Given the option of playing anything, the iPod starts the week with:
- Talking Heads - Warning Sign (live)
- Battles - Bad Trails
- Jimi Hendrix - I Don't Live Today
- Dinosaur Jr. - Puke & Cry
- The Kinks - Where Have All The Good Times Gone. Van Halen's version kills this.
- Tortoise - Night Air
- The Cure - Fascination Street
- Belly - Stay
- Robyn Hitchcock - Butterfly
- Robyn Hitchcock - Sometimes a Blonde. Love this one.
Fair to middling.
Tell me more about ‘Battles’ – heard some interesting things about them…
Battles… yeah, they’ve got their own thing going on. to my imagination, they sound like what King Crimson or Yes would be if they’d started in 2005 instead of 1965, maybe with a little Japanese influence. they’re definitely ‘prog’ – complex, intricate, mostly instrumental, but there’s none of the typical prog rock lyrical nonsense. though frankly, most of the time you can’t understand the vocals, when they’re singing words at all. there aren’t any wanky instrumental solos like KC or Yes, either; instead it’s mostly steady rhythm with various instruments layered on-top.
here’s a video.
i read somewhere that it’s nearly all samples spliced together on a computer – though it doesn’t sound like that to me.