Battles has finished up their follow-up to 2007's Mirrored, though after what could've been a potentially major setback. Ditched by their vocalist Tyondai Braxton mid-recording, Ian Williams, John Stainer and Dave Konopka completed their forthcoming LP without a single peep included from their former singer. With some help from a few guest musicians, including Boredom's Eye, they're ready to drop their yet-to-be-named album this summer.
Pitchfork spoke with Konopka about the process of the new album, and he had some informative, intriguing items to share:
The three of us argued and were pissed off after Ty left but we were like, "Fuck that. That's chapter's closed. Let's move on." From there, the most important thing was to maintain the integrity of what the band means to us and to carry on with it. When Ty left over the summer, we were close to having an album's worth of material-- we had put so much energy into the project and then we had to re-establish ourselves as a three-piece. The end result is a culmination of reworked things we'd been putting together the past couple years and some newer songs.
. . .
There was a lot of new space to work with but the album is still crazy-- it doesn't sound like we're a three-piece. It also opened up a lot of doors for us to collaborate with some really great vocalists like Matias Aguayo from Kompakt Records and Eye from the Boredoms. There are two more guests I can't talk about just yet. And all the vocalists are really integrated into the music, it's not like, "Why is Chris Martin on this Battles song?"
. . .
[I]t feels like such a free, fun, summery album to me. When we listened to it as a whole, it felt like so much more of an accomplishment than Mirrored. It was a really emotional couple years to get it all together. You don't really associate our music with that emotional thing, but I cried like a fucking baby when I first heard it.
Revisit Battles' contribution to the Twilight: Eclipse soundtrack, "The Line." Hear it above and snag for keeps below.
(via P4K)