“Writing about music is like dancing to describe architecture.”

Bewildered Battles fan Sarah Gooding spoke to a bemused and delightful Ian Williams about the futility of music journalism, textures of sounds and a 12-girl screeching choir.

Some people just have it. Baffling intensity, easy humour and intelligent insight. Ian Williams, messianist multi-instrumentalist from the up and coming, fast-approaching New York band Battles, was the most enjoyable musician I’ve ever spoken to. Suitably modest but overachieving, Williams is amused by people’s attempts to describe his unique, experimental band. ‘Futuristic’ is one of the less cringe-worthy terms bandied about that he reluctantly accepts. “Why not? [But] I do think that it’s sort’ve a hokey word, like what are you, the fucking Jetsons or something?” he laughs. “Writing about music is like dancing to describe architecture, It’s sorta like how do you equate one to the other, you know? One thing can’t fit the other thing.” But one must persevere, because to share a band like Battles is to bestow the kind of greatness one only stumbles across a few times in their life. Like Oreo-shakes or a really great pair of togs.

And speaking of swimwear, Williams likens the band’s motives to wearing a tired old two-piece. “I think each record will be a response to whatever we’ve been through, so each record is sort of a process of where you’ve been and basically what’s the fresh new thing that you need in your life to make you happy, to get away from whatever’s been driving you crazy for the past year. So if through the past year I’ve been wearing a bikini on stage every night, probably at the end of the year I woulda been like, ‘I don’t wanna go anymore’! That’s one thing I’m gonna do, you know? So the answer to where we go is really simple.” Tan lines or bust.

Williams is a founding member of the experimental scene from which he springs. Charmingly excited about his current band, he says he saw vocalist Tyondai Braxton “beat boxing or something like that at a solo show and I was like ‘that’s crazy!’ cos he just does it through a guitar amp and it’s all kinda raw and weird, and I thought ‘oh that’d be great! I wanna play with him!’”
After gathering bassist/guitarist Dave Konopka and drummer John Stanier, the band then attempted to secure a 12-girl screeching choir, but feminist freak-outs caused the plan to go awry. But with their burgeoning popularity they just might revisit the idea. “Maybe now that more people know us we can get lots of good applicants and it’ll sizzle, it’ll be great… Girls who wanna do it should contact us, so we’ll have a 12-girl, New Zealand girl choir,” he laughs. Since this interviewer spoke to him, 11 places remain.

Williams’ verbose explanation of Battles’ vocal sound is almost an antithesis to their methodological recording process. “Putting the noises on the vocals kinda just helps blend it with the music more, so they don’t call as much attention to themselves. It sort of imbeds it a little more within the music so it’s just like another cog in that wheel… all the little parts add up to the larger whole.”

Their unique rhythmic constructions can also be credited to the guitar-tapping technique Williams developed during his early days. “In my old band Don Caballero I used to finger tap on the fret board a bunch… All of a sudden it opened up a whole new avenue of sounds, cos you could get like blending textures and harmonies and multiple sounds on the keyboard. So suddenly there’s a whole new world, it sorta connects you to the visceral element of like, a loud electric guitar, combined or blended with the colder aesthetic… I found it’s a new direction; it’s an impetus.”

But don’t dismiss their fragmented array of Echoplex loops and rhythms as mindless indulgence. “We don’t think of what we do as jamming, it’s all very twisted and tight… I don’t think we’re the kind of band that just sort of turns on a red light, smokes some pot and jams for two hours and just sees where it takes us, I wouldn’t say that’s us at all.”

That’s not to say they have no free reign on their songs live, either. “There are a few designated areas [for jamming]. It’s sorta like, you have a back yard, there’s the house and that’s sorta where you understand ‘okay, back there I’ll have a barbeque and that’s okay’. Otherwise it’s sorta like you have to have a barbeque in your living room, so we understand that, you know, there are little areas where it’s okay to do the jam.” There is a method to the madness.

Their “magic manipulation” on any of their recordings is baffling, Williams explains the very concept of recording as a “lie”. “The Beatles invented the four track recording process, and we’re not going back on that. There are a lot of tracks, a lot. With the magic of computers you can change all you want. We have a 16 track 2 inch tape machine, synched up with Protools, and there are tracks running on both, so. We have a lot of tracks,” he says. And they’re all incredible. Set sail with togs in tow, for Battles are on the horizon!