5 out of 5

Label: Africantape

Produced by: Giovanni Ferliga (engineered and mixed)

Goodness shizz.  This is magic.  This is what I wanted Battles to be, what they hinted at on their initial EPs between all the wandering spaceless diddling, then tossed away in favor of poppy on Mirrored and poppy plus on Gloss Drop.  This is instrumental experimental fury, guitar, bass, drums and keys not afraid to go Tortoise-production magic – ‘Ac Ha’, the untitled tracks 7 and 8 – or post-rock stop-start on the pristinely bloated closer ‘Tesla.’  Yes, it’s on Africantape, so you’ll hear the kind of focused interplay of Chevreuil (since the label was started by one of the members of that group), but Aucan ditch the feedback loops in favor of more direct riffing.  The tracks perflectly flow into one another without blending: there’s a clear divide between any given track but the disc is sequenced to work as a loop, heaving and hawing from toe-tapping (‘Iena’) to riffing; from groove (‘Satellite’) to head-banging.

Magic.