Aiming for Enrike, Battles, and Other Strange Loops

 Review and discussion on Aiming for Enrike’s Music for Working Out (2020) with a digression into Battles 2007 classic Mirrored for context and an examination of the nuances of looping technology.

Relevant links:

An early text post on Mirrored

Another text post on Gloss Drop

Yet another text post on Tyondai Braxton’s solo album

The full rundown of Simen’s rig by Living Room Gear Demos

The full Audiotree performance

2020 Preview Series Part 1: The Hands-On Approach

Previews of new music for 2020, including:

Anamanaguchi – [USA] (2019)

Battles – Juice B Crypts (2019)

Crystal Beth – Push Through (2019)

Floating Points – Crush (2019)

Everything Everything- A Fever Dream (2017)

RPWL – Tales From Outer Space (2019)

Below is a widget to the 2020 playlist.  Watch it grow!

John Zorn's "Naked City" and a Disappointing 14.5

Although Mike Patton was far more visible as the lead singer of Faith No More, Mr. Bungle's jagged and sinister self-titled debut became the defining favorite for me in the early 90s. The album was produced by John Zorn, a fact that put this incredibly prolific composer on my radar when Naked City was released.  Back then, test driving an album before purchase, especially one by someone as avant-garde as Zorn, was pretty much impossible. Even while working at a record store, we really could only listen to promotional materials.  I had no idea what I was getting into when I bought Naked City.  It turned out to be an all-out assault.



Naked City eschewed all of the clownish imagery of Mr. Bungle and distilled its noisiest aspects into one to three minute blasts of aggression. To call it jagged and disorienting is an understatement. It was a hard listen, but it was also uniquely electrifying. It became a private favorite that I shared with only a few brave souls, but it opened up the doors to a broad variety of noise rock and avant-garde jazz.

There are not many venues for me to really dig in and digest this sort of music these days.  Naked City would drive my wife nuts and might irreversibly scar the Little One.  Nevertheless, the album resurfaced for me due to a recent post that popped up in my feed last week. I was looking for the announcement of 14.5, the final workout for this year's CrossFit Open.

The Open workouts were announced every Thursday when I am in aikido class.  I was barely out of my gi before people were texting me about the WOD.  I went home to find the official movement standards, but was distracted by this amazing live clip from the Naked City project.



This video is the first time I have ever seen a live performance of this material, and it shines a new light on what Naked City was all about.  The original recordings are so erratic that they seem like studio constructions, but these performances challenge that perception in a big way.  Yamasuka Eye, who recently showed up on a Battles album a couple of years ago, is particularly amazing in a way that just can't be captured on a recording. There are not many musicians that I can think of that throw themselves more fully into a performance of such complicated and intense music as I see him do here.

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Not far away from this video was the announcement for workout 14.5.



I admit, I like being stronger and faster than the average joe on the street, but in truth, I am not into this CrossFit thing to be the strongest or the fastest. The system has a competitive component which is motivating, but ultimately I train so that I can maintain a high quality of life and, more functionally, keep my breath in the dojo. This mindset allows me to be pretty forgiving of myself, so I don’t beat myself up too much if I don’t come out on top. Still, its nice to perform well on a hard workout, and although burpees and thrusters don't bother me too much, there is a lot of work happening in 14.5. 

But the next morning I opened the garage and I was not ready. I was congested, short on sleep, noticeably gassed from a workout from the day before, and, worst of all, terribly grumpy. The result: my performance on 14.5 was awful - easily my worst Open workout of the season. I wasn't consciously taking it easy or trying to dial it in, I just couldn't get any traction. When I was done, I was jittery, and post-recovery, I still physically felt like I had pushed myself. 14.5 was just hard, and I was not in a place in which I could pull out my best. Despite being disappointed with my performance,though, I still felt more fit for doing 14.5, which is ultimately the point.

When all the submissions were reviewed this week, the top time for the workout was just over 7 minutes.  That's just ridiculous. To get a time like that, you have to come at this workout with an intensity that borders on pure insanity - not unlike Eye had on Naked City.

A Satisfying Interruption: Tyondai Braxton's "Central Market"

Traditionally, I am not possessed by school spirit, but I do like playing drums.  Who doesn't?  Last year, at the school district's annual "employee pep rally,"  I hid in plain sight by beating the skins like a rabid gorilla.  This maneuver was so successful that I received several requests from my campus coworkers for repeat performance at this year’s pep rally.  Sounds easy enough - I show up at 8:30 am to make my contribution to the school by playing drums really, really loud.  Everybody wins.

The evening previous, however, my wife’s obstetrician had set up an ominous sonogram appointment with our perinatalist at 7:30 am.  With our daughter’s due date just ten days away, an early call like that rang with a bit of urgency.  There was the possibility that it was nothing, but it was enough to ensure a bit of a sleepless night.

That morning, I set up a pretty rickety set of last-second arrangements with some staff members and, perhaps naively, envisioned myself beating the odds by walking into the gym and playing the part of the dutiful school band director at the last possible minute.  For this to pass, my wife and I went early and in separate cars to the appointment.  When she pulled up beside me in the empty parking lot, I grinned and rolled down the window with this blasting through the speakers.  .

Her perplexed reaction was pretty much what you think it might have been, and, as you might suspect, it was particularly satisfying.

This track is from Tyondai Braxton’s 2009 album Central Market, which I have had on the radar since I heard he left Battles.  As much as I have been shaking my fist at the sky over his departure, I have also been keen to extract and isolate the role that Braxton played in the group.  It seemed totally insane to me that anyone who is interested in producing contemporary avant garde music would walk away from the experimental success of Mirrored.

Central Market, however, seems to go much further than mere experimentalism.  It blurs the traditionally Euclidean division between chamber music and rock in a way that was simply not possible within the confines of Braxton’s previous project.  When I began spinning it at the beginning it this month, the album’s playful energy and symphonic palate immediately brought Zappa’s orchestral work to mind: an oeuvre that is a source of constant inspiration to me.  I can't help but post this amazing piece as an example.

Although Zappa’s background and subsequent “day job” was as a rock musician, his passion was the orchestra.  Through little more than a few trips to the library and a whole lot of creativity, he created a unique style that, I thought, might have been more of an aberration in the chamber music repertoire than a new postmodern direction.  Braxton’s Central Market confounds this assumption by harnessing a similar, but distinctive, conceptual vitality.

It’s not all strings, kazoos, and sixteenth note triplets, though.  Additionally, Central Market sometimes bears a striking sonic resemblance the second side of King Crimson’s Three of a Perfect Pair from 1984, a distinctively noisy part of the 80s Crimson repertoire.  This live performance of Dead Strings, Central Market’s closing track, shows Braxton looping up a cacophonous cyborg storm.

I think that many solo careers are supported more by the ego of the artist than true creative vision.  A few artists, though, seem to be justified in going solo, simply because their musical concept spills beyond the possibilities of their originating projects.  Although his track record is pretty short as of now, Central Market might indicate that Braxton fits into this category.

Dead Strings was playing as I pulled into the hospital’s parking garage at 8:45.  Needless to say, I never made it to the pep rally.  The perinatalist immediately sent us to the hospital, where, for the next eighteen hours, selections from Central Market danced through my head.  The next day, still dressed in my band t-shirt and khakis, I was the proud first-time father of a healthy baby girl.

What happened at the hospital is another story.....   

Battles' Trade-Off on "Gloss Drop"

If you could not tell from my previous post, I am an enthusiastic fan of Battles.  When Mirrored came out, it opened my ears up to an entirely new realm of musical virtuosity.  Today, I would call it a personal classic, and of course I have been looking forward to the follow-up with no small amount of anticipation.  Holding an album in such high esteem, however, causes a conundrum: do I really want more of the same, or am I willing to bend my expectations enough to follow the changes that will keep the band fresh?  This is especially problematic with a band like Battles, whose overt experimentalism keeps them dancing on the edge of accessibility.

On their new release Gloss Drop, however, the problem was somewhat solved by the unfortunate exit of Tyondai Braxton.  Despite the fact that most of Battles’ repertoire is instrumental, Braxton gained the (perhaps misplaced) title “lead singer” due to his pitch-shifted vocal stylings on Battles’ previous “hit,” Atlas.  His contributions to the group extended far beyond vocals, however, and although I did not doubt that the band could continue without him, I felt that the group’s chemistry would suffer due to his departure. 

Battles has convincingly adapted to their current trio format, though, allowing them to sidestep the problem of following up Mirrored.  It’s the same band, but not quite the same.  This expertly filmed clip of Futura from blogotheque is a pretty intimate portrait of how Battles does what it does.

Battles | Futura | A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

Ian Williams’ angular, erratic melodic concept has evolved far beyond the guitar looping approach he pioneered with Don Caballero, and now seamlessly includes samples and keyboards.  Dave Konopka’s soundscaping, in contrast, is nearly orchestral, and provides a compelling counterbalance to Williams while drummer John Stanier is the engine that drives the entire thing along.

The “driving” metaphor is intentional, because Gloss Drop feels “formula one” from the get-go.  Like Mirrored, it’s incredibly fast-moving, intense, precise, and conveys just a hint of reckless danger. Mirrored, however, exhibited a cinematic quality that is missing on Gloss Drop, which replaces this expansiveness with more rhythmic complexity.  The jury is still out on whether or not this is an even trade in the long run.  Gloss Drop sounds decidedly more “New Wave” than its predecessor (a perception perhaps influenced by a guest vocal appearance by Gary Numan), and my wife seems to innocently wiggle along when I have it on, so that’s a good sign. 

One final note concerning the guest vocal appearances: it is very difficult for a band to have any sort of visibility as a strictly instrumental outfit, and there are a few tracks on Gloss Drop that clearly address this issue.  The lead “single” is an infectious tune with a guest vocalist and an absurd video.

The ridiculous innuendos in this Atlas follow-up video seem to be taking sarcastic stabs at conventional media expectations: sex, violence, disjointed narratives, etc.  Although the guest vocal spot is pretty well done here, I can’t help but think that it, like the other guest vocal spots, float above Battles’ concept.  I don’t, for example, hear anyone being brave enough to plug their microphone into a wah-wah pedal.  There are many great avant-garde musicians out there that sing who could contribute to the band (one of which, Yamataka Eye, makes an appearance on Gloss Drop) if they had been open to the possibility of replacing Braxton.  This is, however, not the standard approach these days – musicians in a group generally attempt to cover more bases in the studio rather than add new members and incorporate their particular talents into the group.  Fortunately, the members of Battles are strong enough individually to rise to this challenge.