Juice B Crypts

Battles are back in action with their fourth album Juice B Crypts on Warp Records. Following in the wake of its complex, mind-bending predecessors Mirrored, Gloss Drop, Dross Glop and La Di Da Di, the new album is a sensory overload of information that throws everything you thought you knew about the storied art rock supergroup into flux once again. The band’s redefined line-up puts multi-instrumentalist Ian Williams and drummer John Stanier at the core of the covertly named Juice B Crypts, which was produced and mixed by Chris Tabron (Beyonce, Mobb Deep, RATKING, Trash Talk). Marrying synthesizer loops, cutthroat drum patterns and cyclical riffs, the album flirts with new technology, questions of authenticity, and the technicalities of reinventing the wheel at the eleventh hour.

The remaining members are imperious musicians who can seemingly get their instruments to do pretty much whatever they want. Some of the playing here is simply breathtaking, the sort of thing that many bands would not even attempt to replicate (let alone pull off). Intricate, energetic cuts like Ambulance and Juice B Crypts have as much in common with the maximalist hip-hop of Flying Lotus and Iglooghost as they do with Don Caballero.

The band did have some help with the album, though. And first single Titanium 2 Step matches them with Sal Principato from no wave legends Liquid Liquid, who wails and whimpers and howls all over the band’s busily skronking insanity. The song is an homage to New York, where all involved parties are based, and you can certainly hear the resemblance to Manhattan’s nonstop chaos. Other contributors include Shabazz Palaces, tUnE-yArDs, Xenia Rubinos and Yes lead singer Jon Anderson.

While from New York, Juice B Crypts is the first album Battles have written and recorded there. Influenced by its rhythms, it joins the dots of their lived and unlived experiences there.

"We loved making this record in our hometown of New York and cannot be more pleased that Sal from Liquid Liquid is on the track,” explains John, “it could not have been more perfect".

Juice B Crypts demonstrates once again that there are simply no other acts who can match Battles for musical invention and this record is as vibrant as anything they’ve ever done.

Tracklisting

1 Ambulance
2 A Loop So Nice...
3 They Played It Twice (featuring Xenia Rubinos)
4 Sugar Foot (featuring Jon Anderson and Prairie WWWW)
5 Fort Greene Park
6 Titanium 2 Step (featuring Sal Principato)
7 Hiro 3
8 Izm (featuring Shabazz Palaces)
9 Juice B Crypts
10 The Last Supper On Shasta (featuring Tune-Yard