Battles albums
	2007                                                             Mirrored -  7/8     Mirrored is a one of a kind record that is truly out of this world. Every song is a different journey but the idelogy is the same: create music that sounds like rock from the future. They have been called a "laptop" generation rock band, which is an odd term that doesn't really define anything, suffice to say the music sounds like it has been processed over and over into something mathematically correct, and that is true. To relate it to anything would lead to comparissons to Yes's prog-rock but with vocals ran though a voice altering machine each time. Even with that comparission working for songs like "Tonto" and "Tij", long journey of altering instrumentation, other songs defy this notion. "Snare Hanger" just states that they have an awesome drummer in John Stainer, while opener and closer "Race In" and "Race Out" are guitar fantasies from Mars. "Atlas" is what I love to call "happy industrial music", a seriously demented piece of work that is one of the better songs of the 00's. I usually don't say this, but the video actually complements the song somewhat (though it's in an edited version). Other favorites run abound on this record, and each one is experimental music at its best - "Rainbow" cites everything from contemporaries Wilderness to the epic alumni King Crimson; "Ddiamondd" mixes strange vocals with even stranger music. Some of this doesn't work: "Leyendecker" sounds like loops and samples that any Pro Tools editor could throw together and "Bad Trails" is just "bad". Still, a very high 7/8 should be given here, and hopefully more band's this daring will pop up in the future. Mirrored is an album that enhances rock music's reputation in general. - Trevor e.y. 1.race in- 4 2.atlas- 4 3.ddiamondd- 4 4.tonto- 3.5 5.leyendecker- 2 6.rainbow- 4 7.bad trails- 2 8.prismism- gf 9.snare hangar- 3 10.tij- 4 11.race out- 4