Better late than never, ATS’ Top 50 Albums of 2011 is finally here, and trust me, it’s worth the wait. Also, take a listen to tracks from the albums on our Spotify playlist here. Enjoy! 50. Battles- Gloss Drop By Charles With Battles last year announcing the departure of Tyondai Braxton, many wondered what the follow up to 2007′s Mirrored would hold. But it wasn’t as if the remaining members lacked experience – this is, after all, the “super group” boasting members from Don Caballero and Helmet – and they duly pulled through. Pulling in favours from Matias Aguayo ...

Die New Yorker Experimental-Rocker Battles haben eine Serie von Remix-Singles angekündigt, auf denen Songs ihres letztjährigen Langspielers " Gloss Drop " ein neues Antlitz verpasst wurde. Die erste 12-Inch-Vinyl der "Dross Glop" betitelten Serie wird neue Versionen vom brasilianischen Minimal-Produzenten Gui Boratto und dem schwedischen Electronica-Artist Axel Willner alias The Field beinhalten. Dabei präsentieren die beiden Kompakt-Signings ganz unterschiedliche Herangehensweisen. Während Boratto dem Song "Wall Street" einen gewissen Groove verpasst, bettet Willner "Sweetie & Shag" in ein atmosphärisches Ambient-Klangbild ein. Die erste Single erscheint am 6. Februar bei Warp Records, die nächste folgt Ende des selben Monats und wird unter anderem Mixe von ...

If there’s one guy the writers at Tiny Mix Tapes get a huge boner for, it’s Canadian stack-of-bricks bass saxophonist Colin Stetson, whose album New History Warfare Vol 2: Judges on Constellation made #3 on our year-end list . But for me, it’s less about his lumberjack physique and more about his enormous… saxophone. This spring, Stetson will arrive in the East Coast with his mammoth horn to stir up our hormones. Alongside the beefcake will be the smoldering sexpot Sarah Neufeld, whose powers of seduction have overtaken the likes of Tim Hecker and who Stetson has performed ...

Let's just say there is no love lost at all between former Battles singer, guitarist and on-stage crazy man Tyondai Braxton and his old band mates.Guitarist Ian Williams refers to Braxton as "the member of the band who's not in...

Maintaining the format of each curator playing two sets per day, Battles freely admit to being hungover to hell opening on the Centre Stage. You wouldn't guess if they'd kept schtum, though, because they're metronome tight, as their moxie dictates. While the New Yorkers' popularity skyrocketed with debut album proper 'Mirrored', your humble scribe couldn't stomach main protagonist Tyondai Braxton's increasingly overwrought and superfluous vocal jiggery-fuckery. Post-Braxton departing the band, conversely, this year's 'Gloss Drop' seemed to lose a tad in the songwriting department. Our worries prove unfounded: 'Ice Cream' and 'Wall Street' come ...

Wow this list was pretty fucking tough to make. Thankfully I had Spotify to check out as most songs/albums as I could this year which helped in making this list without feeling guilty about not listening to heavy contenders. Regardless, this list was VERY impossible to make considering the year we've had with so many good tracks. People are bound to get pissed about not including certain tracks, just as I have with many lists so far this year. I mean, has anybody seen Rolling Stone's top 10 songs of the year??? Jeez there's only like ...

-- Kathleen Edwards will release her next album, Voyageur , on January 17 via Zoë/Rounder. Produced by Edwards and Bon Iver's Justin Vernon, it also includes contributions from Norah Jones, Megafaun's Phil Cook, Stornoway, and more. Listen to "Change the Sheets" here . -- A benefit for the African relief non-profit Invisible Children will take place at L.A.'s Troubadour on December 15 and 16. The Mountain Goats, La Sera, Fruit Bats' Eric Johnson with Vetiver's Andy Cabic, and more will perform. -- To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Bang on a Can , the experimental music collective will release a ...

Every casual browser of this here internet loves a list, particularly around this dishearteningly dark and ubiquitously dank time of year. Whether it be a page documenting childlike greed winking and nudging at material gain beneath the tawdrily-lit pine or the explicit illumination of what it was that made whichever year draws to an anticlimactic close shine and brighten the gloomiest bowels of forgotten memory, the pipes, wires and cabling of the web are currently clogged with Lisztomania. Not that referring to Ken Russell's full-length; nor to Rick Wakeman's stodgy soundtracking; nor to Phoenix' glowing estival peep but ...

Clash concludes it's in-depth rundown of it's Top 40 Albums of 2011 with Radiohead, Battles, PJ Harvey, The Horrors and Modeselektor. - 5. Radiohead ‘The King Of Limbs’ Subversive and claustrophobic, Radiohead’s accurate sniping at our iPods from the fringes of outsider rock continued with another delightful ambush. Taut, obsessive rhythmic landscapes were coloured in by Thom’s processed angst and murmurs of vague, sad guitars that matched the restless year of social reformatting. This is interloper rock from a band that rarely fucks up. Best Bit: : The heartbreaking thrall of ‘Separator’, a classic even by Radiohead’s ...

With Tyondai Braxton gone the remaining Battles trio chose a more playful route than the jazzily obtuse moments that afflicted Mirrored. With John Stanier's precision drumming front and centre, the rhythms push out like unstable pistons while around it dance implausibly intricate guitar sounds and keyboard patterns, the sound of carnival fairgrounds gone haywire. It works like a machine, just one that hasn't worked out mathematical precision but will send sparks everywhere, structures sometimes stretched out into Reich-ambient, sometimes bunched up into rushing busily. The decision to bring in guest singers isn't entirely necessary and not just ...

November heralds the end of hectic tour schedules for many bands, but not Battles. They have been on the road consistently for eight months, pedaling their unique brand of angular math rock and their tour will culminate in the ultimate gig for serious musicians: the co-curation of ATP’s ‘Nightmare Before Christmas’. Despite the sizable venue, one can’t help feeling tonight’s show at the HMV Forum is a warm up in preparation for December’s headline slot. Nisennenmondai will be providing tonight’s support. They are a Tokyo-based three piece with a hard, repetitive sound. They bring a ...

El dúo neoyorquino de dubstep Sepalcure que engalanó una de las noches del Festival MUTEK México 2011, precisamente A/VISION 2 con Murcof + AntiVJ y Tyondai Braxton, lanzará su álbum debut el próximo 21 de noviembre a través de Hotflush. Y como adelanto (uno más), podemos escuchar un nuevo tema: “See Mee Feel Me”. En [...]

A/VISION 2: Tyondai Braxton / Murcof + AntiVj / Sepalcure Teatro de la Ciudad Festival MUTEK México 2011 Sábado 29 de octubre de 2011 Fotos: Daniel Patlán (@folkmetender)

Vad gör man när hjärnan säger åt kroppen att den ska dra? Screw you guys, I’m going home. I Battles fall valde kroppen att strunta i det och köra vidare med sin lunk. Det tog några år att sätta igång den, men nu är maskineriet åter igång. När sångaren och frontmannen Tyondai Braxton valde att [...]

To celebrate the widely influential composer's upcoming 75th birthday, Beck and Hector Castillo have teamed up to create a remix album of the works of Philip Glass. Castillo in appropriate choice for the role as he's worked on several projects with Glass in the past, be it as an engineer or mixer. But here, he's helping Beck put together reworked versions of Glass' material from the likes of Amon Tobin, Cornelius, Memory Tapes, and former Battles frontman Tyondai Braxton. It's not clear when we'll be hearing the remix album, but we'll be sure to ...