Let the Battles begin!

OH! a relevant, punny title! How lame ABC! (slap on wrist). Now for the meat of the matter, or, the matter of the meat, this past week has been absurdly discombobulating a) with the election season on full steam and all sides taking potshots or arguing about 'who's the biggest celebrity' or 'who's going to raise/lower taxes, and obamania finding outlets (I even saw a cardboard cutout this weekend!) b) Edwards cheating on his cancerous wife. Yick, won't get into THAT c) Russia invading Georgia (And thus begins Cold War part II) d) The Olympics starting in China i.e. my entire family constantly watching badminton or waterpolo or that Phelps fellow in the background of my life yeesh e) I just picked up Jean Baudrillard book "The Illusion of the End" where the end of History is discussed in full detail. Of course, Baudrillard has me convinced that a-d never actually HAPPENED in reality, but that's besides the point. Not to mention that I just finished Eco's essay "Traveling through Hyperreality." My Gawd, that's a lot of shit.

With all that in mind I went and hit the trail today for a daily run with an ipod and two huge earmuff-looking headphones (I spit in a bud's general direction) because when I go running alone I need music to keep me company, and, of course, there's always that all-important question of What Album To Choose? It's an intergral part of my constructed running world. Shall I go for some jazz fusion? some prog (rush is always a safe bet), some sing-along rock/pop? Today, on a whim, I chose the experimental math-rock group from New York, Battles' album Mirrored. I figured the first tracks' title "Race In" should be a winner for some high intense training, and it was that and more.

The band Battles and I have a short history together. To begin, I saw them on the first day at Bonnaroo and it was by far one of the most impressive performances of my life I've ever seen. My friend on acid said it was lifechanging but that's beside the point. The music was carefully layered but it didn't FEEL like it was careful at all. That may be due to the different instrumental platitudes looped into the mix over ten or twenty minute jams that wind like a snake around and around the ferocious drum beat. The music itself frequently toying with key signatures and sound effects that defy keys, strain the limits of vocalization, and break conventional songwriting pop format in every sense while still retaining a pop-package. That package was the frequented use of dancebeats.

[And boy did we dance. That night I met an attractive young woman at the show from Ohio whom I've forgotten the name of and we got sweaty and I had a halfdozen hardons and mindorgasms - yes, the music was that good, but that is completely irrelevant to anything]

So, anyways, the run lasted just over a half hour and I stretched with it and made it through the whole album. I meditated on its relevance to society - what does this music say about our society? what does the effect of looping have to offer in an artistic sense? Doesn't this fall into the Simulacum (you can tell the Baudrillard influence, meh I'm guilty) the constant Replication of societies' reality until reality and the actual original! MUSIC ceases to exist and the only way it's accepted is due to the dance-beat (and that's! the true source of the appeal - not the actual notes). But isn't that what art is suppose to do? Adapt to the societal understanding of "real" then find ways of packaging it as creative inspirations?

Sigh. So the whole world, or so it seems is a series of battles - on the field, in nostalgia, in creativtivity, in my head - reality - hyperreality - whatever. Alls I know is that this video, track, album and band are off the shiznaz, yo.