Battles Mirrored

Buckle your seatbelt for this one: Battles' 2007 debut is a puzzle box of daunting complexity—and it all unfolds at a breakneck pace. While founder Tyondai Braxton's heavily effected vocals do come into play here, Mirrored is largely an instrumental record, but its instruments play like an orchestra of machinery. On tracks like "Atlas" and "Tonto”, John Stanier builds tempos like a malfunctioning drum machine, while the rest of the band switch from frenzied to barely there. This is the sound of rock music happily collapsing in on itself.