Pitchfork

Battles may boast, "We've got Ian Williams of Don Caballero on guitar", but it's a musical bait and switch: They're not math rock. In fact, the instrumental four-piece band confines itself to relatively conventional time signatures on its third EP, B, a record steeped in heavy funk and craggy post-rock. But let's not beat around the bush-- Williams is still a guitar powerhouse and, placed alongside the reliably inventive Tyondai Braxton, plus David Konopka's guitar work and John Stanier's striated drum grooves, he's infallible-- like Barry Bonds in a lineup that won't let you pitch around him.

Battles thrive on the energy of a group of musicians being dead-aim tight, synced to the point where it almost doesn't matter what they're playing. Their instruments are tuned to be as crisp and dry as possible, reducing the margin for error within their playing. Without the gloss of overtones, every misstep leaves a glaring red tracer; amazingly, such marks are rarely seen on B, and when one is, it's so faint that it could pass for a deliberate impression (a staggered flam, for instance).

Virtuosic playing aside, Battles' guitar sounds are unlike those of most of their contemporaries. Placed in a more conventional sonic setting, these songs could take on an entirely different texture, but as such they're exhilaratingly off-kilter. Williams, Braxton, and Konopka sound hazy and low-res, only without the static and hissing that accompanies many poor quality recordings. Alternately guttural and glistening, "SZ2" opens in a formless haze of fingerings before falling into a pensive, slightly shuffled melody. In contrast to the totemic EP C, Battles here sound acquiescent, as if they're stepping down from the groove-heavy jams of that record into more texture-based territory. But then Stanier enters with an impossibly huge drum fill, splintering the subdued mood and booting the song awake.

The ensuing seven minutes are B's strongest. Battles are impressive musicians, but the real key to these songs is restraint, and "SZ2" presents its selling points in a humble manner that amounts to a vastly greater whole. Unlike in Don Cab, Williams' polymathic high-wire acts are understated; they play a foundational role. Meanwhile, Stanier pounds tight-wound grooves that handle big dynamics with phenomenal sensitivity. That one-two punch is the crux of "SZ2", which at first taunts and pounds its chest, then backs off, performs a quick turnabout, and skitters away in lithe 3-against-4 trot.

This record is a companion to this summer's Tras and EP C, and its five songs explore, hone, and paraphrase material from those two releases. Like minimalist composers, the band work in subtle variations, treating previously recorded songs as constantly evolving entities. "TRAS3" isolates the girding guitar riff from Tras's title track, and bathes it in echo, creating a nice arrhythmic segue after the unrelenting nine-minute opener. "IPT2" intercepts a track of the same name from EP C, removing its heavily processed drums. "Dance" is a strong closer; it has another insistent Stanier drum loop and vamps on an organ melody that sounds like a twisted seventh-inning stretch.

Battles' Achilles' heel is their penchant for abstruseness, witnessed here by "BTTLS", a plodding ambient collage built of fragmented, heavily-processed percussion clips and a smattering of tinny, modem-like squalls. At 12 minutes, the song has plenty of time to find its stride, but never really manages to do so. Perhaps Battles are miserably self-conscious, and they feel the need to try to conflate their musical strengths with an aloof intellectualism-- after all, the similarly meandering, melody-vacant "Fantasy" bogged down Tras, and the band's cryptic song titles provide unneeded obfuscation. Had they done without the outre bloviating of these more experimental numbers, the band likely wouldn't have had enough material for three separate EPs. Rather, they could have put together a leak-proof full-length of their best tracks-- and saved fans about $20.