Seattlest Interview: John Stanier, Drummer in Battles

Yes, we know we've been plugging this band a lot lately, but it's only because they live up to the hype. Besides, after Battles' show tonight at the Croc, we probably won't have anything to say about them for at least a week or so. But no promises. Seattlest chatted with John Stanier, the man behind the kit, as the sonically solid foursome headed up the West Coast.

Have you been surprised by the reaction to the album?

Yeah, totally. When we finished the record, we thought, "we're dealing with a monster here." But I had no idea it would be this massive, and I don’t think any of us did. That's the icing on the cake. Every show [on the tour] has been sold out, we're selling a lot of records in Japan and England and here in the U.S., and on top of that, we're getting great press. It's really cool.

There's been a lot of talk about Mirrored as if it were a cyborg, the perfect melding of man and machine, the brute force of a rock band along with all kinds of computer effects. How does that break down? How much of what you're doing as a band could be considered analog vs. digital effects?

Pretty much everything is analog. Everything can be done live onstage. There's no samples. The only thing the laptops are used for is the midi keyboard sounds.

What about you as the drummer? Are you playing a lot with the effects as well?

Well, I'm playing to the master loop, so in a weird way, that's really the drummer of Battles: the main loop. I'm playing off that, and then everybody's playing off me. It took a little while to get used to, but I'm so used to it now that I feel weird when I'm not playing with something flashing behind my head.

Taking it back to basics, what's the origin of the band? How did you four with all your different musical experiences get together?

While I was living in New York, Ian had just moved there from Chicago, and he got together with Tyondai, and they were talking about doing something together. Ian also knew Dave and invited him to play. The three of them were messing around with stuff and actually played a couple of shows, but I don't they really knew what it was. It wasn't premeditated, and it wasn't even "let's start a band." And then I ran into Ian on the street, and we had known each other from a long time ago. I was looking for something new to do, and they didn't yet have a drummer, so I checked it out. Our first practice was on the 10th of the month and our first show was on the 19th. It's hard to believe, but it happened that quickly. We didn’t have any idea what we were doing and there were definitely no rules. There wasn't a blueprint of any sort for what Battles was going to sound like. It was "anything goes," and it took a little while for us to get comfortable playing with each other, but it was good.

What was the impetus for the change in your sound between the EPs and Mirrored?

Just playing together for so damn long. Mirrored is the result of playing together basically nonstop for three years. The EPs were recorded in the very early days, [when] we thought, "now that we're officially a band we need to record something so we can tour." We recorded the EPs really fast for free in the middle of the night. The songs were really raw back then.

Mirrored was written over a period of years, and almost half of the tracks on the album were road-tested too. We just had more time to play with each other. The sound just evolved over time, and with the introduction of vocals, the songs are much more elaborate.

How would you describe your sound? "Post-rock" is an umbrella term that doesn’t really mean anything and applies to so many bands, so how do you categorize your music?

At the end of the day, we're a rock band, as vague as that sounds. A really weird rock band, but still a rock band. After that..."modern," but not "modern rock," "experimental," but without the negative connotations.

"Experimental" often means "difficult," like you have to work to enjoy it.

Exactly. The term I hate more than anything is "math rock." I cannot deal with that categorization. I wouldn’t be caught dead playing in a math rock band—it sounds really pretentious, really boring, and just not fun. What we're doing is extremely fun: it's fun to make, it's fun to listen to, it's fun to play. We have a little personal mission: we're trying to get rid of the negative connotations associated with doing something new. I don't see any reason why you can't create something new, set the bar higher, push music forward, be modern, be really contemporary—I don't understand why that has to be super-serious, intellectual, and highbrow. It's fun and it should be fun. I don't know why the only "fun" music you can make is party rock, and everything else is really highbrow. That's definitely not true, and that's sorta what we're trying to prove. It's not necessarily the band's manifesto, but we're trying to express to people that music of this kind is fun. I know I have an absolute blast.

9pm doors // Crocodile Cafe // 2200 2nd Ave // $12