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2009 has been Warp Records’ year. With its 20th anniversary has come an all-encompassing box set of classics, rarities and new material from the Sheffield label’s back catalogue. Recent years have seen Warp advance into film, and spread their musical wings by introducing to their roster the likes of dance punk stars !!!, skinny-jeaned indie rockers Maxïmo Park and the prog folk of Grizzly Bear. Monday's show, though, gave the stage to three purveyors of Warp’s more traditional boundary-pushing electronica.
Opening act Nice Nice are one of the newer additions to the Warp family, and the Oregon duo offered a great start to the night. Basing their relatively chilled out jams around a wide-ranging set of guitar effects and drum machine samples, their momentum was continually absorbing. Some technical hitches in their closing number almost brought them to a standstill, but a late recovery ensured their chin-stroking reception was wholly positive.
Flying Lotus (Steven Ellison to his friends) announced that he “didn’t mean to drink” on the night, but not before he’d got through most of a bottle of spirits during his set of laptop hip-hop. Energetically gliding through a series of live mixes and throwing out snippets of banter like momentary drum fills, his set got livelier as it went on. The first signs of raucousness in the crowd met his later tracks, and their appreciation forced him out for an encore.
Battles were undeniably the main draw of the night, their show rarely stopping for breath during its hour-long duration. One of those live bands so accomplished as individuals that to watch any one of them effectively provides a show in itself, their contributions took so much focus and energy it was unsurprising to see the sweat dripping within minutes. John Stanier’s drumming never missed one of its pounding off-kilter beats, and the dynamic contributions from Ian Williams, Dave Konopka and ringleader Tyondai Braxton on guitars, effects and vocals complemented each other explosively.
The non-existent gap between the stage and the crowd allowed for a few stage invasions as the show progressed, most memorably by the girl who took control of the drum sticks while Stanier briefly vacated his stool. Until a member of the stage crew lifted her clean away and dumped her back into the crowd (allowing for the wild math rock rhythms to return), Battles seemed to be being fronted by a surprisingly jarring 4/4 backbeat.
New songs being trialled ahead of their next album’s 2010 release came across as experimental and exciting as anything on debut Mirrored (though without the crossover potential of ‘Atlas’), whilst old favourites ‘Tonto’ and ‘Race:In’ induced the crowd into some kind of ecstasy. The first signs of closer ‘Atlas’’ arrival were greeted with cheering, jumping and a few cases of crowdsurfing, and the following six or so minutes must have been among the most thrilling to grace the Academy in a good long while.
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