For a band whose music is so extrinsic, calculated and precise—okay, math rock—Battles still provides surprise and smiles. When they released the single, “Atlas,” a sprightly jam of ramping rhythm earlier this year, the Internets were a bit shocked that the band, noted as a cool, exclusively instrumental oddity, had added vocals. And not just any vocals; Battles had broken bread with a laboring battalion of chipmunks. The debut album on which “Atlas” appears is entitled Mirrored. It follows a furtive stream of cryptically-designed EPs that have earned the band a sizable digital following to coincide with the audiences they’ve entranced in the quasi-estranged physical space. Wisely sprinkling tra-la-la-esque vocals across compositions that are alien but never cold, Mirrored offers miles of mental Sims without driving a loved one’s arm to withdraw itself from your shoulder and glumly slither into the kitchen.

By Kyle Munzenrieder for Ignore Magazine