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Where: San Francisco Bath House, Wellington
When: Saturday, September 22

Battles is the name of an American “Math-rock” band (a newish descriptor for modern progressive-rock music, or post-rock as it used to be called). And they are my favourite band of 2007.

As a music reviewer I do not get to say that (and mean it) nearly as often as I would like to. But hearing Mirrored, the band’s debut album (on the back of a couple of superb instrumental EPs) I was genuinely floored.

Here was an album that I wanted to tell everyone about with only one problem – how do you begin to describe it?

Seeing Battles live completes the circle, explains the band as a project/concept and confirms the passion and intensity of their recorded work.

John Stainer (ex-Helmet) sits front and centre behind a drum kit with a lone cymbal stretched high on a straight stand toward the ceiling.

Around him and his kit leap and pop Dave Konopka (ex-Lynx), Ian Williams (ex-Don Caballero) and Tyondai Braxton (the son of avant- garde jazz musician, Anthony Braxton).

Konopka, Williams and Braxton coax their sounds from guitars, keyboards, bass and computers – bopping about in time with the thrum of the band’s exciting sound.

Essentially, Battles is a band that has made progressive-rock cool; they have turbo-charged Kraftwerk and sold the sound to a generation raised on the post-rock and jazz experimentation of bands like Tortoise.

Stainer’s powerhouse drumming is machine-like in its consistency and sets the pulse for many of the tunes.

Braxton’s filtered wordless vocals (twiddled knobs shift the pitch of his voice in a possible approximation of the chatter between small woodland creatures) provide strange hooks – the audience cannot hang on them alone.

But, thanks to the stirring bass grooves, the layers of keyboard and guitar sounds and the visual exuberance of the four band members literally creating their own world on stage to live inside of, Battles manages to make what could easily, in the wrong hands, be construed as musical masturbation into a lively, danceable, accessible sound.

The single Atlas, easily the most pogo fun you can have nodding along to nonsense, is a huge mid-set highlight.

The song builds with time, then falls away and is rebuilt from the rhythm through to the melody. The pulse charging the separate parts, an inherent groove never lets the audience out of its grasp.

A musically intense, constantly exciting, evolving performance. Do you agree with this review? Send us your