Battles

Featuring an almost too-good-to-be-true lineup of avant-experimentalists and math rock musicians -- including guitarist Ian Williams, formerly of Pittsburgh's Don Caballero and Storm & Stress, and composer Tyondai Braxton -- it's perhaps not surprising that the music Battles make is anything other than complicated, richly layered and quite unlike anything that's come before. Sounding something akin to an Atari 2600 hooked up to a Marshall stack, B EP is the third in a trilogy of impossible-to-classify albums released by Battles this year. And while the first two, EP C and Tras, Fantasy, worked to solidify the band's reputation as post-noise savants with a punk-rock edge, B EP takes it a step further by creating a furious electronic force field you can almost dance to. Of course, Battles, by its very nature, is the sort of supergroup project that's bound to break up before long. Our advice? Pay close attention while you've still got the chance.