Battles Announce New Album Juice B Crypts, Share Lead Single “Titanium 2 Step”

Battles is the New York City-based art-rock supergroup helmed by Ian Williams and John Stanier. The last we heard from them was 2015’s excellent La Di Da Di, and today (Aug. 7), the duo is announcing their fourth record, Juice B Crypts, and sharing our first taste with some help from the No Wave legend Sal Principato.

Like all the best Battles tracks, “Titanium 2 Step” is a geometric and percussive freakout. An homage to the rhythms of the Big Apple, the track skitters with a start-stop energy provided by Stanier’s supremely geeky drumming that reflects the always-on nature of the city’s traffic. Williams warped guitars and keys add an additional color, as do Principato’s jittery vocals.

Juice B Crypts is set to let the tight, math-y compositions of Battles’ past loosen up a touch. Williams explains in a statement:

It’s about chord progressions, resolutions, returning home. Take that and throw it into a blender of modern electronic tools like glitching devices, or use melodic lines and take them and regurgitate them and pulverise the traditional stuff but at the same time try and retain harmonic relationships while completely smashing them up.

The album’s revealed collaborators is just as exciting: There’s confirmed appearances from fellow New Yorker Xenia Rubinos, the rhythm-experimenters Tune-Yards, rappers Shabazz Palaces, Yes singer Jon Anderson and the Taipei psych-rockers Prairie WWWW.

Juice B Crypts is out on Oct. 18 via Warp Records. Check out “Titanium 2 Step” below, then keep scrolling to find all the album’s details and Battles’ upcoming tour dates.