With the regular occurence of everyone telling, no....ordering me to go and see battles eventually wore me down and in the end i just never bothered. it seemed to make sense that it should work live. the compiled 'b ep / ep c' merely reinforced that idea. exciting, unpredictable, loaded with ideas that all seemed too stifled on the recorded format. no such problem on this, their debut album for warp. to me, it sounds like the album is split into two. the first half has all the 'hits', whilst the second does its best to break everything that went on in the first half down to its core components. the opening cycle of 'race:in' shows off their dizzying approach to composition, especially when tyondai braxton's vocals appear mid-way. eventually making way for the stunning single 'atlas'. i remember the klf writing in their 'manual' that the music-buying public can stomach the glam rock riff every few years and it seems battles were listening. pretty much the most fun i've had all year with a piece of recorded audio.