THE JO-TEL …believes some of what Nathaniel and John say, but believes England is still our sovreign

Battles
Mirrored
(Warp Records; May 1, 2007)
Rating: 8.8

A disjointed series of topical conversations featuring:

Gertrude Stein (homely poetess)
Richard Dawkins (pesky British atheist)
Daryl Dawkins (authoritative NBA dunker)
King Ludvig II (flamboyent king of Bavaria)
Martin Heidegger (German philosopher and probable Nazi sympathizer)
Homer (Greek epic poet)
T-tops with a Saddle (exhibit at creationist museum)

Setting: Cavernly dancefloor of the Arrow Bar (telluritic naval of the world), Friday.

TOPIC #1 (Pathos)

T-TOPS: Let me tell you about pathos.
STEIN: Your pathos is nearly crazy.
T-TOPS: Your pathos is nearly crazy, go back to France and diagram a sentence. As I was saying, I am an exhibit in a museum and wear a saddle to show how dinosaurs co-existed with humans.
R. DAWKINS: Oh, T-Tops how the Cretans mock your majestic wonder!
T-TOPS: Indeed. And what’s worse is that I’m off the sauce.
HEIDEGGER: The natural concept of truth does not mean unconcealment.
T-TOPS: And off the drugs too. So that little outburst didn’t mean anything to me.

[I was forced at gunpoint by my fellow Joteliers to break this post up … my submission to the tyranny of the majority thus requires you to read the rest of this review after the jump. -Shark]

TOPIC #2 (Homer: Man or Counsel)

STEIN: Starting from the pre-supposition that The Iliad and The Odyssey are the product of an oral tradition, the theory that (a) the oral history, so to speak, was stored in one wandering bard, “Homer”, or (b) that one bard formulated the epics that were carried on by oral postbearers are both problematic to the point of being far-fetched. First, noting the complexity of the Homeric couplets, and considering especially the rigid nature of Greek suffixes for the purposes of end-rhyming within the dactylic hexameter, it is unlikely that one individual could commit the entirely of the two epics to memory. The above-described theories are further waylaid by their reliance on the theory that Homer existed at the end of the era of oral tradition, embodied the pinnancle of the style, and lived long enough to commit his poems to writing, despite probably being blind. Second, if Homer had simply began the oral tradition of the two epic poems, then ample evidence exists that their oral transmition altered their style (See The Illiad, wherein the jocular description of Menelous’ battle with Paris is at odds with the gravitas present in the earlier account of Petrocles’ death) as well as their content (see The Odyssey, wherein the Telemachy appears grafted onto the Odyssey-proper, which itself appears dichotomous in structure, with Odysseus’ pre- and post- Nausicaa wanderings separated (conveniently) by the Scherie bard Demodocus’ ode during King Alcinous’ feast). The somewhat artificial wholeness of The Odyssey is even more suspicious when contrasted with The Iliad’s thematic focus on one segment of the Trojan War epic (i.e. the rage of Achilles) as opposed to the entire timeline of the war (from judgment of Paris to Trojan horse).
R. DAWKINS: I actually find quite convincing the theory that the name “Homer” was actually a shorthand place-holder for a society of poets called the Homeridae, which literally means “of hostages,” or “descendants of prisoners of war.” These men, who were not sent to war because their loyalty on the battlefield was suspect, were entrusted with remembering the area’s stock of epic poetry, to remember past events, in the times before literacy came to the area.
HEIDEGGER: Or is there a first possibility for thinking apart from the last possibility which we characterized (the dissolution of philosophy in the teleological sciences), a possibility from which the thinking of philosophy would have to start out, but which as philosophy it could nevertheless not experience or adopt? No. Sciences still speak about the Being of beings in the unavoidable supposition of their regional categories. They just don’t say so.
R. DAWKINS: Gertrude, you’re not using the possessive tense properly for proper nouns. For instance, while awkward sounding, “Demodocus’” should be “Demodocus’s”.
STEIN: Usually correct, Dick. However, figures of antiquity are the one exception to your general rule regarding proper possession. See for youself.
D. DAWKINS: Get out the wayin’, back-door swayin’, game delayin’, if you ain’t groovin’ you best get movin’ …
T-TOPS (pauses, looks around, then points at Homer): Um ….
HOMER (to T-Tops): Right, T-Tops. (to the rest of the group) Look at me. Toga. Cane. Withered Blind Eye Sockets. Does this look like a fucking counsel to you?

TOPIC #3 (Piňatas)

HOMER: This one’s easy. Pinatas are awesome.
R. DAWKINS: Dis. Agree.
STEIN: A Mexican pinata is nearly a Mexican pinata and very much moves like a white hunter
R. DAWKINS: Seriously though. Watching kids whiff at a stupid pinata for hours is worse than going to church. Plus, what’s up with the dads that insist on raising and lowering the pinata so that it’s harder for the kids to hit? If eugenics were accepted, the first thing I would do — well, okay, I’d finished this beer — then I’d go and isolate the gene that causes dads to think that raising and lowering the pinata is somehow fun and eliminate it in all the species. Raising and lowering the pinata just prolongs the misery. Finally, most kids would just cheat and peek through their blindfold if there as an incentive to cheat, but there is not. Tell me, Homer, what can be the advantage of breaking the pinata, an accomplishment that puts you at a significant disadvantage in getting at the pinata’s candy innards?
HOMER: I like Almond Joy the best.
D. DAWKINS: Chocolate Thunder flyin’, glass flyin’, Robizine cryin’, parents cryin’, babies cryin’, glass still flying ….
R. DAWKINS. K.
KING LUDWIG II: Here’s the thing. Pinatas are festive, yes, but minor.
T-TOPS: Ludwig, good to hear from you. Hey, what’s up with everyone writing songs about you? The Clean? Matmos?
KING LUDWIG II: Well, T-Tops, to be quite frank, I was pretty awesome. Anti-war, outgoing, kind to the peasants, plus I built my famously whimsical castles with my own money. Bavarians have been raking in the tourist dough ever since.
R. DAWKINS: Plus, wasn’t the Sleeping Beauty castle at Disneyland modeled after one of your castles?
KING LUDWIG II: Yes, Richard, it was.
T-TOPS: Weren’t you gay.
KING LUDWIG II: Yes, T-Rex, I was.
HEIDEGGER: It is not our business to prefer one to the other, as can be the case with regard to various Weltanschauugen.

TOPIC #4 (If You Were Forced To Get a Deep-Tissue, Full-Body Massage, Replete with Mood Music and Lighting, and You Had To Choose Whether It Would Be Performed by a Beautiful Man or an Ugly Man, What Would You Choose?)

R. DAWKINS: Beautiful Man
T-TOPS: Huh, interesting to know, Dawkins. Ugly Man. Easy.
HEIDEGGER: Ugly manch.
STEIN: Ugly man. Easier lay.
D. DAWKINS: Thank you wham ma’am I am’ jam …
HOMER: I’m goddamn blind. I don’t know. Which one has smoother hands?
KING LUDWIG II: Beautiful man.
R. DAWKINS: Wait Wait. Ugly man. No. Wait. Ya. Beautiful man again.

TOPIC #5 (The Album Mirrored by Battles)

STEIN: The change in that is that red weakens an hour. The change has come. There is no search. But there is, there is that hope and that interpretation and sometime, surely any is unwelcome, sometime there is breath and there will be a sinecure and charming, very charming, clean and cleansing. Certainly glittering is handsome and convincing.
HOMER: Math rock that you can dance to.
HEIDDEGER: I give a “being” with a lower-case “b” — three and a half daesins.
D. DAWKINS: Rim-wrecker’, ‘left-handed spine-chiller supreme’, ‘turbo sexophonic delight’
HOMER: Do they bring their dithyrambs with them to their live shows?
T-TOPS: Whoever this Battles band is, they must be better than what this third-rate DJ is spinning here at the so-called Arrow Bar. Now, I know that Saturday is the big night, but cut me some slack, on my one night away from the museum I don’t want to see you, DJ guy, fuss and labor over your seamless transitions. I just want to hear some songs that sound good while I’m chilling at a bar. Maybe … “Cherry Pie”? Maybe … “Holy Diver”? Something like that. Don’t worry about letting the damn beat drop.
KING LUDWIG II: There is some support for your gripe. William Bowers at Pitchfork Media recently made a similar observation:

The overprioritization of beatmatching is ruining America. What else might humanity have accomplished with the energy devoted thus far to avoiding even an infinitesimal rhythm-skip? My old undergrad Buddhist monk acquaintance would have called beatmatching an ‘obstruction to enlightenment.’ I guess what irks me is that when I rely on Itunes’ built-in fades to help half-ass ‘deejay’ a no-stakes get-together, some ‘DJ’ mourns my artlessness, like I’m the lazy steam-powered hammer to their hard-working John Henry. As if functional knowledge of Traktor, the DJ program whose name puns on John Deere’s milieu, was tantamount to folk-heroism. These same DJs masochistically internalize the colossality of their failure to beatmatch if, say, a chatty pal, or intoxication, or an uncooperative soundcard, or a glitchy mp3 conspired to existentially shame them.

Love them or hate them, Pitchfork can have some relevant observations at times.
R. DAWKINS: Screw Pitchfork, they’ve dulled down their original gonzo style so extensively that they’re little more than an online Rolling Stone now.
KING LUDWIG II: Agreed. Long live Cokemachineglow. Those stupid Canadians really get me going.

TOPIC #6 (The Jo-tel)

R. DAWKINS: Come again?
STEIN: Jo-what?
HEIDEGGER: Don’t read it.
T-TOPS: Well, I sort of, you know, everyone once in a while at the end of the month I, um … No. Never heard of it.
D. DAWKINS: Chocolate thunder’s bringing ‘em under.
HOMER: Don’t read it, but, I haven’t to say, this … what is it … Pabst Blue Ribbon. Tasty. T-Tops, care to indulge.
T-TOPS: Well, as I said, I’m sober now. Buuuuuuuuut, I kind of ruined that when I did like four huge lines in the bathroom while Dawkins was talking about grammar. So yeah, sure, let’s do this my good aoidos.
KING LUDWIG II (turns to the audience): I was a peaceful king, accepting a mutual defense treaty with Prussia to resolve the Seven Years War, and a man of the people — someone who genuinely enjoy the company of his people - and someone who, while reclusive in his later years, did not the deserve the fate that befell him. My friends, Prince Luitpold’s hired assasins murdered me, along with my companion, Dr. Gudden, with poison provided to me and the good doctor at dinner at the Castle Berg, wherein I had been unjustly interned. When I realized the poison, which had been added to my wine, had been imbibed by not only myself but also the Dr. Gudden, I bade Gudden to take a walk with me — a walk during which I unbossomed myself to him, telling of my aspirations, accomplishments, and of my life’s loves, many of which (castles, paramours) came to fruition before my eyes — a result that not many men can truly claim. Then we both died, the poison closing our throats as we fell in the cold of waters of Lake Starnberg.

this review is dedicated to the memory of Brent DiCreszenso