''Mirrored'' is the debut studio album by American

experimental rock Experimental rock, also called avant-rock, is a subgenre of rock music that pushes the boundaries of common composition and performance technique or which experiments with the basic elements of the genre. Artists aim to liberate and innovate, with ...

band

Battles A battle is an occurrence of combat in warfare between opposing military units of any number or size. A war usually consists of multiple battles. In general, a battle is a military engagement that is well defined in duration, area, and force ...

. It was released on May 14, 2007 in the United Kingdom, and on May 22, 2007 in the United States. ''Mirrored'' marked the first album in which the band incorporated prominent vocals and lyrics into their songs, as previous

extended play An extended play record, usually referred to as an EP, is a musical recording that contains more tracks than a single but fewer than an album or LP record.

s by the band had been completely instrumental, with the exception of occasional

beatboxing Beatboxing (also beat boxing) is a form of vocal percussion primarily involving the art of mimicking drum machines (typically a TR-808), using one's mouth, lips, tongue, and voice.

and wordless vocals on certain tracks. The first single from the album, "

Atlas An atlas is a collection of maps; it is typically a bundle of maps of Earth or of a region of Earth. Atlases have traditionally been bound into book form, but today many atlases are in multimedia formats. In addition to presenting geographic ...

", was released in the United Kingdom on April 2, 2007. ''Mirrored'' was released to wide critical acclaim and appeared on year-end best album lists from several publications, including ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'', ''

NME ''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming, and culture website and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a 'rock inkie', the NME would become a magazine that ended up as a f ...

'', ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', and

Pitchfork Media ''Pitchfork'' (formerly ''Pitchfork Media'') is an American online music publication (currently owned by Condé Nast) that was launched in 1995 by writer Ryan Schreiber as an independent music blog. Schreiber started Pitchfork while working ...

Reception

''Mirrored'' was widely acclaimed upon release. At

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

score of 86, indicating "universal acclaim", based on 31 reviews. The album placed ninth in ''

The Wire ''The Wire'' is an American Crime film, crime drama Television show, television series created and primarily written by author and former police reporter David Simon. The series was broadcast by the cable network HBO in the United States. ''The ...

''s annual critics' poll. Online music magazine ''

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'' later placed ''Mirrored'' at number 105 on their list of top 200 albums of the 2000s. The single "Atlas" was ranked at number 42 on ''Pitchfork''s top 500 tracks of the 2000s list. In October 2011, ''

'' placed "Atlas" at number 54 on its list "150 Best Tracks of the Past 15 Years".

Track listing

Personnel

;Battles *

Dave Konopka Dave Konopka is an American musician who is best known as the former bassist and guitarist in the experimental rock band Battles. A graphic design major at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, he also designed the band's record covers ...

– bass, guitar, effects * John Stanier – drums * Ian Williams – guitar, keyboards *

Tyondai Braxton Tyondai Adaien Braxton (born October 26, 1978) is an American composer and musician. He has been writing and performing music under his own name and collaboratively under various group titles and collectives since the mid-1990s, including in ...

– guitar, keyboards, vocals ;Additional personnel *Mike Viele – assistant engineering *Seth Manchester – assistant engineering *

Jeff Lipton Jeff is a masculine name, often a short form (hypocorism) of the English given name Jefferson or Jeffrey, which comes from a medieval variant of Geoffrey. Music * DJ Jazzy Jeff, American DJ/turntablist record producer Jeffrey Allen Townes * ...

– mastering *Jessica Thompson – mastering *

– art direction and design *Timothy Saccenti – photography

References

External links

Official Battles website
{{Authority control 2007 albums Battles (band) albums Warp (record label) albums