Battles blew my mind away. There is no other way to put it. I heard they were electrifying live, but I was unprepared for the spectacle that unfolded before me.

After a solid support slot from Canyons, who were much improved from the last time I saw them at their EP launch in December, Battles came on and started off with Africastle, a track off their 2011 album Gloss Drop. But this wasn’t the Africastle I heard on the album, the only recognisable feature was the distinct melody line. The band proceeded to create something entirely different, yet completely their own, around it. It’s clear even this early on that drummer John Stanier, in absence of frontman Tyondai Braxton, is the musical driving force of the band and as such they have placed him centre stage. With his mad almost neurotic energy and frenetic speed drumming, the songs that he doesn’t drum on just don’t shine the same way.

The band is so intensely focused and concentrated on the music that it becomes almost a show within a show. There’s the visual scene of the actual show, hypnotic visuals on the two screens behind them and blinding lights that flash at the peaks of the music. But then there is also another show when you watch the band members themselves interacting with each other, it’s spontaneous and they just feed off each other’s ideas and tangents with all the songs blending fluidly and seamlessly into each other. It feels almost as we are encroaching on something intimate between these three musical wizards and as if the audience doesn’t exist for them, we just happen to find ourselves watching this experimental rock jam sesh. Then the lights go crazy and you remember that you indeed are at a concert.

The band played their hit song Atlas, but apart from this they choose to play material mostly off Gloss Drop, the first after their frontman left the band. To make up for the lack of front man, videos of guest vocalists play on the screens behind them. When they play their track Sweetie and Shag, named after the radio hosts on FBi radio, Kazu Makino from Blonde Redhead flirts with the camera, batting her eyelashes and staring as the camera zooms in and out of her face. Battles make music that is experimental and boundary pushing, and so is their live show: everything is so much more complex and multi layered than the album, with a wealth of samples and loops which the guitarist Dave Konopka fiddles with onstage.

Another big song of theirs, Ice Cream, with vocals from Matias Aguayo shines live. The track that seems so tropical and bright gets a bit of an eerily sinister makeover courtesy of some distortion added over the top and some scary visuals interspersed with Matias’ face projected on the screen as the band plays.

There is minimal crowd interaction from the band, with the band mostly in their own world and saying only a few words to the end, which were quite awkward, especially the part where guitarist Ian Williams called Australians funny convict versions of English people. These guys are music nerds and the music and visuals do all the required communication. It’s refreshing that they don’t have to resort to grandiose rock star tricks to hide a lack of talent that is so present in music lately.