Art Of Ballistics
“Broken Mornings”

iTunes / Amazon / Bandcamp

Great records often don’t come easily – requiring periods of rest and thought-collecting coupled with periods of prolific sessions to follow ideas wherever they may lead. This is the method the brand new Art of Ballistics EP took over the years since 2002 when the first seeds were planted.

In March of 2002, Will Watts made the pilgrimage from El Paso to Austin to celebrate The Intergalactic Frontline’s first release, Lovetron’s “All Across The Grand Charade”, despite the fact that half of the members had left the band during the album’s pressing. Founding Lovetron members, Greg Reynaud (Short Hate Temper) and Adam Amparan (At the Drive-In), cobbled together a new rhythm section just in time for their SXSW showcase, but that effort could not be sustained, and the band ultimately dissolved alongside its label. Later that week, Reynaud (Lovetron’s principal singer/songwriter) played Will Watts some of the new, beat heavy material that he had been working on for an unnamed, hip-hop oriented project, and Watts was blown away. Watts immediately suggested that Reynaud release some of these new tracks as instrumentals, and Reynaud agreed. In 2004, the first Thieves Behold The Profit EP, “You Hold the World like a Gun”, was released on Watts’ newly formed label, Lowatt. While the record garnered rave reviews, Watts and Reynaud were still underwhelmed by the response, and they retreated to their respective lives in Portland and Houston, with bigger plans in the back of their minds.

As Lowatt and Thieves Behold The Profit evolved at their own pace, in their own environments, something continually, or rather periodically, pulled the Art of Ballistics project together. Greg’s attempts to complete a follow-up to “You Hold The World Like A Gun” had been thwarted by computer meltdowns, and Will’s early attempts at production were over-simplified - so when the two laid their pieces and parts on the table in 2006, collaboration seemed long overdue, and new songs began to take form and shape. Time pressure and close proximity coupled with Watts’ impressive collection of vinyl oddities and Reynaud’s steady chopping hand yielded several tracks quickly, including: Unspoken Truths (the cacophonous and groove-heavy opening track), The Curse of Pat Boone (the patient but compelling second track), and the eerie, mid-tempo, well sculpted album finale titled Broken Mornings. The working pace slowed once Greg’s relocation to South Korea became permanent, and the effort to finish an album was forced to trudge slowly through email, file sharing networks and weak internet signals over the course of the next few years.

In 2009, a month long session produced the final tracking and mixing to be sent off to Don Grossinger (The Flaming Lips, Rolling Stones, Sonic Youth) for mastering. Clocking in at eighteen minutes and forty seconds with no gaps between the songs, “Broken Mornings” efficiently presents a worthwhile ride with Reynaud and Watts in the drivers’ seat. Through the course of the record many elements of mastery expose themselves. The samples are musical. The cacophony purposefully plays its role. The live instruments used give some extra life not often found in electronic music which makes this record feel like humans played it rather than robots – and they did. The resolve in the final two minutes of Broken Mornings brings the record to the final celebratory close – the way a masterfully dynamic album should eventually take flight.

Though geography and many false-starts stood as speed bumps in the process of Art of Ballistics, the final product is one that shows resolve and resilience – one that importantly makes its debut here on a record aptly titled Broken Mornings.

Reviews

WILLAMETTE WEEK

The release of the new DJ Shadow record has been met with a lot of shrugs and head scratching. The music writers and geeks of the world have expended a lot of column inches and pixels wondering how one man can continue to produce music that simply builds on the same ideas he introduced with Endtroducing but not really evolve them in any appreciable manner.

In response, I want to point all of them towards a group that is taking that instrumental, hip-hop-inspired sound to new levels: Art of Ballistics. This duo is a cross-continental collaboration between local producer (and the man behind Lowatt Recordings) Will Watts and his friend Greg Reynaud, a musician who records under the name Behold The Profit and is currently living in South Korea.

Their collaborative work, as heard on their EP Broken Mornings, and especially on its opening track “Unspoken Truths” pays heed to Shadow’s cut-and-paste genius but adds much more urgency and steam into the mix. And there’s a reserved element to it that pushes the spoken word sample into the background rather than letting drive the track. It’s all about that beat, that splashy almost furious beat that will add a little extra pressure to the gas pedal and a jolt of adrenaline to your bloodstream. The more you know about this band, the better. [Bob Ham]

WRUV REVIEWS

Debut from Art Of Ballistics is broken Mornings. Heavy, Trip Hop beats are what this album is all about. The moment the album starts so do the beats and your toe is instantly tapping. The second track, The Curse Of Pat Boone adds some violins and voiceovers making this more than an “instrumental beats” album. At 18 minutes this album is impossibly short which is good and bad but good. You crave more of the sound but at the same time the album isn’t watered down with boring tracks that just take up space. Each track is solid and as a whole it’s funky and slinky with beats that pleasure the soul. Definitely check this out! [justintime]