Battles - Atlas

APR 02 2007 · 12:00

Battles - Atlas (2007) Director: Timothy Saccenti Era: Post-Internet Indie Avant-Garde (2007) - The year Warp Records expanded its experimental rock roster; mid-2000s NYC art-rock scene at peak critical visibility, coinciding with the rise of YouTube as a music video distribution platform and a resurgent interest in math rock and noise-adjacent experimentalism. Extremely high. 'Atlas' is among the most critically recognised experimental rock music videos of the 2000s, with the song appearing on numerous decade-end best-of lists. The video is a primary document of Warp Records' visual aesthetic expansion, Timothy Saccenti's emerging directorial voice, and the NYC math rock/experimental post-rock scene at its cultural apex. The mirrored-cube-in-space concept is visually distinctive, widely referenced, and directly tied to the album's conceptual framework, making it an essential archival object for both music video history and 2000s experimental rock cultural studies. Context: Released in early 2007 as the lead single for Battles' debut full-length album 'Mirrored' on Warp Records, 'Atlas' arrived at the precise moment when UK-rooted electronic experimentalism (Warp's core identity) was merging with the NYC post-rock and math rock underground. The video visualises the band's central conceptual thesis, that instruments, effects chains, and signal processing are the true performers, by staging the band inside a mirrored cube floating in space, a metaphor for both sonic self-containment and infinite sonic possibility. The dark, warm, gear-saturated aesthetic visually encodes the band's process-driven philosophy. The song became a critical touchstone, appearing on multiple year-end and decade-end lists, and achieved significant mainstream cultural penetration through placements in LittleBigPlanet, MLB 2K8, and major advertising campaigns for Ford and Dodge. Director notes: Directed for Warp Records; premiered February 28, 2007. Full documented crew: Director of Photography Ivan Abel; Editor Ryan McKenna; Art Direction by Battles; Art Department by Mal Torrance; Visual Effects by Russell Mack; Colorist Damien Van Der Cruyssen for Company 3 (per fantasticmusicvideos.com). The set design, a mirrored cube staged to appear as a spacecraft floating through outer space, was a foundational visual concept that aligned with the album title 'Mirrored'. Saccenti subsequently oversaw a high-definition remaster of the video, published to his Behance portfolio in October 2015. The 'Atlas' video was an early career landmark for Saccenti, closely associated with his NYC indie experimental roster work including Animal Collective 'Peacebone' in the same period.