Battles are a New York–based three-piece that exhibit an exponentially technical prowess. Layers crush with weirded precision-grooves. Loops echo and strobe off each other. Battles are preeminent. Dave Konopka and Ian Williams meld guitars and keys, soldering together sheer mathematics with levity. Drummer John Stanier (the Condor Pope)—with his one crash cymbal 10 feet high, shining like a sun shield—is simply one of the better drummers you will see and hear in your lifetime.

The sounds on Battles' latest album, Gloss Drop, conjure images of that public-service announcement depicting a surgeon who smokes pot right before he operates. The surgeon gets high as hell, and a nurse puts a scalpel in his hand. As the shot fades, the last thing you see is the surgeon moving in for the incision, and he's laughing his ass off. The point is well made—surgeons shouldn't get high and operate. In the Battles version, though, you want this surgeon to get high and cut you open. You want that doctor to do as many mind-altering drugs as possible and go to town on your insides.

Coming out of anesthesia after the Battles surgeon operates, you find your body has been transformed into a Caribbean M. C. Escher/The Tao of Physics/Chuck Palahniuk fun house. Miniature adventure boats make their way through your circulatory system. Your lungs exhale into the shape of geese wings folding seamlessly into one another. Crossdressing Buddhas play your eyeballs like they're steel drums. As the ride exits out the saliva duct under your tongue, its passengers travel time via a strain of rabies back to Memphis on April 4, 1968. There, they selflessly jump in front of the bullet that killed Martin Luther King Jr., saving him in an attempt to restore harmony to the world. Like Battles, it sounds impossible, but skilled surgeons can do many things. Dave Konopka spoke. He did not have a scalpel.

With Battles, I see M. C. Escher's imagery, the quantum organics of The Tao of Physics, and the freak-creativeness of author Chuck Palahniuk. I see y'all as crazed genius surgeons transforming bodies into amusement-park rides. I want to verify with you that this is okay for me to think.

It's definitely okay for you to think that. Actually, we have a vibe master who tours with us and hangs Escher posters up wherever we go. And lights candles.

Is there anything else you guys do to get ready for a show?

Not really. The other day, I watched a Yankees play-off game. If there's Red Bull, we might have one, or some coffee—maybe a beer to get the juices flowing. We don't sit in the back room and do peyote or anything.

How did losing your vocalist in the middle of recording Gloss Drop affect the album?

Writing the album was a difficult process between the four of us. We went into the studio as a four-piece and left as a three-piece [laughs].

Was there a time you thought about just doing the album as instrumentals?

Some of the songs were complete. Some, like "Wall Street," became super-layered, with tons of parts that we knew would be an instrumental. Previously, when we had a vocalist, he was singing on stuff, and the three of us were holding back instrumentally to give the vocals room. When he quit in the middle of the studio session, we went back and took out all of his parts and rewrote everything so we could represent ourselves as a three-piece. The decisions to have guest vocalists were made on the fly. We had spent three months in the studio, then we realized we weren't getting anywhere. Then Ty [Braxton] quit, and we went back in for four more months. At that point, we were like, "Do we do an instrumental album? Or do we get guest vocalists? And if we do get vocalists, who are they going to be?" We had a list of people we thought would be cool and appropriate for the songs. Each person we ended up collaborating with not only covered the spectrum from pop to experimental but added another dimension to the songs we would have been incapable of adding ourselves.

What was it like working with Eye from Boredoms? He's a God.

Yes he is. Eye was in Osaka. I remember checking my e-mail and seeing that he had sent his take in. It was him just absolutely going off from the moment the song started all the way to the end. No effects at all. It was totally bizarre and amazing. But he was just giving us a ton of stuff to choose from, and he told us to do whatever we wanted with it. So we chopped it up and edited with Keith Souza and Seth Manchester to get it to fit within the fabric of the song. It's one of my favorites on the album.

Do you know what Eye is saying in the song?

My sister-in-law is Japanese and lives in Providence where we were recording. I asked her to come over and translate while we were editing, because we didn't want to cut Eye off in the middle of a sentence. She said, "This isn't Japanese." This is its own language.

Sort of similar to Matias Aguayo's gibberish language on Gloss Drop's "Ice Cream."

Very similar. In the past, the way we've worked with incorporating vocals into the songs has always been with a little bit of caution, because we're so driven by the instrumentation and not a lead singer per say. We see the vocals as another instrument, and having Eye and Matias do vocals fit perfectly into that scheme. When we had "Ice Cream" in its instrumental stage, we thought Matias could give it a certain level of fun. He is saying a couple of things in Spanish like "Ice cream melting in the sun." But he was just running with it and really upped the ante on the tropicalia vibe. With the wrong person singing that song, there was the chance it could have become a really cheesy thing. Like a Hanson or a 311 song. Matias gave it a sexual presence. Just what it needed. I'm not dogging anyone here, just throwing references out there.

Is the tropicalia Caribbean sound on Gloss Drop something ya'll set out to do? Or do the Caribbean tones rise out of Battle subconsciously? Are those steel drums I hear?

No, that's my guitar. That sound comes more from us experimenting. We didn't have a Caribbean mission statement or anything. I was messing around on a new pedal I had with octave dividers and playing with the highs and lows on the EQ settings and reverb.

What pedal were you messing with. Please talk gear. What's in your effects chain? And Ian's?

Ian doesn't use pedals. All of his effects are coming from the computer. He's using Mainstage (Logic) and Ableton Live for his looping. Ian and I switch amps around when we play live. The amp behind John is the loop amp, so if I'm the one making a loop, I'll play through that. John needs to be able to hear the loops well as the drummer. Everything we do is functionally based. I use an Electro-Harmonix POG, a Boss PS-3, an Xotic RC Boost, and a Line 6 DL4, which I think every guitar has now. My main looping instrument is the Gibson Echoplex, which allows us to sync our loops together. I love it. A place in Providence called B Sharp make a clean distortion pedal I really like, too.

Where are you now?

We just got to Cleveland. We play the Grog Shop tonight. We were in Toronto last night. It's awesome to be here right now. We've been playing in Europe so much. Even though I don't know Cleveland so much, it feels familiar here. It's the same with Seattle. We love Seattle. We love that Caffe Vita place, good coffee there. That's the stuff that makes a good tour for me: knowing where the good coffee and taco spots are.

I'm sure you'll be heading to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland.

Oh yeah. I'm going to dust off Stevie Ray Vaughan's guitar.

They just inducted Guns N' Roses. The Rush fans are pissed. Rush still aren't in.

"Sweet Child o' Mine" is an undeniably catchy song. People go bananas for it. I can't believe Rush aren't in. Really?

It is true, Rush are yet to be inducted. The Rush contingency, of which I'm a part, is in a state of mass discontent over it. I listen to "YYZ" at least eight times a day. The GNR influence on Battles is obvious. Y'all are huge GNR fans. Axl Rose was one of the guest vocalists on your album, but that track got cut at the last minute. He got pissed and lit his car on fire.

Unfortunately, his singing on "Ice Cream" wasn't working. He was singing about Night Train.

What is a Battles recording session like? Do you guys do tons of takes?

Yes. Tons of takes. It varies and changes every time we go into the studio. We recorded the two full lengths at a place called Machines with Magnets. When we recorded Mirrored, we used to write stuff down on paper all the time, referring to parts. I think we had a bunch of songs ready, so we went into the studio and banged everything out live. And then of course everyone was like, "I can play my part better." So we went back in and did tons of overdubbing. We recorded all the drums to two-inch tape and then bounced them to ProTools. It was a strange process of experimenting and trying to get that live take, and then get your overdubs in there and make sure everything is up to par. That was one way of approaching it. We wrote a couple songs on Mirrored like "Leyendecker," where it was all written in the studio with different parts we had lying around.

What was different about recording Gloss Drop?

In the studio, we were multitasking. And we were separated into different rooms. I had my own API Lunchbox and I was recording all my stuff direct into Logic. Ian was in another room in the studio and recording his parts in Logic as well. John was stationed mostly in the main room, the live room, with the engineer. Ian and I would get our loops together, and exchange files, and write to each other's parts. It was way more of an analytical process than Mirrored, where we jammed on parts, trying things over and over as a live band. With Gloss Drop, we reviewed every part under a microscope, piecing things together like a puzzle in an additive process.

Is your drummer John Stanier human? Is he a condor?

I believe he is human. There could be some condor in there.

Condors have eight-foot wingspans.

He could definitely have some condor in him.