Following a stunning performance at the Gold Coast Big Day Out, New Yorkers Battles back up for another go at the Zoo – this time a headlining show of their own. Signs at the door declare the event is “sold-out”, but once inside it’s obvious from the less-than-full room that a fair proportion of the crowd are too-cool-for-school scenesters who’d rather skip straight to the main act.

As a result, they miss out on the manic antics of genre-crossing Japanese multi-instrumentalist and electone wizard Tucker. Early numbers picked out on his Yamaha electone make for a solid start before some more-than-competent scratching skills catch the ear nicely. But when he whips out the rock instruments, setting up loops of brash guitar and bass before jumping onto a drumkit to deliver some punk-inspired thrashing, that’s when the ‘woah’ factor starts to kick in. The rawness of it all is clear, but the physicality makes up for the technical deficiencies. For a follow-up, he applies himself with equal aggression to the Tequila song before finally doing some breakdancing handstands on his Yamaha and setting it alight. Flame on!

It’s a lot more crowded when Battles’ Dave Konopka wanders onto stage, hooks up his instrument, and draws out the sonorous opening refrain of Race Out. Near-hysterical whoops rise as the rest of the band joins him and the pace intensifies. Then, as drummer John Stanier layers in thumping toms, the heavy atmospheric sharpens into the familiar keys-guitars riff and the sardine-packed front rows collectively lose it.

With expectations so evidently sky high, it would be easy to under-deliver. But the energy the foursome inject – coupled with reams of talent – ensures their spin-together, pull-apart indie-electronic experimentalism bends the mind in all the right ways.

It’s utterly counter-intuitive. A sound so complex, where dozens of individual guitar, key and vocal fragments are constructed, looped, assembled, bent out of shape and reinvented on the fly using an array of pedals effects, knobs, dials and even a couple of Macs should be anathema to the live environment. Yet this quartet make the amalgam pulsate with life, balancing the whole on a needle with mind-boggling ease.

Stanier’s drumming is the point of that needle. Positioned front and centre of the tiny Zoo stage, the former Helmet hardman works arms and legs with the regularity of pistons. For all his machine-like rhythm though, his percussion throbs with organic beauty, and funk-fuelled favourite Atlas illustrates just how it shapes, drives and paces Battles’ sound.

Throbbing industrial sounds hint at what’s coming, but it’s Stanier’s tribal thudding that galvanises the crowd, and holds together the joyous construct-destruct of layered keys and guitars as they twist back in on themselves like a Mobius strip. Between the peaks, nominal frontman, the frizzy-haired Tyondai Braxton, deploys his signature see-sawing munchkin voice to electric effect. It’s delicious fun all the way to the pulsing crescendo where Stanier beats the living daylights out of the highest crash cymbal in the business.

Of course, there’s much more: Tij’s warped, industrial-strength vocal hiccoughs, the mix-n-matched beepy electronics and sawing guitar of TRAS and Tonto’s teasing keys-driven quasi-Mikado theme (complete with Braxton singing like he’s about to cough up a hairball) all draw raucous appreciation. Later, on the snare-infected electronic buzz of Leyendecker, a good 50 or 100 eager fans try to imitate Braxton’s technologically freakish sing-song crooning with amusing lack of success.

A mere 50 minutes after they kicked off, Stanier stands up at the conclusion of a rampaging version of Race In. Soaked in sweat, he looks completely shattered, but the crowd’s visible shock that it might be over all so soon coaxes him back to his seat. Chaotic B EP number DANCE – patently the most cacophonous number of the night – closes out the main set with unearthly Kalahari bushman click-vocals that morph into manic screeches at the very end.

Even then, the crowd hollers for more, and after long moments the band returns to encore with Bad Trails. Konopka mirrors the start of the night, setting up another deep ambient soundscape that the others add to one by one. Stanier returns last of all and, having indulged in a quick shirt change, takes to a floor tom with undimmed intensity. As a conclusion, it’s not so much a meltdown as some perception-expanding slow-groove mindfuck, but it shows these guys have the talent to do anything with music when they put their mind to it. Watch out world.