Central Market

Tyondai Braxton has been making music, patiently and maybe a bit pensively, in New York for most of the past decade, both in the ecstatic prog-rock band Battles and as an occasional loop-mining solo artist who can summon the sound of several bands over. None of his music has been small, and none of it has lacked for promise. But none of it even began to foretell the scale and sweep of Central Market.

Tyondai Braxton formed Battles in 2004 with John Stanier (Helmet, Tomahawk), Ian Williams (Don Caballero), and David Konopka. They released a string of EPs over the next couple of years, fostering greater notoriety with each subsequent record. Their full-length debut, Mirrored, arrived in 2007 and topped many critics’ year-end lists. Indeed, with Battles being a collective of such formidable talents, it’s not hard to understand why few people know of Braxton’s work outside the group. Of course, part of the problem is that Central Market marks Braxton ’s first solo album since 2002’s History That Has No Effect, but he makes good use of the album’s seven tracks to shed light on just how much his vision contributed to Mirrored’s success. And from the sound of things, the guy had something to prove.