Electro-pop quartet Classroom Battles embrace technology but never allow it to drown out the individual voices of the band. Â The members of the group — hailing from France, Ireland, and The United States — currently reside in a large house in Dublin where they compose and reconstruct threads of bright synths, piercing melodies, and expressive vocals, courtesy of lead singer Tigrane Minassian. Â They do so by pairing live instrumentation with studio software — in particular Ableton, of which producer/Classroom Battles cohort Martin Clancy is a certified trainer — and letting each, the synthetic and organic, feed off each other and unfurl into something more than the sum of its often disparate parts. Â On their upcoming debut EP, This Week’s Question (out today), the band creates waves of darkly melodic synth-pop that melds their penchant for distinctive analog instrumentation with a more circuit-based aesthetic.
With each member having a background in both the visual arts and music (between them, they’ve worked on Oscar winning movies, TV programs, and art installations), they’ve set out to make a video for each of the four tracks on This Week’s Question. Â They’ve already released the clip for “Call To Arms,” and now we have the stark black and white follow-up with “Cross-Eyed Horse.” Â Marrying reverberating synths, a driving percussion, and synthetic orchestral swells, the track creates a rhythmic momentum that pushes the song forward, with the accompanying images of running and passing landscapes helping to further this idea of action as a means of emotional conveyance. Â By the time the video ends, we’re left with the main character presumably alone standing along a vast stretch of empty road. Â The listener, like this man, is just waiting for the next musical push.
Beats Per Minute is pleased to premiere the video for “Cross-Eyed Horse” from Classroom Battles’ upcoming This Week’s Question EP.