Ear Bendingly Abstract
Faced with the cover art of a scantily clad female waving her buttocks, it was with some hesitation that I played the latest CD from Black Dice. However, my assumptions were wrong and the first track to greet me from 'Broken Ear Record' was in fact a gloriously chaotic, drug addled foray into electronic-driven music. Psychotic and brimming with energy, 'Snarly Yow' should really have a health warning attached to it- this is the kind of 8 minute epic that makes trips of any kind seem ten times more extreme.
For those with an affinity for the abstract, the listening doesn't get easier. Black Dice do not make music that slips by subtly on a hot summer's day. 'Smiling Off' will cascade upon your senses and purge all sense of reality from your mind. It's a dark, twisting song that shifts from surreal fairground-esque music to more military beats in the blink of an eye. 'Heavy Manners' is a blur of distorted, mumbled words and brings to mind a bleached white room and a fitful sleep watched over by nurses. Uncomfortably abstract, it's a relief when 'ABA' begins in an oceanic echo and briefly lifts the mood.
'Street Dude' is akin to 'Heavy Manners' and is another unsettling mixture of chaotic beats and unfamiliar sounds that breaks down eventually into a matted distortion of everything that came before it. 'Twins' has a slightly funkier feel, if it's possible to describe such an individual sound as that. It's interesting listening, but I find myself thankful that I'm totally sober.
Final track 'Motorcycle' brings with it a more eastern feel. There's something decidedly oriental lodged in between the wild beats and extravagant samples that find their way out through the conceptual sounds. There's something decidedly strange about Black Dice's most recent record that needs to be heard to be believed.