Early Black Dice were a thrash group specialising in particularly violent and noisy gigs, as they developed improv crept into the sound and early skunk infused meetings with the nascent Animal Collective and Wolf Eyes produced lengthy industrial soundscapes. In fact despite the face value disparity between these groups, they all admit an influence on each other.
Black Dice's new found experimentalist tendencies and creativity, along with the huge influence of Boredoms, whose sounds, live sets and design, cannot be underestimated, and rips through all of this scene like a large scale epiphany, contributed to the creation of Beaches & Canyons. Also in their favor Beaches & Canyons was picked up by James Murphy's DFA label, adding a cool element attractive to followers of LCD/Rapture etc.
Thoroughly modern Beaches & Canyons combine heavily treated guitar, primal vocals, heavy percussion and loops oscillators, ring modulators etc, into a music that builds and crescendos repeatedly, imagine a disco Sun Ra covering Melvins. Occasionally bird like modular feedback squeaks faze into lopsided beatbox rhythms disturbed by bullfrogs. Epic album closer 'Big Drop' fades in from the sound of waves, kicks up a shitstorm of vertical drumming and ends with excellent screaming, none of which seems angry of negative, in fact the whole record is exploratory and euphoric. Somehow the overall feeling of the record has something of the majesty and power of nature about it.
Cone Toaster followed Beaches & Canyons, and displays a less organic, patchwork, dance influenced sound, but remained amazing in it's textures. Yamatsuka EYE was listening, as he provides a B-side remix of Endless Happiness from Beaches & Canyons, which unsurprisingly finds detail in the percussion.
Black Dice continue to be fascinating, and I'll be seeing their LOUD show this weekend at ATP! Woop Woop.
No comments:
Post a Comment