BLACK DICE

Beaches & Canyons

LP/CD, Fat Cat

On “beaches and canyons” you’ll get some of the most hyperactive drones you have ever heard, that reach out to industrial, electronic as well as to psychedelia and ambient. These tracks change, evolve, reloop, flow with an almost tidal dynamic and energetic crescendos that will make you think about how different they are from the bands that come closest, such as Godspeed You Black Emperor or Sigur Ros. And all that done by four guys with drums, guitar, bass and a truckload of effects and mics. With five tracks in close to 60 minutes you might close your eyes and imagine them playing live in your living room.

It might be the fact that winter has boomed in these past weeks, or maybe it is just a coincidence, but I find myself listening to more and more music, that might be called psychedelic in the sense that it really takes you on a trip in your own imagination (drug use not necessary though by no means prohibitted). There is Godspeed you black Emperor, Soulo, Primitive Painter, Guitar, Outhud, Kaito and some others. With Black Dice I have found another favorite.

If design-students set out to make music, their approach will obviously be less about harmonies and melodies or songs, but they will be more interested in how sounds structure and shape time and space. I have read about the intensity and effects of the live-shows of Black Dice, where they use volume and extreme frequencies to really draw the listeners into the experience. They started off with 15 minutes of total aural mayhem, including corporal injuries and have lately settled with one-hour-drones that ebb and flow in harsh dynamics, lots of sounds being mixed together and no respect towards any convention. Catharsis and transgression, and to some people this kind of auditive experience has become a sort of therapy. I only heard and read about that, because I never had the opportunity to see them live, but what I heard sounds as if Black Dice could make up the model for live-bands in this new century. They mix analog, “traditional” instruments, such as drums and guitars, with lots of electronic equipment (both analogue and digital) and refrain almost completely from using vocals. Actually, they use a very traditional band-structure of drums, guitar, bass and singer, but you won’t hear that, because they use more effects than are stocked in an average guitar-shop. But live is one thing, and recorded music quite another, especially if a band is producing music that is mainly improvised and flows with the feeling of the moment.

I wonder how they do it live? I guess, visiting their shows has to be an extreme. Either you pick a good day and get an excellent experience, or you pick a bad day and you ask yourself why you are wasting you time. Four people interacting so intricately, so closely and so compact as on this album seems almost impossible to me. Except for the drums, played in a very tom-heavy, tribal way, it is impossible to say who of the four-piece does what. All the electronic effects make it impossible to guess where a lot of the sounds come from. And then you start to wonder, if the some-minute long piece of waves splashing on the shore on the beach, really is a field-recording that was mixed into the track in the studio, or did they just twiddle some knobs on a digital effects-panel to its most extreme? And what the heck is a Gonkulator or a Zvex Wooly Mammoth? (I don’t think Black Dice will ever make the cover of “Guitar Player”-Magazine.) And is that important, or doesn’t the result count as much or even more?

“Beaches and Canyons” is a wild trip, with the sounds and the attitude pointing directly at the main influences and objectives of the band. But even though this record will make you want to dig out your old albums by Throbbing Gristle as well as Pink Floyd as well as some Krautrock, Black Dice aren’t interested as much in the sounds these pioneers made, but rather in the attitude these bands had, when they started off. The Black Dice are still filled with the energy and idealism you have, while studying at college and they use it to the most extreme degree. For instance on my favourite track on this album, “Endless Happiness”, which starts off very slowly and peacefully, almost like a new age-CD called “Gardens of the East” or “The Spirit of India” or something likewise repugnable, but repeatedly evolves into a hyper-fast scream-and-trash-orgy that reminds me of the Boredoms a lot. And then somewhere else and back again. But no matter what the actual bpm is at the moment, they take their time, they don’t hurry. Bliss and ecstasy will come (or not) but if you try to force it, it is gone. So are we dealing with Zen and the art of rock? Or is it the art of droning in hyper-activity?

01/2003