Black Dice are ridiculous; they have the spottiest and most transformative of musical histories even when compared the most dysfunctional bands. After ten years and numerous experimentations in sound, the band is somehow still cooking up and destroying music, and with plenty of gusto to boot.
The first of two songs is "Roll Up," and it starts the record off immediately following last year's Gore 12" and art book (which is also a huge, delicious mindfuck) and places the band in someplace distantly familiar if you've heard the caterwauled cacophonous electro-drum jams on Broken Ear Record.
There is still the propulsive beat structure that was reintroduced/re-imagined on their last full-length outing for DFA after a noticeable absence on Creature Comforts, their last recording with sickass drummer Hisham Baroocha, which oddly enough is sans any organic drumming. The record has an underlying electric haziness that sweeps along and keeps the song contentedly afloat, if uneventful. "Roll Up" has the by-now signature Black Dice sound embedded within it and even though it comes across as a simple tune, there is a lot going on. Hissy electronics, pseudo drumbeats, and angry electronic sounds are peppered in.
Both jams on the 12" are seven minutes, with "Roll Up" being the straightforward and "Drool" more reminiscent of the weird, almost foreign sounds Black Dice create. Unlike the last full-length, there is an air of a more adept connection with their electronic equipment, which can be looked at as either good or bad. On one hand they can manipulate sounds much more, but on the other it seems as if they are getting more comfortable in less experimental territory, and choose not to.
These two tracks and the three from Manoman will be on the new Black Dice record come October, which is entitled Load Blown. And either way you spin it, we already know that the songs that comprise this 12" and the Manoman 12" are familiarly fried in a way that only the Dicers can compose, which is equally assuring and alluring for fans of the band. Fear not, Black Dice have taken another step in the right direction with their shoes untied, and thankfully still on backwards.
