collage

Black Dice – Broken Ear Record

/ David James / 4 Comments

Black Dice are one of the most interesting noise fetishists of this decade, crafting everything from burned out near-ambient soundscapes to rumbling sample-melting inverted party anthems – all with a jagged outré sensibility about how songs are crafted.

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Imagine aliens descending on the earth eons after humans abandoned it.  The cities are crumbled and in an attempt to understand us, they rebuild everything – not as originally intended, but the way they imagine it to be.  The bits and pieces are placed together via extraterrestrial logic, ignorant of the traditions and established methodology of physical construction on this planet.  The result is something utterly fascinating and strange, with underlying familiarity in its makeup but complete disregard for the way this long-gone race decided things should be.

Then imagine the aliens are the members of Black Dice, and the cities are a thousand shattered records lying on their studio floor.

Broken Ear Record starts off with a deep brass thump, nearly the last recognizable instrument, and proceeds along through a wiggly, pulsating river; occasionally jarring, the overall effect is trance-inducing.  Smiling Off continues this with a more rhythmic pounding and crescendoing structure thoughout its 9 minutes.  The rest of the album springs from the opening duo’s template, adding percussion, subtracting the drift, and working itself into an occasional frenzied burst of cathartic melody.  Oh, and it’s dancey too, in a sorta flailing-seizure-in-a-metal-body-cast way.  There is something truly hypnotizing about this particular beast; it’s like a full giant computer full of instruments rolling downhill until all the crunching and bending and chaotic crashing coalesces into a consistent beat that becomes a straightforwardly pleasant listen.  One only has to surrender to its will and give it some time.  By the end of the second track, its claws will dig in.  By the end of the finale, Motorcycle, they’ll be down to the bone.  Understanding and bewilderment attained in the same wild instant.

Believe me, I was a doubter at first.  Now I can’t stop the momentum.

[get this album, with its attendant awesome cover art, at amazon or boomkat or for vinyl also boomkat or (oddly enough) cdmarket]

Gang Gang Dance – Retina Riddim

/ David James / Leave a comment

Gang Gang Dance dropped this slice of fried (and twisted) gold less than a year before their breakthrough masterpiece Saint Dymphna arrived to warp the innocent minds of our youth.  (A video project released as a combination dvd/cd, this is the audio portion.  You’ll have to buy that dvd yourself to see the insanity.)

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In a way, Retina Riddim is even more mindbending – packing in every conceivable rhythmic shift and unexpected sample, every wild percussion tone and dub variation – it’s like a wild roller coaster ride through the band’s collective labyrinthine nightmare, the moment before they awoke and created Saint Dymphna.  Stuffed to the gills with middle eastern string sounds, heavy bass thumps, bent and skewed organ swells, and an overwhelming exotic feel, the uninitiated may be forgiven for assuming it’s like any other release from these esoteric primal psych spelunkers.  It’s not.

If you haven’t heard Saint Dymphna, do so now in preparation for this disorienting onslaught of blissful oddity.

A single uninterrupted 24 minute track, Retina Riddim nearly feels like the band dropped their other albums into a blender and simply poured the resulting fluid into the grooves of an LP as it spun at top volume.  Fortunately, repeated listens reveal an intricate structure and flow, a steady build through varying tempos and structures both dizzying and purposeful.  Fans of Dymphna in particular will notice several sampledelic building blocks for that masterpiece album embedded throughout this wild ride;  some in untreated form, some ready for the spotlight, and some which require a bit of teasing out to reveal their source (or more likely, destination).  When the whole package wraps up with an undeniably transcendent part of the later LP (recognizable in the track Vaccuum) confusion is an understandable first thought.  Second thought usually goes something like:  “I want to hear that again.  Now.”

[the best part of this is that the sound is only half the show – pick up the dvd combo at boomkat or amazon for a totally reasonable price]

Cornelius – Fantasma!

/ David James / 1 Comment

Cornelius is the music pseudonym of pop wunderkind Keigo Oyamada, a true maverick and leading light of his nation’s music community.  He was first, unfortunately, tagged as the “Japanese Beck” – unfortunate because he’s so much more than this reductive catchphrase could encapsulate.  He initially traded in pop-sound mashups and collage song structure, as Mr. Hanson did, but most similarities end there.

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One reason the Beck comparison fails is simply that Cornelius was working within a music scene he helped create – shibuya-kei.  Starting with his group Flipper’s Guitar, and popularized by Pizzicato Five, the sound thrived in Japan throughout the 90’s and is still the basis for many new projects – everything from Buffalo Daughter‘s trance-rock disco confections to the utterly sublime Katamari Damacy game soundtrack.  [Which reminds me, I’ll be writing about that strange treasure of an album soon.]

Since you’re here about the album, I’ll get to it.  Fantasma is considered by most fans to be the crown jewel of Cornelius‘ recorded output.  As a lover of Point, I’m personally on the fence, but there is no question that this is the place to start if you’re curious about the man and his amazing work.  Imagine a musical genius being exposed to all manner of 20th century music – from the bleeding-edge avant garde composers to the purveyors of sixties pop majesty – all at once, with no distinctions drawn between ‘art’ and ‘fun.’   Then imagine him fusing everything he hears into a cohesive shape, focused through a lense of 80’s hiphop irreverence and carved with a DJ’s ear for pacing and transition.  Then imagine he makes a record with the ambitions of Pet Sounds-era Brian Wilson.  You’re close.

Now, play this album and realize that Keigo Oyamada shares not only the ambitions, but talents of my favorite Wilson brother.  This is no mere cheap analogy:  Repeated close listens to the nuanced and fractured pop ecstasy he’s made reveal the truth in my words.  He may never be as lauded, much less well-known, as those Beach Boys he worshipped as a youth.  But he deserves it, and this album is Exhibit A in making the case.

[grab this at amazon or for only $8 from matador themselves.]