Oddly enough, considering Black Dice’s rampant use of noise, their newest record is more a pop one than anything. That is, a thoroughly twisted pop record, in which the banal is stomped upon, broken into atomic units and destructed in a particle accelerator.
“Load Blown” is almost like a translation scheme. It takes pop ideas, turns them into alternate dimension versions, and combines them with noise. But unlike some clandestine coding program, it seems as if Black Dice wanted the code to be broken. This isn’t noise acting like noise or masquerading as music; it’s a genuinely strange perspective on something straightforward.
It’s certainly the right time for Black Dice to behave this way. Post-rock’s prominence presented them with a chance to stretch their indulgent wings, but in this time of finely edited pop minimalism, a clever and ironic nod to the mainstream guarantees a bit of instant and unpretentious credibility. “Load Blown” is more of a noisy reflection than a new image, and this restriction links the record more cohesively than would noise carried away in its noisiness.
“Roll Up” begins its distortion of reality with a sort of white noise that fades in and out of focus. It rides above undifferentiated cymbal nonsense and low-end noise that gurgles, in a vaguely rhythmic way, like bubbles releasing a swamp’s gaseous incontinence. While this mess slowly comes into rhythmic focus, a warbling, sped-up sample of a vintage keyboard initiates a Brazilian block party, and soon screeching samba whistles complete the picture of a favela dance translated through danceable static.
“Toka Toka” begins with a computerized call and response between video game characters until electro-thrash/hop brings home the unlikely, MIA-esque grit funk. “Drool” places multiple layers of recorder playing over bratty record scratching to create something resembling a twisted Scottish dance.
Even when “Load Blown” is at its most nihilistic ““ as during the emotional black hole “Manoman,” (computerized voices monotonously invoke the sound of believing in nothing, later transforming into mock excitement) or “Bananas,” which opens with some sort of combination between a Ravi Shankar meditation and a reverb-saturated taping of water dripping in a hallway deep in a dystopian industrial sector ““ the disc refrains from falling into noise proper.
Not like that would be a bad thing. It just wouldn’t be as much fun.
““ Alex LaRue
E-mail LaRue at alarue@media.ucla.edu.