Black Dice
"Miles Of Smiles" CD EP / "Creature Comforts" CD / Wolf Eyes Split CD (DFA / Fusetron)
Black Dice is an unusual entity - it doesn't make music so much as shapes noise, as it guides seemingly random sounds into something resembling order and structure. It has more in common with avant-garde composers like Philip Glass and Steve Reich than it does with indie or punk, although most of the people who listen to Black Dice likely wouldn't bother with listening to the band's predecessors. These songs bubble, pulse, throb and sometime squawk with noise; usually they sound like modulated whale songs with arpeggiated guitar notes played in reverse. You get the idea. It's noisy shit that isn't always easy to listen to. The "Miles Of Smiles" EP is almost 30 minutes long and consists of two songs. The "Creature Comforts" full-length is less soothing than "Beaches And Canyons," but still utterly fascinating. The Wolf Eyes split (honestly, with the lack of liner notes, it's tough to tell who does what or is involved with it) is more of the same, with more thrashing noise in the vein of Black Dice's earlier work, as well as audio terrorists like John Zorn.