BLACK DICE - Beaches And Canyons

"Beaches And Canyons" by the Black Dice came out in 2002, remaining within reach of only the lucky few who, one way or another, came to hear this splendid work. It's worth talking about it again because word of mouth has apparently done its job, so much so that in 2003 Wide reissued the record, hoping for wider distribution. Black Dice come from New York, Brooklyn to be exact, and this is their third album; their earlier work had them pigeonholed into the Merzbow-style power-noise camp, with merciless blasts of uncompromising music, also evident in their fine collaboration with those other terrorists of the human eardrum, Wolf Eyes.

But what makes this "Beaches And Canyons" so special? The fact that, right from the first hints of "Seabird", the opening track, we're immersed in a fantastical world dominated by a nature that is at once real and alien. That's the only way to describe the environments sketched out by Black Dice's music, with the picture completed over the following tracks thanks to a crescendo of inexhaustible expressive ability: "Things Will Never Be The Same", "The Dream Is Going Down", "Big drop" are long, incredibly vital musical constructions, just like the nature they seem to be painting, alternating between delirious chaos and landings into stillness, tribal rhythms that look back to the early cosmic, visionary explorations of Popol Vuh, Tone Float and Tangerine Dream.

Only occasionally does the drumming give us patterns that have anything directly to do with rock; more often we're swept up in rhythms that evoke a primitive ritual quality. The screaming, half-hidden voices, the keyboard effects often verging on hyperrealism — everything is geared toward building this pre-modern, archaic world, where man doesn't dominate nature but is fused with it.

The record's masterpiece is the fourth track, "Endless Happiness", where we find ourselves immersed in an uncoded world that is awakening, unfurling its own authentic force amid flute samples, noises and restless, jittery bass undertones, mechanical chirps, shamanic voices, building up a chaos that, once it settles and fades, leaves only the placid sound of the surf — which, in this context, manages to be almost moving.

Listening to this record means landing in an estranging environment, as imaginary and synthetic as it is alive, evoking a primordial nature that is none other than our own planet's. If Herzog were ever to decide to shoot his own version of Verne's "Journey to the Center of the Earth", this could well be the fitting soundtrack. This writer, more modestly, believes that this "Beaches And Canyons" might well be rediscovered a few years from now by many who don't yet know it, since it can easily happen that a masterpiece stays hidden in the ocean of today's music production.

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26/10/2006