BLACK DICE - Broken Ear Record

"Broken Ear Record" is probably the record that best captures musical 2005 as a whole. An album that's ugly by classic aesthetic standards (and thus outdated on every front), constantly torn between a thousand influences (noise, industrial, ethnic, indie and even dance music, though far less than has been claimed) and confusing despite its monolithic quality, which is the trait that stands out on first listen, making it closer to the masterpiece "Beaches And Canyons" than to the strained (more scattered than confusing) "Creatures Comforts".

In this writer's opinion, talking about danceable elements in typical DFA style and a prelude to a pop turn, as the band itself has somehow done, is a bit misleading as a way of conveying the idea of a record that is above all a manipulated sonic flow - richly coloured, dense and deceptive, smooth in the classicism of a power-noise sound that has recently come back into vogue, yet crossed by abrupt, lacerating jolts that make up Black Dice's most personal contribution to the field of electronic manipulation.

Rather than getting lost in the thousand sophistications that the backwash of glitch-pop has decreed to be the privileged, almost dogmatic route to making headlines within the indie sphere, or in the blind, gratuitous brutality of the countless underground labels populating the US underground fabric, Black Dice choose to fuse together materials that, taken separately, are already rehashes of familiar languages, in order to build, once the record is complete, strange sonic Frankensteins condemned - like sinners in the circle of the gluttonous - to endlessly regurgitate themselves.

Children, then, of the discographic bulimia of the p2p era, these electronic monsters often take on Beefheartian guises in their construction (which in itself is fairly original), when they don't fall back on reiterations of odd visions caused by the poor digestion of Pantagruelian sonic feasts. In a word: questioning, unresolved songs, unable to choose a direction.

"Snarly Yow" opens with a rude fanfare propped up by an industrial march-beat, culminating in Terry Riley-style synth tails caressed by blasts of power-noise. "Smiling Off" is a battlefield between analogue bombardments and an antediluvian Roland that tries (in vain) to bring order to the chaos, which slowly turns into a Beefheartian march sustained by demented, twisted vocalizations (the new "Pachuco Cadaver"?). "Heavy Manners" is the questioning track par excellence, the sickly offspring of Bugskull, with scraps of lo-fi electronics surrounding a listless, perpetually unfinished dirge. The lunar fragment "Aba" is the link to the previous record, while "Street Dude" stages yet another botched attempt to find meaning in the chaos, first through a withered tribalism and then in pulsing free-noise that gradually fades out. "Twins" is impro-rock poking fun at itself, before the closing "Motorcyle" kicks in, the only (very) vaguely pop track, grafting a liquid, wobbly guitar - caught between country leanings and animalistic choruses - onto heavy techno scansions.

Ladies and gentlemen, 2005 is served, steaming hot on the table, and also a little hard to digest.

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30/04/2026