Customer Reviews

Cold Hands

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Black Dice has seemed to stray away from more "song" oriented material and gone toward more noise. Only six of the twenty-two minutes on this album could be described as songs, although, you be hard pressed to find any structure, melody, etc... The first track is a soft feedback hum with odd background noises, played over an out of tune broken down music box. The last track is twelve or so minutes of harsh guitar feedback with cymbals. The middle "songs" are the only tracks were all members contribute. I think it's interesting though...

...besides Merzbow and Wolf Eyes this band could probably be one of the noisiest harsh noise (out of this genre...in others I may have heard louder) I have heard...it has a rather nice complexity that uses the power of transforming the instrument into sounding like modern day items that are discarded from children (e.g. Musicbox reference in track one) to represent the loss of innocence in this world (either that or I'm trying to find meaning when there's nothing there)...but tracks like "The Raven" represent their relentless and butchering sound that just constantly screeches and tears at your skin like a trapped Raven (surprise, surprise) stripped of it's pride... songs like "Birthstone" are alot more gradual in it's noise of excruciation and slowly turns you inside out with it's ambience and exploding static screech of a speaking voice...

...I haven't heard any more of their work but this has encouraged me to explore it...for fans of ambient noise of the highest quality...campaign to make everything music!!!

P.S If you want to see what this music can really do to your mind try listening to it while meditating (Tantric or Vajrayana is preferable)...

Each of these four tracks varies greatly... not nearly as disiplined as the follow-up to it, Beaches and Canyons. Buy that first, then check this out.

Worth buying for the 1st track alone: 4 min of interesting guitar noodling that sounds like a broken music box. Sounds like it's being played on the strings between the guitar nut and the tuning knobs. Nothing else like it.

The Second and Third tracks are interesting, sort of a bridge between the 80s hardcore sound of their early days and their modern, improvised "new-age noise" sound of present.

Check this out.

First of all let me say if you enjoy consciousness expansion through the help of mind altering drugs and you like any band falling under the noise/noisecore/postrock/neoprog/experimental/ categories, particularly trippy bands with a heavy slant, you should absolutely immerse yourself in this aural nightmare of feedback, hypnotic bass lines, perverse tortured screams and seemingly arhythymic percussive dissonance. I warn you, this is not friendly listening. This is meant to screw you up. Sober listeners with little experience in these aforementioned genres will find this release a bitter pill to swallow. I notice, whether coincidence or not, a striking similarity to EYEHATEGOD on this EP. So toke up, trip out, and buy all of this band's releases. They are fantastic.