#12 - Ryan & Steve

Black Dice

Beaches and Canyons

2002

It's funny to think that Animal Collective and Black Dice were working so closely together around this time. While they both began by creating noisy cacophonies attempting to stumble upon something wholly new and exciting, they've ended up occupying entirely different words at the end of the decade. After a few smaller releases with Fusetron and Troubleman Unlimited and a couple collaborations with unrelenting noise-dudes Wolf Eyes, Black Dice return with an album as sparse as they've ever made. The tracks here elicit a feeling of gradual progression, an ethereal quiet shifting and eventually resulting in new age musics for noise-heads. I mean, they generously sample five minutes of ocean noises on a song called "Endless Happiness".

With "Beaches and Canyons", Black Dice honed a singular album experience that they have yet to match. The first track, "Seabird" is an aptly named song that's filled with repetitive blips, bloops and various electronic squonks that do sound remarkably bird-like. Track two, "Things Will Never Be the Same" drifts and floats upward in a gentle white noise that slowly incorporates some shouting/screaming and ascending drums only to bleed out into an industrialized drone. During college I had a radio program where I was allowed to play whatever I wanted (this was a short-lived affair at my student-debauched radio station) and on my most adventurous evening I played Black Dice's fifteen-minute opus "Endless Happiness". It's a quiet, tranquil number that gently builds upon some delayed flute noises along subtle synth arpeggios, sampled atmospherics, shimmering bells and unnatural tonal swells. But at five minutes in we're surprised by a full drum kit pounding away as the repetitive looping of the background picks up as a kind of motorik propulsion. It's a beautiful song that was delicately crafted, just as any pop song would. Black Dice have been creating pure abstract music for quite some time, but I can't see them toppling the colossal noise/new-age masterpiece they've concocted here. Brilliant. -S.R.

There are some parts that are interesting, but overall the album really bores me. Track 2, “Things Will Never Be the Same,” feels VERY much the same the whole way through. The fact that each track just gets longer than the one before doesn’t help me through the listening process either. I doubt I will ever have an urge to listen to this album on my own time. - Phil