Black Dice - 'Broken Ear Record' (Warp Records)
4/5
By: Thomas Hannan
Apt titles aren't abundant in our times. Plays on words, uselessly ambiguous phrases or lazy eponymous headings are two a penny, perhaps because it's actually a lot easier to talk unrelated nonsense than it is to actually sum up the sound of a record in a mere few words. 'Broken Ear Record' does it though. You'll hear things correctly, yet wonder whether your equipment's gone faulty. Do not adjust your set.
Unlike past Black Dice work outs, it doesn't actually do the breaking. Things here aren't quite as noisy as they have been, but everything does have a marvellously irregular, crooked sound to it that'll make you feel as if your ears have already been broken, like they're hanging off by a few stringy bits of tissue, and that you might be able to decipher some kind of proper tune if you're trusty sound receptacles were operating to their normal standards. It's a 'Broken Ear Record'! There you have it.
So you may ask, why continue the dissection if the title sums it up quite that well? Because (oh, here we go...) things predictably aren't that simple. The theme of fitting monikers ends there. The opening 'Snarling Yow' has none of the suggested grimace to it, just a curiously uncomfortable, repeated couple of disjointed yet somehow related patterns of sound twinkling underneath distant grumbles. It's bizarrely pretty. In fact, a lot of this is - the justifiably lengthy 'Smiling Off' and bastardised calypso groove of the closing 'Motorcycle' all sound like a band trying to play regular, sweet little tunes, except for some unfathomable reason you're only being allowed to listen to every other beat.
And it's this that makes you think that instead of listening to an experimental noise record, you could quite possibly be listening to, y'know, proper music, but that your ears are finally so completely screwed (probably from a few years of listening to the former) that maybe this is what all music sounds like to you now. You'd been warned after all. But you turn on CD:UK and find out you're wrong. 'Proper' music is still, well, shite. What you've found is something very clever.
Face it though, a lot of people are cleverer than you are, and a lot of these people are in bands like Black Dice. So whilst you may be able to pointlessly (but that's not to say boringly) theorise about a lot of it, given that you and I are comparatively idiots, there'll still be a portion that'll whoosh over some heads. Just bear in mind that there won't likely be anyone outside the band themselves who can honestly say they fully 'get' the drowsy mumbles of 'Heavy Manners', let alone the unsystematic hammerings and intermittent guitar spasms of 'Street Dude', and your opinion as to whether this is vital sonic experimentation or futile waffle is as valid as any other.
Our take on it? Since you ask, 'Broken Ear Record' is quite conclusively the former. Having something you don't entirely comprehend yet still sincerely revel in is a blessing. We've started to wonder - if our ears have truly been broken, might it actually be worth keeping them this way?
Artists in this article: Black Dice
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