Dear Diary: What Can I Say About Black Dice?

A Journey into the Mind of Rock Journalist David G.

Black Dice w/Red Krayola and Blood on the Wall
Fri. Oct. 7th
Great American Music Hall

This show review was written and rewritten throughout the week of October 9th. For your convenience, I have separated my various drafts and labeled them with the days on which they were written. Enjoy!

Monday, October 10th
It’s morning, now, already, and I haven’t written a thing. For about two weeks I’d been anticipating the upcoming Black Dice show by both listening to their new album, Broken Ear Record (DFA/Astralwerks, 2005) and doing more and more research on a band that had been slowly getting my attention. My first exposure to the NYC trio was a used copy of Creature Comforts, released about a year and a half ago, that I picked up on a whim. Something about the cover caught my eye and screamed “modern, challenging, artistic.” So I gave it a listen, and another, and got halfway through a third when I decided I was unimpressed. They were different, sure – a very ambient brand of electronic noise that compared to Eno’s Music for Airports series but remained distinctly different in its absolute ignorance of rhythm and structure. But as revolutionary as that may sound, the fact remained that the record was boring. Dull. Blah. Like reading a dictionary. I sold it a few weeks later to buy something else, figuring that was the end of my affair with Black Dice.

But for whatever reason (I blame the artwork), I rolled the Dice again and picked up Beaches and Canyons (2002, DFA). This was the record I was looking for: sprawling, rhythm-less, but with this brilliant flow to it that was just mind-boggling. Think Mouse on Mars meets Mogwai…but better. It deconstructed and reconstructed beats made entirely with screechy loops of static and feedback. It built dense, confrontational soundscapes only to destroy them with eerie, hollow hums. It was savage and tribal, but with this strange urbane sensibility. This is the future of music, I thought, modern, challenging, artistic…this is something NEW. I had to find out more. I learned about their beginnings, self-releasing CD-R’s and cassettes as a nihilistic, sludgy hardcore act. I learned about their affinity with LCD Soundsystem and James Murphy, who took them on DFA and released various 12” singles with a more danceable feel. And the more I learned, the more I was impressed; not just by their obvious diversity, but also their relentless approach to music, both in their unceasing output as well as their uncompromising philosophy, their seeming mission statement to redefine what we educated listeners think of as music. I could ramble on and on about this band…which begs the question that is on repeat in my head: Why the hell can’t I write about this damn show????

Tuesday, October 11th
I got nothing.

Wednesday, October 12th
Okay, maybe talk a little about the openers, that might help get things started. Yeah. Good idea. Ahem – Kicking off the evening in glorious fashion was Blood on the Wall, a trio who, like Black Dice, hail from the city that never sleeps but have a completely different sound. See, that’s not bad…“glorious fashion” sounds kind of stupid but don’t stop now.
It seems like there would be a lot to dislike about Blood on the Wall – their name, for one, is more than deceptive. One imagines Swedish metal hordes in garish Viking suits drinking blood (or red Kool-Aid) from goblets, but one listen to their CD Awesomer (Social Registry, 2005) shows them to be a lot less over-the-top then you might think. BOTW sound like old indie rockers DJing: they shift from the hyperactive rock of the Pixies to the mellower, slacker pop of the Breeders (no, Kim Deal is not in the band), while even at times, the straight-forward rock’n’roll licks combined with the male and female vocals sounds like prime, Los Angeles-era X. Derivative? Definitely. Awesome? You bet. Awesomer, even.

Which is more than I can say for Red Krayola. For those unfamiliar, Red Krayola is a bit of in oddball in the world of independent music, which essentially boils down to them being an anomaly in a field of anomalies. The band has been through several shifts through the past 40 (yes, 40) years, but at this point, Red Krayola is basically the solo project of one Mayo (yes, Mayo) Thompson. This particular night Mayo was joined by another guitarist and an organist, who played a seemingly improvised set of psychedelic/folk/protest songs. I could even call it math rock, because of all the awkward, off-tempo shifts and changes in the music, but judging by all the sheepish, guilty smirks from Mayo and his band mates, I’d prefer to call it sloppy. Horribly sloppy. They started with a sputtering and jargonized version of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” (how can you even think to sing “electric surrealism?”) only to stutter and stumble through an entirely incomprehensible set. During the spectacle, I overheard someone behind me tell a friend, “No, I get it. They want it to be raw.” Well, so did Ol’ Dirty Bastard, but even he took breaks from dodging the law and cashing in welfare checks to practice every now and again! Rest in peace, ODB…and know that your gritty and hardnosed tails of “getting burnt by gonorrhea” hold much more value to me than Red Krayola ever will…by and by.

But abysmal sets aside, I must say I was very impressed by the line-up of the show. Especially in San Francisco, where noise acts flourish, it would be easy to make a homogenized bill. Seeing this apples-and-oranges line-up reminded me of fellow New Yorkers Sonic Youth, who still prefer to tour with their favorite bands as opposed to more similar acts (Wolf Eyes and East Bay’s own xBxRx joined them on their last tour, for example). Come to think of it, Black Dice share a lot in common with Sonic Youth. Their arty but accessible music, their approachable demeanor, their interest in all mediums of art, not just music – the similarities are subtle but still present. At this point I started to really get excited; what if Black Dice become the next Sonic Youth? And what if this show is like one of those shows you save the ticket from, because you know you’ll want to look back at it and say “I saw them before their major label debut?” Before their collaborations with obscure Japanese artists? Before their solo projects? Before they got old? What if, what if, what if…

Thursday, October 13th
THEY JUST WEREN’T THAT GREAT, OKAY????? I’m sorry! But it’s true…they just weren’t that great. I have tried and tried and tried to find a way to review this show and focus on the positives for the sake of this band who I really do like, but I give up. They came on stage, they played a mediocre version of their new album in front of really crappy projected visuals, and then ran backstage before anyone could ask for an encore. That’s it. No mind-boggling intricacies, no collaborations with obscure Japanese artists, no “modern, challenging, artistic,” nothing new. Just three kids on drugs twisting knobs and making noise. It wasn’t horrible, but let’s face facts – a bad show is a bad show. Despite all the promise of Beaches and Canyons, despite all the possibilities for the future, a bad show is a bad show. And I’m sorry to say it, but guys, maybe it’s time to put the “tour-record-tour-record-tour-record” schedule on hold and go back to New York and live a little, because it sounds like you’re running out of ideas. And on a personal note, please do so before you come here next, because I can’t sit here in front of the computer like this any more!