Black Dice's latest album, Repo, has been on heavy rotation for the last few months. Just yesterday, a friend came over when I was playing it and asked: "What is this? Is this even music?" Somehow, the comment made me love Repo even more. As an album, it's never obvious with its intentions, and it's taken me a few months to "get it". Now, I love it.
Repo doesn't have any immediate hipster reference points. You don't think "electro", "hip-hop" or "Britpop cast-offs". On Repo, Black Dice are creating a new musical language for people to understand.
For those familiar with Black Dice and their origins (from Rhode Island School of Design to EMI, before heading back to their DIY roots) the new album may be a shock. Especially for those who carry around indie-ghetto misconceptions of the band. On Repo, you won't hear "guitar-noise terrorists" or "purveyors of musique concrete" – you'll just hear pop music. Yes, pop music. OK, so this isn't exactly Lady GaGa, but it is accessible in its own alien way, just like sister band Animal Collective have toned down their own avant-garde tendencies on Merriweather Post Pavillion.
For those worrying that this means Black Dice have lost some of their edge, fear not! Stepping into their world is still as bizarre and challenging as ever. Repo is a supernatural, spectral happening, finding its feet in the Street Tuff world of New York hip-hop, and informed by an even more futuristic version of mutant disco. Vocalist Eric Copeland comes on strong as a disorientated Timbaland or a rock'n'roll Aphex Twin.
Repo is fractured music and to some it may seem non-linear, but if you listen closely, it has its own internal logic and rhythm, building on a classic techno template (albeit one that has been severely reimagined). A sample-heavy experience of ghostly television voices and hypnotic machine-gun sounds, Black Dice have clearly fed on the trash of our disposable culture, using MTV reality and classic AM radio as insane inspiration. Ultra Vomit Craze wields industrial-sized beats painted against the heaviest metal machine psychedelic guitar solo of the year. La Curacha is Lou Reed's Street Hassle revisited and remixed by Jay-Z and Kraftwerk.
There's a reason why heavies like DFA and Animal Collective tour with, represent and release Black Dice – it's because they push music forward. Whether it takes one year, or 20 years, the Black Dice musical manifesto is important and Repo is a grand statement of visceral intent.
In Jean-Luc Godard's Two or Three Things I Know About Her, there is the line: "If you can't afford LSD, buy a colour television." But if you can't afford drugs or a colour television, you will always have Black Dice.
