Black Dice

These boundary-pushing Brooklyn residents aren’t the underground’s hot topic for just any old reason. Black Dice are singular sound purveyors who have brought the aesthetic of the hardcore noise they started off playing six years ago into the psychedelic spiritualist sound-worlds they’re currently constructing to create something quite unlike anything else. This two-song EP clocks in at just under 28 minutes, and boy does it deliver. The opening title track was created for their part in a "Poetry of Sex” installation in a Tokyo gallery, and sounds like a cross between the Hafler Trio’s sex ritual recordings, the Microphones’ tape experiments on Mount Eerie and the disorienting Wolf Eyes epic, "Dead Hills.” With its provocative nature and sensual sonics, "Miles of Smiles” might just attempt to represent the four carnal stages of love’s blossoming: the first encounter, making out, knocking boots and the afterglow. Either way, a marching band has never been made to sound like it does on this track’s explosive culmination. The b-side, "Trip Dude Delay,” has often been used as Black Dice’s live set opener but gets its due as a studio recording here and showcases the band at their soothing, organic best. "Trip Dude Delay” would’ve been right at home on the band’s only proper full-length, 2002's Beaches & Canyons, but on this EP it only serves to stoke the fires of anticipation that surround the band’s sophomore album, Creature Comforts, which is being released in June. With Miles of Smiles, Black Dice have rolled another "seven.”