Black Dice - (2021) Mod Prog Sic

FourFour Records – FFR-441

Now revolving Björn and Eric Copeland, plus Aaron Warren, on ‘Mod Prog Sic’ Black Dice keep tilling the mucky rut of polychromatic noise and grinding grooves that earned them a fearsome reputation around the turn of the millennium and during that wild patch of noise that sloshed over the ‘00s, when they were heavily associated with a fecund Brooklyn scene and the likes of Animal Collective. All much longer in the tooth these days, they admirably stick to their wonky guns on this new batch, churning ‘em out in the space between no wave punk funk, psychedelia, techno primitivism, and good ol’ noise.

The world has changed a fair bit since their last album, 2012’s ‘Mr. Impossible’, with members of that original noise scene becoming major label and Hollywood artists, but Black Dice still have their boots on the ground, albeit stuck to the underside of paving and splashing in the sewers below. Across the twelve track on board of ‘Mod Prog Sic’ they give it some cruddy welly between the fizzing guitars and soggy wallop of ‘Bad bet’, the skudgy bogey boogie of ‘White Sugar’ and the street-brawl electropunk of ‘Downward Arrow’, clod-hopping from the janky lurch of ‘Tuned Out’ and ‘Swinging’ to styles adjunct Wolf Eyes trip metal bong hits in ‘Plasma’, and some properly lysergic acid rock with sputtering drum machines in ‘Jocko.’