What exactly is the proper job title for Black Dice member Eric Copeland? Is he a DJ? A producer? That guy who forever fucked your hearing capabilities when he opened for Animal Collective? Eric Copeland is an artist who willfully contorts and choreographs samples (both original and appropriated) into pieces for his dragnet sound collages. Unlike much sample-based production, where bits are carefully drafted from hours of crate-digging and then plugged into a master design, Alien in a Garbage Dump holds a loose leash over it’s children. Elements coexist like creatures dropped in a fishbowl; often in competition with each-other, but occasionally moving in a strangely organic unison.
This new full-length on Paw Tracks is a synthesis of the Alien in a Garbage Dump and Al Anon EP’s, which were gradually constructed over several years of recording and revisiting jams. Those familiar with 2007’s Hermaphrodite should feel right at home with these new tracks, which seem to have no agenda to convert the masses but simply to reaffirm the faith of those already aboard. With no hope of conventional beauty, Copeland leads his deformed sounds to conquests of pure rhythm and atmosphere. The off-beat, helium-fueled dance of “Corn on the Cob” marries poignant analog chirps to a wheezing chorus that slowly shifts up and down to the hobble of the machine’s clicks and clacks. Sometimes, however, as the album jerks about like a radio scanning for a clear station, it arrives at moments of minimal resolve. Tracks like “Everybody’s Libido,” which employs a short verse of Spanish vocals played at various speeds and pitches, can feel more like exercises in context and contrast rather than finished songs. But although Copeland’s soundscapes can be frustrating, claustrophobic, and even menacing, Alien in a Garbage Dump is also home to some of his most ecstatic moments. “Auto Dimmer” lays down a late night 4/4 shuffle as a catchy B-movie synth circles above. A skronky keyboard riff hangs on the very edge of the beat, injecting bursts of movement into the hazy groove . Even in an increasingly noise-tolerant music culture, this is an adventurous listen, and that alone should have your earbuds watering by now.
Alien in a Garbage Dump is out now on Paw Tracks.
For fans of: Black Dice, Gary War, Ariel Pink, Growing, Excepter
MP3 :::
Eric Copeland – Auto Dimmer
Eric Copeland – Corn on the Cob
