Black Dice, Lucky Dragons @The Forum, Melbourne(8/10/2011)

Wed 12th Oct, 2011 in Gig Reviews

The folks behind the Melbourne Festival have once again put together a weird and wonderful buffet of international music. But no matter what lineup you stick them in the middle of, Black Dice are always going to sit at the weirder end of the spectrum. The experimental electronic trio put on a live show that simultaneously barrages the ears and eyes, and as one punter put it, “you really have to be on something for it to make sense.” But even if for those who weren’t, Black Dice’s set was certainly a sight to behold.

The main event was preceded by a set from fellow Americans Lucky Dragons. A washy, electronic haze of music offerings, built up on top of a droning sonic base, the duo slowly constructed a landscape of looping and twisting sounds, which they spent most of the set adding texture and layers to. The performance seemed more of an exploration than anything with a fixed direction, and it took a good while for it to become clear that the first song had begun. The sampled percussion crept in so slowly that for a while it could have easily been mistaken for somebody banging loudly on the next table over, and the songs faded together so gradually that it was difficult to define start and end points. Both members of the band managed to mix their vocals into the concoction over the course of the set, and the girl/boy variation added a pleasant depth to the music.

For the first few minutes of Black Dice’s set, it was difficult to concentrate on the music. The visual display occurring on the giant screen behind the band was just so intense that it commanded undivided attention. But the band matched the visuals with a warped wall of glitchy electronic sounds, which banded together into an audio assault requiring just as much attention for proper digestion. It took a little while to get used to so much happening at once.

With a drummer no longer present among them, Black Dice built their songs on scratchy smatterings of noise that weren’t quite beats, but came close enough to form a foundation for the songs. For the most part the set flowed constantly, although at times the song segments did jar against each other a little. This happened more at the start of the night, and the seams stopped showing pretty quickly.

When the band eventually kicked into song-mode, things got impressive. There seemed to be a few key moments that the set was built around, and when these moments arrived they gave the night a glorious purpose. The vocal deliveries were thrown in around these high-points, and even though they were warped until totally indecipherable, their presence still tied the songs together in a way that the splatters of programmed rhythm couldn’t quite manage.

While this show probably didn’t make sense to everybody, even those that found it totally incomprehensible can’t deny that it was an interesting experience.