Black Dice - Miles ofSmiles

Sat 22nd May, 2004 in Music Reviews

Quiet autumn night on the way home from work. Dark everywhere. Even the streetlights seem dimmer than usual. There is a hum in the air from all the traffic and the neighbourhood TVs; the remnants of the Black Dice EP in your head.

You walk up the hill from the station, and hear a lonely dog howl close by. You can’t see it in the dark. Your heart starts. Everything goes quiet again and you can hear the blood pumping in the veins near your ears. Boomboom boomboom. Windchimes. Bloody hell, everyone in this suburb seems to have wind chimes. Must have all been given them for Christmas or something. Barely smelt conversations waft in from second storey balconies. A van rushes by; its balding tyre disturbing the sleeping cats in the back alley. You can hear them stir. Some head toward the road, others back to the comforts of crushed cans and gravel.

Damn it’s quiet. You begin to imagine hearing your daughter playing with the roll of alfoil she discovered last week. Unrolling it across the kitchen floor and then trying to roll it back up. Another cat leaps toward the other side of the road and your mind jumps to the present, quick. You’re at Parramatta Road, already. Trucks and cars and buses rush by. People have to yell to be heard. The light is shocking. It makes the signs shout at you as you pass. Phone numbers of businesses seem to seem important. They grab you by the sockets and scream in your face. Take me back to the shadow of the elm trees, you shudder to yourself. A teenager screams from the front seat of a car. Something obscene, probably.

Not far up Norton Street you see the man sitting at the bus stop. He is partially leaning on his zimmerframe. There is a hip flask of Bundaberg Rum smashed at his left foot; you can see the splash it left on the inside of his boot. The liquid has run downhill slightly and from a distance it seems as though he has pissed all over the footpath. He is asleep. No one moves to wake him, or ask him if he wants any help. People rush by in pairs, huddled into their partners’ woollen collar. The air is brisk. The traffic sound is getting fainter. You hear a cricket. It sings with dignity despite being trapped in a potted plant beside a parking meter. It doesn’t understand its limitations. You do. It makes you sad.You have just listened to the Miles of Smiles EP.

It is not music. In fact, you cannot detect anything musical whatsoever about it. Ambient noise, found sounds, carefully structured emotion. Something which can only be heard after dark. With the headphones on. When you are most vulnerable. It sure ain’t music. If it were to be labelled as an art it would be cinematography. A picture tells a thousand words.