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 to access audio and video on collective you need real player.Small wonder. The shoebox-sized practice space that houses Brooklyn’s Black Dice is located in the basement of a dilapidated industrial building on the outskirts of still-fashionable Williamsburg. As Aaron Warren, who comprises one-third of the band along with brothers Bjorn and Eric Copeland, greets Collective, he warns of the oppressive heat and cramped quarters inside. Given the intense nature of the band’s music, the setting could hardly be more appropriate. In a city where space is at a premium, and in a neighbourhood that continues to attract legions of hipsters, practical considerations have forced the band to squeeze into such claustrophobic confines. “I feel like you’re out-budgeted everywhere you go,” says Eric, the quietest of the three. “There are ways you can make it work, but it’s definitely challenging,” adds Bjorn. “It is a little weird. It’s approaching critical mass,” agrees Aaron. “But I personally like living here a lot.”  Although the band only intermittently record in this space, it’s here that the songs for Black Dice’s latest album, Load Blown, were sculpted from an arsenal of barely working equipment and heavily abused effects pedals. The recording of the album was spread over a fertile 18-month period, and the songs have already been released as a series of vinyl EPs. “We’d just done three records pretty fast and we wanted to take it easy on ourselves,” says Aaron. Bjorn talks about their need to make the packaging “a little more special and desirable”. He says, “All of us have really been attracted to album artwork. It’s something that informs the whole package a little bit more.” The key to Black Dice records is to expect the unexpected, and there’s a notable stylistic shift from 2005’s Broken Ear Record. Standout tracks Drool and Roll Up are the clearest indications to date that a more tuneful sensibility is seeping into the Black Dice palate – although their sound remains “advanced” by anyone’s standards. When asked if mainstream pop has been an influence, Eric admits: “We toyed around with some of those ideas, even if we turned them upside down.” He adds, helpfully, “I don’t think, for instance, that you’d have a six-minute drone in a popular radio song.”  Being described as an electronic act is something the band balk at, but an impromptu demonstration of Bjorn’s sequencer-in-a-suitcase (which was designed by DFA instrument maestro Gavin Russom) induces a discussion of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop; an institution which, for Bjorn, neatly encapsulated the Black Dice aesthetic. “There are a lot of rough edges and awkward aspects to it, which is in keeping with how we work, by misusing gear rather than using stock sounds. To me, electronic music always sounds like you’d have to know a lot about gear and equipment, whereas the way that we’ve always done stuff is we just sort of fumble through it.” Long may they fumble.
Nick Neyland
Black Dice - Load Blown is out now on Paw Tracks.
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 animal collective session the juan macleaninterview
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