Brooklyn noise-rock crew Black Dice will return with their sixth LP, Mr. Impossible, on April 10th via Ribbon Music. Spanning nine tracks, the album is billed as a ”soundtrack to a substance-fueled teen basement show on Mars” that explores the “uncommon ground between The Seeds punk primitivism, extra-terrestrial throbbing of Funkadelic, and discordant rebelliousness of Royal Trux.” Ray Bradbury’s inner punk rocker would be thrilled.

As an early taste, check out the music video for the track called “Pigs”. To match the bass-heavy waves of distortion, the accompanying visuals are like an iTunes commercial directed by Timothy Leary. An mp3 download of the song is also available on SoundCloud.

Mr. Impossible Tracklist:
01. Pinball Wizard
02. Rodriguez
03. The Jacker
04. Pigs
05. Spy Vs. Spy
06. Out Body Drifter
07. Shithouse Drifter
08. Carnitas
09. Brunswick Sludge

In a partnership between Vice and Intel, The Creators Project combines art and technology to create next-level experiences, all in a multimillion-dollar studio called…wait for it…The Studio. For this year’s inclusion, The Studio is working with Arcade Fire, Animal Collective, Interpol, and possibly others on each of their respective Coachella sets. What’s the goal? As they explain, “to transform their sets into dramatic multimedia visual experiences.” For now, Arcade Fire and Interpol are remaining tight-lipped about their showcases; the former letting out little more than that Chris Milk (“The Wilderness Downtown”) is involved and that it’s called “Summer into Dust”, and the latter revealing only that it has created a work called “Under Surveillance”. Animal Collective, however, has laid its plans out on the table for all to see. For their set, the band has enlisted none other than Brooklyn experimental group Black Dice to put together a video collage, as well as edit and mix their live set in real time; in other words, get ready for some high-quality jumbotron — err, “Jumbletron” — madness.

That ain’t all, either. The U.K.’s United Visual Artists have revamped the Coachella Stage, so much so that the more intoxicated members of the audience might find themselves confused upon repeat visits. The stage “unfolds and evolves over the three days of the festival,” according to The Creators Project, “all the while projecting intricate and beautiful lighting effects, with the help of the latest Intel technology.” Just try to imagine Kanye West performing to the backdrop of a fully functional Optimus Prime replica – with lasers, too. Who says your wildest dreams can’t come true?

There’s also something unique for the Sahara junkies, too. The festival’s popular dance tent will receive a makeover from architect/artist Muti Randolph. Randolph will craft the new Sahara in the mold of his São Paulo club D-Edge. This includes an enormous light installation and perhaps an even more impressive visual experience – at least compared to what the Sahara crowd has seen in past years.

Lastly, as you may have heard, Spiritualized and director Jonathan Glazer are putting together what may be the most ambitious work: a “physical manifestation of the song ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space’.” In this exhibit, there will be an interactive cathedral-esque installation featuring “isolated pools of light…each containing a different component of the original track.” Well, if that isn’t bizarre…

Beyond these major draws, The Creators Project will also have its own tent featuring more interactive works from around the world, according to Coachella’s website.

For those of you who aren’t going, you can start kicking yourself if you haven’t already.

But, soon after I got to Chicago’s Empty Bottle, I realized this was going to be even weirder than I could have imagined. The Ape Technology gear that sat on the floor was more a collection of geometric shapes than identifiable instruments. On one side stood an upturned green cone with a large white orb at its tip. The set also included a four foot wide, five foot long, white tube and a strange pillar.

After a short wait, the lights went out and things became truly bizarre. I noticed a strange, bearded man open up what looked like a remote control for a toy car. The other musician sat behind the tube at a table of electronics, which released a barrage of howling sirens and shuddering sub-bass. Then, suddenly, the cone started rolling around and the orb started flashing. The thing would creep towards particular parts of the audience, flash like 10 flashbulbs in their faces, then roll away, all while the dense, droning electronics pulsed through the room.

The sirens soon melted away, replaced by an odd, doom-bringing, ultra-pitch-shifted bass voice repeating a sentence or two that sounded like they could have been from a movie trailer. The voice was punctuated by thundering, ultra-bass thuds. The tube was used as a sort of extra-large drum, Blue Man Group style.

Throughout all of this, the cone teetered around the room, blaring light and bumping into people. It was like a strange episode of The Twilight Zone, except no one was over-acting (well, maybe a few of the hipsters trying really hard to be so hip).

Wolf Eyes came out next and seemed kind of conventional, at least in performance style, after the psychosis that was Ape Technology. The trio worked through their set without much banter or time wasted at all, instead relying on two long-form pieces. The first sounded a lot like Jack Kerouac’s journey into hell. Instead of traditional jazz instruments, the band used screeching feedback, crunching, distorted drum samples and saxophone. That’s right, John Olson, besides laying down disgusting layers of filthy noise also brought a soprano saxophone, a flute and a strange, certainly homemade wind instrument (a long, thin y-shaped piece of tubing) along for the ride.

The second piece employed a long, droning, two note flute sample, which the group then screamed, crunched and pounded on top of.  Nate Young howled a strange spoken word/scream that, again, felt like a strange, demonic jazz session. Bassist Mike Connelly (also of Hair Police) head-banged along with the arrhythmic lunacy like any good metal bassist would.

After the Wolf Eyes pummeling, the crowd surged to the front, ready for the rhythm-happy noise lunacy that is the Black Dice. Much like the other two acts, the Brooklynites didn’t want to leave anyone room to breathe, instead favoring one constantly flowing, interweaving piece. It was hard to identify particular “songs” from their albums, but that didn’t stop some of the crowd from bouncing along like they knew what they were doing.

Early in the set, Eric Copeland triggered a drum and honking saxophone  sample that signaled the beginning of “Ultra Vomit Craze” from this year’s excellent Repo. Eric’s brother Bjorn plucked at a guitar with one hand, fiddling with knobs and electronics with the other. On the other end of the stage, Aaron Warren swung, sidestepped and bounced with the mic in his hand, looking like an over-caffeinated Biz Markie, though the sounds coming out of the exercise were extremely altered and nearly unrecognizable as a human voice.

After a while, it was clear that a good portion of the crowd had lost the energy to keep up with the constantly changing noise barrage that Black Dice were throwing out, but the opening squeals of “Kokomo” got everyone back into the mood. The song wasn’t quite as cogent as the album recording (which is saying something), but the chopped, extended version, full of sudden drops in intensity and explosions of sound may have been even better.

All in all, I never expected that Wolf Eyes and Black Dice could be shown up in the weirdness category, but it happened. The lunacy was still there in droves and the crowd ate it up. But it was really the technical skill, knowledge of pacing and patience to let drones work their way together that proved why the two bands have been as successful and long-running as they’ve been.

Good stuff, right? And that’s without mentioning Black Dice’s trippy new video for Repo‘s “Glazin”…

Black Dice 2009 Tour Dates:
05/20 – Chicago, IL @ Empty Bottle #
05/21 – Minneapolis, MN @ Triple Rock #
05/23 – Missoula, MT @ Palace #
05/24 – Seattle, WA @ Holy Mountain #
05/25 – Vancouver, BC @ Biltmore #
05/26 – Portland, OR @  Backspace #
05/29 – San Francisco, CA @ OCD Warehouse #%
05/30 -  Los Angeles, CA @ Gilbert’s (F Yeah Fest presents) #~
05/31 – Tucson, AZ @ Rialto Theater *
06/01 – Albuquerque, NM @ Sunshine Theater *
06/02 – Boulder, CO Boulder Theatre *
06/03 – Norman, OK, Opolis
06/04 – Dallas, TX House Of Blues *
06/05 – Austin TX @ Stubbs Waller Creek Amphitheater *
06/06 – Oxford, MS @ The Library *
06/07 – Birmingham, AL @ Bottletree
06/08 – St. Petersburg, FL @ State Theatre *
06/09 – Fort Lauderdale, FL @ Culture Room *
06/10 – Orlando, FL @ Club Firestone *
06/11 – Atlanta, GA @ The Earl $
06/12 – Chapel Hill, NC @ Local 506 $
06/13 – Baltimore, MD @ Sonar $@+
06/14 – New York, NY @ Bowery Ballroom $!
06/15 – Boston, MA @ Outside The Lines $
06/16 – Montreal, QC @ Il Motore $
06/18 – Detroit, MI @ MOFA $#
06/19 – Pittsburgh, PA @ Garfield Art Works $
06/20 – Philadelphia, PA @ Kung Fu Necktie $
09/12 – Monticello, NY @ ATP New York

# = w/ Wolf Eyes
* = w/ Animal Collective
$ = w/ Awesome Color
! = w/ Soft Circle
@ = w/ Dan Deacon
% = w/ Sic Alps
~ = w/ Richard Bishop
+ = w/ Dat Politics

Despite their interconnected histories, the two bands have developed in very separate manners. Black Dice’s early sound was heavily inspired by the RISD scene: Lightning Bolt-esque noise, complete with a drummer and some guitars. As time and lineup changed, the group has become a trio of electronic manipulators, standing behind trays of pedals, synths, laptops and occasional guitars. Where Animal Collective fuse worldbeats and unusual sonic textures onto pop sensibilities, Black Dice cling to its experimental noise roots with a fervor, taking similar textures and beats to a unique world.

Repo, the group’s seventh studio album, is their second for Paw Tracks (further cementing the connection to Animal Collective). 2007′s Load Blown jumped even further into psychedelic space, more poly rhythmic and strangely danceable than Black Dice ever had been. Repo continues this trend, but can’t seem to sit still for more than a couple of minutes.

“Inches” incorporates bleats of what sound like television newscasts into the swirling, noisy groove-pot. “Lazy” has a Battles-esque loop of effected vocals under squelches of synth bubbles. The epic, six and a half minute “Ultra Vomit Craze” takes an industrial-sounding crunching drum sample and drops in surreal, alien talkbox vocals.

The last few Black Dice albums have come a long way away from 2002′s excellent Beaches and Canyons, to the chagrin of many.  Where Beaches.. was focused more on lo-fi instrumentation, Repo layers on the unidentifiable samples and sounds at full force. Where Beaches built from quiet, churning noise to epic climaxes, Repo is a constant freakout, discarding everything but the unusual and interesting. Instead of being relegated to structure or expectations, Copeland and friends let things happen. The music falls in and out of focus, in and out of a semblance of structure, but consistently challenging the boundaries of music.

Check Out:

Entitled Repo and officially set for release on April 7th via Paw Tracks, the trio’s sixth full-length effort is described as the outcome of a “new roadhouse blues-band philosophy,” which apparently has allowed the Copeland Brothers and bassist Aaron Warren to create a record that “irreverently mulches the sounds and images of radio, TV and internet into a fertile compost pile squirming with new, raw life.”

Confused? Don’t worry, so are we, but based on the aforementioned description, it sure sounds like we’re in for something unique…

Repo will be released on both CD and as a double LP.

Repo Tracklist:
01. Night Cream
02. Glazin
03. Earnings Plus Interest
04. Whirligig
05. La Cucaracha
06. Idiots Pasture
07. Lazy
08. Buddy
09. Inches
10. Vegetable
11. Urban Super Mist
12. Ultra Vomit
13. Gag Shack