Label: FatCat Format: CD
Creature Comforts is a drifting album of instruments and electronics, where rhythm and tune merge and mutate into one another. New sounds growing out of old ones. An epic psychedelic jam at points like listening alien conversation, or elsewhere like a chorus of demented narcotic Hawaiian guitars.
Citing contemporaries such as Sonic Youth does little to define Creature Comforts. It at once sounds very much instrumental while at the same time being electronic. The band have ventured far into the world of electronica here, almost bordering on microsonic – if microsonic music can be said to have borders. Perhaps attitude and approach are more important. Black Dice have a love of sound for its own sake. The fact that instruments are used (or not pushed beyond the point of all recognition) makes the sound reminiscent of the side long improvs of Amon Düül II, Can, or Faust. Or of course Fripp and Eno‘s No Pussyfooting, which practically wrote the book on processed guitar.
Creature Comforts has a human and less austere feel than much processed beyond recognition microsonica. However, the structure is as radical. In this sense, the album sees Black Dice going much further into the current processing oriented world of electronica. Further than, say, Radiohead, who’s ventures into electronica are, by and large, for the sake of song rather than sound itself.
-Alaric Pether-
