Somewhere along Black Dice’s strange career trajectory, one that saw hardcore noise-rock splatter slowly morph into ethereal alternate-galaxy highs of psychedelia to experiments in musique-concrète to beat-oriented kaleidoscopes, there rose the distinct feeling that their shifts in auditory concerns continually produced both new and alienated fans. While there may be some animosity here and there toward the trio, it needs to be said that Black Dice craft some of the most outlandish, perplexing, genre-destroying sounds in the free-form underground. As such, seeing Copeland go solo leaves an interesting realm of possibilities open, both exciting and potentially crippling. Will Copeland hit upon a new patch of lands he hasn’t been able to explore while operating under the membership of a collective, or will it emphasize a certain sense of loss in sonics with two of his bandmates out of the picture?
Going in a similar direction of the increasingly fascinating alien beats of the Dice’s output since Creature Comforts, Hermaphrodite is thankfully a fleshy, breathing, beautiful yet grotesque beast built sturdily out of Copeland’s own bountiful creative drives. Sounding less like a fatally sparse one-man delve into a public exploration of personal artistic experiments, Copeland’s first solo full-length feels as richly constructed and outwardly penetrating as one of the Dice’s three-man concoctions. Listening to this album blindly may cause one to question whether this is really a fruit comprised solely of Copeland’s own doing. Much more assured and calculated than the majority of solo bids by artists whose identities are inextricable from their "main" band, Hermaphrodite stands wondrously on its own legs, looming over its lush universe of impossible beings.
After the brain-melting serenity of the title track, “La Booly Boo” out-weirds plenty of albums that stake out similar territory, as it presents a giddily enthusiastic march as exuded by the inhabitants of an extraterrestrial oasis. “Green Burrito” layers its own language out of gibberished vocal cut-ups that forces its own meticulous gorgeousness along with the surprisingly Earth-bound pings of harp-like strings. Following with the same bizarre hints of organic semblances overpowered by the unearthly, “Spacehead” recalls a twisted hillbilly stomp that could easily act as a score to Amy Lockhart’s ingeniously abnormal animated short Walk For Walk, which visually encapsulates Copeland’s same perceptions of the cute colliding with the freakish. The more abstract arenas Copeland pokes his mind into, such as the quietly foreboding “Oreo” or the pitch-drunk fuzz-rumble of “Mouthhole,” are equally developed and fully confident, and Copeland’s closing salvo of “FKD” and “Scraps” further explores the layered audio derailment that comfortingly robs his listeners of their grasp of reality.
Hermaphrodite is an album for individuals open to Copeland’s distinguished brand of carefree bizarreness. Far beyond a diversion to Black Dice’s upcoming Load Blown full-length, Copeland has crafted a sonic manifesto that forms as an unfolding dream into vivid insanity, but one that’s paradoxically vibrant in the context of the noise underground's usually nightmarish adventures into the unknown.
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