Black Dice

A vital presence in the evolution of 21st-century underground sound, Black Dice motivated a generation of experimental artists to jettison rock instruments for electronics. Emerging from Rhode Island’s noise-rock scene in the late ’90s, the quartet initially whipped up chaotic, Gravity Records-inspired hardcore increasingly punctured with feedback and pedal-generated drones. After relocating to New York, Black Dice signed with James Murphy’s DFA Records, representing the experimental extreme of the label’s electro-punk ethos. Arriving in 2002, Beaches & Canyons reveals a vast expanse of dubby loops, Boredoms-style freakiness, and gut-rattling textures that would offer fellow musicians new ways of marrying noise with electronic music. Drummer Hisham Bharoocha departed in 2004, leaving the trio of brothers Eric and Bjorn Copeland and Aaron Warren to embrace electronic processes even more fervently. Albums like 2005’s Broken Ear Record and 2009’s Repo plunge into unsettling media collage and gnarled beat-work. Black Dice slowed down in the late 2010s, while Eric Copeland devoted more time to his equally bizarre solo records. But the threesome reconvened in 2021 for Mod Prog Sic, a reaffirmation of their stature as eccentric lifers whose uneasily mesmerizing concoctions consistently propel experimental music forward.