Experimental psychedelic band Black Dice came to Chicago Sunday night and played the art gallery Co-Prosperity Sphere, which is located in the heart of the Bridgeport neighborhood. I got into Black Dice right at the beginning of quarantine at the recommend of a few friends; spring 2020 in retrospect was the perfect time to get into a band like them because the abrasive noise and dense soundscapes helped soothe the chaos going on in my mind when the pandemic hit. Opening for them was other-worldly pop fixture Aitis Band; another band Civic Center was originally on the bill as well but they unfortunately had to drop out last minute. The gallery itself was a neat space with artworks lining the walls, and the door folks were kind enough to supply earplugs.
Black Dice consists of brothers Eric and Bjorn Copeland alongside Aaron Warren. They formed in 1997 and began as a hardcore punk band, although that would change over the years as the band’s material began incorporating more studio experimentation and pedals for them to venture into the realms of electronica and ambient noise. Although they have been based in Brooklyn for a long time, now only one member still lives there while the other two are in LA.
The band’s latest album “Mod Prod Sic” is their first in nine years and is forty minutes of oddball dance beats, roaring samples, obfuscated vocals, and cathartic waves of industrial electronica. Most if not all their material on Sunday came straight from this record and it was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Everyone around me in the crowd was in their own world, absorbing the noise in individualized trances. Warren was jumping around and sweating his ass off as he’d shout voraciously into the mic, accompanied by the Copeland brothers’ knob-twisting and guitar strumming. It’s always humorous to me when a band plays such an extreme or left-field set, and then once they finish they pick their heads up smiling and give a nonchalant “thanks for coming!” – like, dude, y’all just blew our fucking minds – I’m exhilarated!
Black Dice has to be among the most unique and other-worldly bands I’ve seen thus far. Their music has traversed the many rims of experimental styling and I imagine it’ll continue to as long as they’re still making music (2002’s “Beaches and Canyons” is a record of theirs I particularly love). Music like theirs makes you feel like it’s okay to be weird and like weird things; it’s a vastly different approach to artistic expression from normative pop standards that still triggers such visceral sensory reactions leaving you in awe. I struck up a conversation with Bjorn Copeland outside the venue afterwards and he was real sweet. I told him how much his music has helped me navigate the confusion of the world in the last year and a half, which certainly isn’t something you get to do with every touring artist you see. I also told him I hope they get to come play Milwaukee again sometime; he said he’s been here a few times and has enjoyed himself.
I was super happy to have ran into Milwaukee artists Apollo Vermouth and Rod Stench in the crowd as well.