Cheers Merdeyeux - half the reason this review came out late was because I was hesitant about doing the whole "why don't London audiences dance?" angle again; but honestly the overall attitude in there was appalling. It wasn't just apathy but ACTIVE apathy, if such a thing can exist, a whole "what the fuck are you doing?!" attitude even right down the front. And it addresses what the point of going to see live music is, especially if you can't really make out the band at all. The whole affair was preposterous, as if the audience were trying as hard as they could to look like they'd rather be anywhere else.
I'd argue that Mr Impossible is their first actual dance record (save Cone Toaster). Repo is more a hiphop/collage thing and I don't really hear the other records as being dance - more power electronics or something?
― make like a steak and beef (dog latin), Thursday, 15 November 2012 15:48 (eleven years ago) link
hmmm. well i guess our ears just work differently!
active apathy is definitely right, the cheap hipster diss explanation is putting it down to a kind of guardedness re showing any feelings or more importantly showing THE WRONG feelings about things, but i haven't been able to come up with a better one. i've come to accept it and my lonely dancing but i know people who've given up on going to indie-leaning gigs in london because of that vibe, and it's very understandable.
― fun facts about human waste (Merdeyeux), Thursday, 15 November 2012 16:32 (eleven years ago) link
I say take the dancefloor back. Do a Sid Vicious and shake things up, bump into people, fuck it. Something I didn't mention in the review was when I found myself getting cross and shouting "I don't know about you but I came here to see fucking BLACK DICE" (bit tipsy by that point), one bloke turned round and kind of acknowledged the situation and started bouncing around with me, which I was very pleased to see :-)
― make like a steak and beef (dog latin), Thursday, 15 November 2012 16:56 (eleven years ago) link
I never really thought of Cone Toaster as a dance track, tbh. It was easily one of the least dance-oriented early DFA records. In fact, I always thought having Black Dice on the label in those days was a way to pin down an extreme noise end of the spectrum of the sound they were charting.
― MikoMcha, Thursday, 15 November 2012 18:22 (eleven years ago) link
when i saw bd in london, mb three years ago, there was some dancing
― ogmor, Thursday, 15 November 2012 18:28 (eleven years ago) link
As an aside, I was on Discogs the other day and was amused by this: "Punk funk label set up by James Murphy, Tim Goldsworthy and Jonathan Galkin."
I haven't heard DFA described that way for ages, mainly since their sound became sort of ubiquitous or at least normative throughout the 00s. Anyway, reminded me to compilations like this one.
In any case, agree that Black Dice have become way more dancey over time, but especially by now mining 90s genres like breakbeat, gabba and drum'n'bass, combining that with their noise-roots. To my mind, they also always arguably had electro-influences, but mainly through stuff like power-electronics.
― MikoMcha, Thursday, 15 November 2012 18:36 (eleven years ago) link