Terrestrial Tones

Blasted, indeed, because this collaboration between Dave Portner (aka Avey Tare of Animal Collective) and Eric Copeland (of Black Dice) is a collection of some truly mesmerizing minimal electronics. Each one of these 11 tracks is built from fluidly percolating clusters of crusty, barely audible machine-produced whir and chatter fortified with rippling low-end effects. What sounds like a formless, opaque goop when my ears are preset for tuning in ordinary, everyday life quickly transforms itself into this lean crystalline pulse when my ears have been tweaked from, say, drowsiness, meditation, pensive moods, or ... uhh ... marijuana. And, there, I said it. Weed! I don't fucking meditate; I pack a bowl, get ripped, and listen to this disc because it's all trippy in the head, and it busts this zoned-out listening-to-the-crickets-all-night-long stoner groove. Hell, all that New York hippietronics freakery, including Animal Collective and Black Dice, is tailor-made for dedicated stoners, and that's all right by me as long as the music is this profoundly psychedelic.