Terrestrial Tones are a Brooklyn duo comprised of Animal Collective's Dave Porter (aka Avey Tare) and Black Dice's Eric Copeland. On Blasted, these roomies pull from a sonic palette that wholly evokes their nom de feedback and fashion a 33-minute subterranean landscape of gargling mud baths inhabited by the robotic chirps of rusted aviary grubs. The album displays less joyful humanity/beauty than Animal Collective's Beach-Boy campfire jams and swivels less raucously than early day Black Dice; pinpointing an ambient equator, it loosely resembles Danse Manatee dry humping Beaches & Canyons.
Looking outside the band's apartment complex, they're closest to the criminally forgotten Vancouver noise crew Pork Queen-- well, if those Canadians reformed to cover swatches of Throbbing Gristle sauerkraut, extracting porno evil, and presenting preternatural industrial howl as pedestrian video game music. OK, it doesn't really sound that cool; much of Blasted conjures wordy imagery but feels sluggish, lacking the liveliness of Porter/Copeland's main projects.
Opener "Gorilla In The Woods" bequeaths a drowning sailor's glug to guitar-like creaking, depth-buried entropic repetitions, sprung rhythm, and reverb katydid swirls. If commissioned by Nintendo, imagine digital grubs eating ones-and-zeros roots. The track ends with humanoid bird caws and laughter of its participants, hosing off the anonymity of what came before it.
"Our Single" is drumpad plus buried vocals, and it equals an auto-asphyxiated Xiu Xiu suffocating inside a house of cellophane. "West Indian Day Parade" samples the event that gave it a name, but the low hum of celebratory language and spicy vegetable patties are inter-spliced with a marching band jump cut into a typewriting Burroughs fusion. "Heavy Angel"'s rumbling percussion has the same soft corners as "Gorilla in the Woods" and really, this is all very gentle, somehow submerged and cushioned, a game of padded Pong played by termites. In addition to the titled compositions, there are a handful of untitled maggot granules begging listeners to loop/expand elsewhere: clock chiming and/or unwinding, loose cables spelling "SOS", a sand-dollar concertina stuck in the receding ocean jetsam.
But let's put it in perspective: Terrestrial Tones is often referred to in reviews as a "super group" but although Porter and Copeland are in popular bands, they're also roommates; and as any musician who's lived with other musicians knows, each music house supports about 30,000 bands depending on the night and who's around. So instead of naively reading Blasted as a meeting of indie-rock power brokers, it helps to strip away the distance and funnel the sounds through the framework of two friends getting together in the comfort of their own home and putting some fairly modest abstractions to tape.
Still, despite its low-key nature, Blasted is certainly Psych-o-Path's highest profile album to date, though the New York City label's released stronger work including two Space Is No Place Big Apple noise samplers and the shimmering, often painfully beautiful stringed buzz-quake of SF trio Axolotl's eponymous debut. Especially impressive is Mouthus' locked-groove of a self-titled debut, which along with Loam, a mesmerizing follow-up just released by Ecstatic Peace!, establishes the scruffy NYC duo as the most combustible new-school heirs to Dead C's free-range soft-black feedback (as reinvigorated by Lighting Bolt's punky broke-drum tribalism). But whatever, if it takes Terrestrial Tones' middling underwater cricket opera to put Psych-o-Path on the map then Copeland and Porter should rest well knowing they've transcended the skeletal patchiness of this fun but undistinguished offering.
-Brandon Stosuy, January 20, 2005
Terrestrial Tones
Blasted
Psych-o-path
2004
B
the O.T. of the Good Book (for all the heathens in the house that’s the Bible’s Old Testament) briefly mentions a sect of human-demon hybrids called the Nephilim. According to classical Judaic explanations, the story goes that fallen angles came to earth and mated with the daughters of men, conceiving the Nephilim, who were gigantic Titan figures that inhabited the land of Canaan.
Demons and women— whom most non-The Man Show watchers would put on opposite ends of the good vs. evil spectrum—are, indeed, an unexpected pairing. Less dramatically, members of both Animal Collective and Black Dice have utilized this paradoxical pairing principle, becoming one in Terrestrial Tones. Leaving behind the playful psychedelia and the dissonant, musical massacre respectively definitive of their given bands, Dave Portner of Animal Collective and Black Dice’s Eric Copeland, cleave to each other in Terrestrial Tones, establishing a unity via their mutual love for experimental electronic music. In Blasted, the duo screw around with synthetic microtones, conceiving their own divisive, Niphilimesque musical baby.
By likening this Animal Collective-Black Dice collaboration to the myth—or, God forbid, the truth—of the Nephilim, I run the risk of being mistaken as believing one of these two bands dilutes the beauty of the other. But let us not forget that the darker half of the supernatural world does, indeed, have a lot to offer: they make great horror film subject matter, are usually portrayed as having chiseled, muscular frames and, to some, are even deemed worthy of worship. Sure, their bastardized, ½ human offspring wasn’t the most admirable of creatures, and Goliath, a Nephilim himself, was killed by a slingshot-bearing prepubescent, but, according to the Bible, the Nephilim did form a powerful nation. Likewise, both Portner and Copeland’s contributions merit the Niphilim analogy: they’re two different entities that combine to create an unconventional, yet successful, product.
Blasting, specifically, goes further into experimental territory than Animal Collective’s occasional use of Gregorian modes and Black Dice’s massively cluttered rhythmic section, opting to completely disregard monorhythms and tonality. Electronic figures swim as individuals, building upon each other’s drones, clicks, and pulses. The various sound manipulations are given a smooth, rounded treatment, but lack the clinical precision associated with most IDM. This is due to the fact that many of the tracks here sound as if they used live instrumentation and others are swathed in a warm, aquatic reverb. Portner and Copeland establish a careful equilibrium in mixing, controlling an enchanting and chaotic aura with the various cycling and fragmented electronic snapshots.
Though the album is characterized by its wonderfully incongruent, sprawling disjoint, each track is undeniably thought-out, supplying a specific timbre and theme. Dark, creepy undertones swell within its electronic mixes and specifically highlight the 4th untitled track (track 8). The song begins with lo-fi clanking and, what sounds like, a reversed, MIDI controlled kazoo gradually changing rhythms as sub-bass chugging sneaks into the backdrop. The extraterrestrial, sonar chugging builds a significant amount of intensity over its length, before moving to the album’s next track, wherein the tension builds to a nearly fever pitch.
While it lacks prototypical crescendos, high-octave piano melodies, or savage violin quarter notes, the themes from Blasted would make an ideal choice for the next artsy, three star, quasi-experimental horror film. Terrestrial Tones captures that sense of foreboding, provoking the natural biases of our physiology that is naturally trained to grow fearful at the presence of out-of-place unworldly noises, minor keys and dissonant reverberations. Blasted is truly a monster of an album.
Reviewed by: Kyle McConaghy
Repetition is a device that empties the grave, renders the inanimate animate; gets the necrotic walking and talking. Even when the form itself is unshaped, emptied of idea, cribbed of its content, repetition empowers communication without the minimum of power needed. Repetition’s utility is myriad: politicians use it to inflate sagging claims; Jean-Luc Godard used it to assemble his celluloid character(s); Hebraic Biblical scribes, Greek poets, and propagandists use/d it to facilitate mnemonic; corporations use it to bring breath to their logo: one increased from twice, to thrice, gives the impression of development, of a trend, or transformation. And repetition is – of course – used also in music.
So enters Minimalism. There’s the usual cast of characters, be they Feldman, Riley, Young, Reich or Adams. For the overly critical critic, minimalism IS repetition; for the patient, for the open-minded (and ear’d), minimalism isn’t so much repetition as it is a slow transformation: Yes, Feldman’s pieces use repeating figures, but each repetition isn’t regurgitation of its predecessor; it’s a permutation of that predecessor, a shape softened in some way, shrunk or enlarged, stretched or compacted. The fundamental atomic structure of the sound remains, but it’s taken on something new, and continues to do so throughout the duration of the piece, be it six minutes, or six hours.
The same goes for Riley, Young, Reich and Adams: threads of sound sew themselves up and slowly unwind, creating and dissolving a sonic tapestry which - at first - threatens to suffocate, and then relents, becoming as loose as the mouth around an old sock.
Perhaps this is obvious. If so, Black Dice’s Eric Copeland has either misunderstood the formula or is enacting a sort of punk nihilism upon it, hoping that minimalism’s destruction will lead to a Brand New Form.
Whatever Copeland’s intention, it’s not working. Critical “grade-inflation” gave the Black Dice a pass on their egregious follow-up to 2003’s chimerical Beaches and Canyons, the banal Creature Comforts. It’s one thing to get turned on to musique concrete, it’s another entirely to misinterpret the genre as artistic license to walk into the studio and pound away at a Korg Kaoss Pad in hopes of growing some flesh on decaying bones. Unfortunately, Creature Comforts marks the beginning of not only a drummer-less Black Dice, but a band also infatuated only with effecting FX pedals to no creative yield whatsoever. And – of course – very few have called them on it; so they’re only too willing to continue on the same path.
With Blasted, Eric Copeland brings his twiddling knobs together with sparring partner, Mr. Dave Portner (a.k.a. Avey Tare), one of the musical geniuses behind Animal Collective. As a duo, Portner and Copeland operate under the Terrestrial Tones moniker, a name that’s seen print only once prior to Blasted, finding sound and ink on the Space is No Place compilation, also on Psych-o-Path. On paper, this duo is a combination worthy of intrigue. Sure, it’s a given that Copeland’s going to bring the glitch, but with Portner, the possibilities are seemingly endless. Tribal drumming? Ethereal singing? Cascading acoustic guitar?
Actually, none of the above. Instead one’s privy to a handful of short, go nowhere cuts that half-heartedly attempt to pass off spinning wheels for linear progression.
Tremolo, wah-wah, delay, and various mixers band together to strangle “found sounds,” “field-recordings,” and other sampled yawn-inducing blah. Some of this is humorous: the 11th track sounds like Copeland or Portner sampled each other doing bong-hits; it lasts for 34 seconds. “Danny’s Villian” – all 28 seconds of it – sounds like a truncated Nintendo soundtrack wearing a fuzz-pedal’d wig. Track six sounds like an Austrian public telephone unwilling to complete the transaction. “Heavy Angel” – the longest of the lot – takes what sounds like a slowed-down lion’s growl and fits it with a scissor glitch, lasting over 10 minutes. “West Indian Day Parade” begins with a “field-recording”: cymbals and drums slice and bump into one another, and, then, instead of bringing the electronics in slowly, they shove the field-recoding aside – like two drunks fighting for the same cab.
While Godard attempted to destabilize the viewer’s perception via repetition of frames, the musicians of the minimalist school sought to stabilize the listener’s perception through a facet of repetition: symmetry. And while their repeating themes weren’t entirely invariant, the incremental repetition – the subtle shift in form – lent a more supple appeal to its form in flux. This is an enterprise that calls for kid gloves; an aspiring gourmet doesn’t want the young’ns stampeding into the kitchen while the souffle’s setting. But, with Blasted, that’s what’s rendered: a disparate electronic sauce beaten into formlessness; flash baked and deflated as quickly as it rises.
Sadly, Blasted is indicative of so many recordings that are being heaved out onto the market today: awkward, unfocused, assuming one can emulate past masters with a mere tweak of a knob; and with a wealth of truly excellent electronic music out there, why waste time on this?
By Stewart Voegtlin
It could be said that Terrestrial Tones is a super group of sorts. A duo composed of roommates and friends, Eric Copeland and Dave Portner (aka Avey Tare) of the Brooklyn bands Black Dice and Animal Collective (respectively). Their debut album "Blasted" was recorded by the band in their home in 2003. An overall feeling of honesty leads to the success of this record. The compositions are sparse, and never slip into cluttered webs Perhaps some of the success of this album can be traced to safe, relaxing and familiar environment in which it was created. It becomes obvious through the uncontrived sound, that comfort and knowledge of ones collaborator may prove necessary to achieve truly successful experimentations.
"Blasted" unfolds to the listener like a sketchbook. Showcasing pure and uninhibited creations. One feels as though they are being led on a trip through the artists mind just by listening to the songs. It is in this overall feeling honesty that the success of this record lies.
Blips, beeps, whirs, manipulated field recordings, mangled vocal slurs and low-end throbs, are often looped to infinity. At times they create a soundscape, allowing you to float through the atmosphere of a foreign planet, below alien flora and fauna chirp and buzz. At times you wander into an underground dance club on mars. Terrestrial Tones sound recalls early noise artists such as Throbbing Gristle while simultaneously evoking qualities inherent to dub. It's as if all the instrumentation has been stripped out off of a dub track and we are only left with strange sound effects, heavy delay, bass throbs and tape hiss.
Terrestrial Tones is an entity of it's own not a spin off band and it shouldn't be approached as such. It deserves to be taken more seriously than the usual side project. The two artists that make up this duo, are breaking new ground. Don't be surprised if once you drop the needle to this record the windowpanes begin to shake, and your room is suddenly transformed into a deep sea vessel. On the floor of the ocean with angler fish, Terrestrial Tones are you sonar.
- Ryan Brown | 2004-09-03
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