Black Dice Vs The Black Lips

For Clash's Personality Clash

Veering from nebulous sonic violence to uncompromisingly influential structures, Eric Copeland is one-third of Black Dice, the band credited for inspiring the Animal Collective to go so low. Cole Alexander is the throbbing pulse of garage rock gods The Black Lips, a band whose improvisation and crazy live shows stands them apart from the jostling pack of tame imitators.

Aside from adopting a ‘noir-de-guerre’, both these bands demand extreme levels of performance aesthetic with which to deliver their music gestated at the outer limits. The Black Lips’ live shows are inspired by the ‘punk-before-punk’ of Viennese Actionism, and the infamous onstage outrage of GG Allin. Cole has a medical condition where, as you will read, causes regular vomiting, often setting the tone of their early shows. Black Dice have toured with everyone from The Residents to Godspeed You! Black Emperor and remain dedicated to sonic extremism. Clash rolled the tape and the duo shot some breeze from a wind that started blowing a long, long time ago.

Cole: I always heard that you were a fan of our band and I was always really touched because you do really more far-out and avant-garde stuff than us. I’d heard about you from Moses in Deerhunter, he said how intense your shows were.

Eric: We always had a good attitude for going into a live show and fucking things up, and making it a real experience. Have you guys had to step up your song-writing?

Cole: We’ve learnt how to play better, and we’ve gotten broader with our sounds. We actually rarely practice. We tour so much that if we have a new song idea and we have a soundcheck then we’d just try it out at soundcheck. If it went well then we’d try it live. Often it sucked but after three or four times it’d be sounding good. In a year we might practice four times!

Eric: So what do you do with your time when you aren’t in the band?

Cole: I’m an avid thrift store searcher. We drive around and find old shit, records or weird women’s clothes. Just the other day me and my girl were at the thrift store and we found this dress, and inside it we found sewn in this giant handkerchief and I was like, ‘Dude, there’s probably like ancient boogers in there!’ But she kept unwinding it and found some tinfoil. So we bought it and took it to the car and unwrapped it all. There was a $100 bill wrapping loads of other ancient bills from the 1960s. There was $1000 and a letter saying, ‘This money is for my children’ in really broken English. I love finding weird time capsules like that. On our last album there’s a song about dumpster diving.

Eric: Dumpster diving? Do you worry about bed bugs?

Cole: There’s a massive problem with bed bugs in New York right now; they’re everywhere.

Eric: On our last tour I got scabies and ringworm at the same time! I had to do a full skin detox when I got back, but I made it through the tour. But one whole side of my body went numb. It was horrible. That was the hardest journey I’ve ever been on.

Cole: (Makes vomiting noises) Oooh… Excuse me, I just threw up! But talking about artists suffering, I think it can be a good tension for an artist, to bring out some of their best work, though not true for everyone.

Eric: I think if an artist is around for long enough then it’s inevitable. It’s not always going to be rainbows and sunshine. Some people have great lives but nobody is without pain or suffering at some point. Like, the fact you guys have been around for twelve years is an accomplishment in this day and age. We used to say that at ten years you become a real band.

Cole: How long have you been going?

Eric: Sixteen years now. But when we play shows I still have no idea how many people will show up. We played in Alabama and six people showed up. It’s a LONG drive for six people!

Cole: It’s amazing that you’ve been around forever and you still don’t care about what happens, that’s a real band.

Eric: I started relating to those songs about ‘taking it easy’ by The Eagles and it is true; you do just have to relax and see where it goes.

Cole: Are you touring the States in May?

Eric: Yeah we’re touring in Memphis. I’ve never played in Memphis.

Cole: I like Memphis. They definitely have a lot of history musically which I was always envious of – the Stax recording studio and Sun Records – but Atlanta back in the ’20s and ’30s was the country music capital of the world – The Carter Family, Hank Williams. If you get a chance you can do a tour of Sun Studios and the Stax museum. The live room at Sun Records where Elvis used to record is really cool. The walls look like they’re made out of cardboard. I learned about how they would record really quietly back then and you could hear everything better.

Eric: I went to Graceland. I thought it was very eccentric. It made me a fan; before that I never gave a shit, afterwards I bought his records.

Cole: I like Little Richard because he was one of the first men to bring homoeroticism into rock ‘n’ roll. He brought the effeminate touch that it kind of needed. Little Richard was really fucking fruity. Last time I saw him play in concert he brought out these waxed-up African dancers in hot-pants who gyrated their asses to his music. It was amazing.

Black Dice’s new album ‘Mr Impossible’ is out now on Domino. Read our review of it HERE.

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