Album Review: Eric Copeland – Black Bubblegum
2 min read
Understand, feel, listen, pay attention and soak up all the loose glory of Eric Copeland’s latest record Black Bubblegum. Having released music on his own before as well as with Black Dice with which he serves as a core member, and also responsible for output together with Animal Collective’s Avey Tare as Terrestrial Tones, he’s no stranger to exciting and adrenaline injected musical procedures. The New Yorker releases his latest record on esteemed label DFA and it’s a scorching product of no holds barred taste making. You can expect plenty of low-fi sampling, distortion, and avant-garde novelty at its unexpected finest and utmost weirdest.
Fuck It Up is an Industrial, Blind Melon-ish track. Effects saturated faint, looped distant voices make it a piece not easily forgotten. The drums are programmed into peculiar muddy rhythms and revolve around a carousel of echoed voice sampling. Radio Weapons is perhaps the stand-out off the record – memorable guitar chords and electric funk effected drums tie the incomprehensible vocal installments. Plugging into a cerebral unpredictability, Copeland smears his peculiar thoughts and unfettered characteristics over this Black Bubblegum canvas. Teasing over the duration of 34 minutes is a sizable chunk of vintage rooted musical newness. Artistically, Copeland illustrates his analog feelings into a morphing statue of veracious generation. A creative explosion of colours and senses, it’s perhaps a bit too unpolished and raw – but does well with formulating a series of sensations that help shape a free-flowing infatuation with what is otherwise, a record that demands spiritual re-imagination. Blue Honey is one of the most familiar units on the album – sticking to a 4/4 beat that brushes against other percussion examples, clicks, and a savoury distorted guitar application. Leading into a noteworthy solo, the percussion does well in growing a centred focus around the heightened stresses taken in the lyrics. It is not out of place when the tones in On shift to an even enlarged psychedelia movement. However, the over echoed vocals seem a little unnecessary, perhaps subtracting much from the general flow of what could have been a promising track. Feelings of confusion and blurry infatuations rise by the song’s end, elevating the listener into a funky grogginess. Highly contrasted but a well-needed change of pace comes in the form of the track Cannibal World, serving as a well-pieced bit of instrumental tape funk featuring a healthy dose of some calypso drenched hip-hop characters. Over repetitive hooks and chorus’ make the overall feeling a little draining but the track has an increased momentum and a certain subdued veracity. Quintessential Copeland material.
If you’re after a mind-warping and no-rules album that promises an overabundance of experimental feelings and ominous planetary directions, then look no further than Copeland’s Black Bubblegum. It’s a series of wild, semi-underproduced gems that for the most part make sailing into uncharted waters a whole lot of nervous fun.
