i confess: i bought this for erase errata. i thought black dice would make a nice b-side of challenging hardcore, but nothing spectacular. i was definitely wrong.
despite two great songs, the erase errata side clearly establishes itself as that which can only be called 'b.' the reason: bad production. usually, this is a stupid complaint, but it seems clear that the engineers at troubleman deliberately fuzzed out the sound to go for some kind of hipster garage aesthetic. well, sorry, but i am siding with musical genius weasel walter (who remastered the erase errata lp) here: it doesn't matter how cool it sounds, it should just sound good. my second complaint is that the second track, "french canadia", is a reworking of an lp track. i grudgingly oblige to give the remix a chance, but here it loses much of its power with the rythm section so low in the mix it sounds absent - it's not even a good remix!
okay, that's redundant.
anyway, on to the black dice side of things. one song, untitled, procedes through at least three distinct "stages" (metal clanging, subtle popping sounds, etc.) for about six minutes. i failed to realize, when purchasing this, that this was beaches and canyons -era black dice (i.e. the no longer even remotely hardcore but some crazy electronic noise jams instead -era). this was about as far away as one can get from conventional song structure, and i like it. if bathtub shitter is the neil perry of electronic music, the black dice are john cage.
"this band can do no wrong" erase errata fans and curious avant-heads should both be in to this, but people who liked old hardcore black dice might fall asleep and have very unusual dreams. troubleman unlimited