You could think of it as a mere entrée before the main course of the new Black Dice album (taster here), but the new solo album from member Eric Copeland is deceptively substantial (all to do with the size of the plate, most probably).  It is released on Panda Bear’s Paw Tracks label, and if you cast your mind back a wee bit you would probably remember the two of them doing an enjoyable album together as Terrestial Tones.  So it is all linked.  And there is a new Animal Collective album out soon too, which proves my point, whatever point that was.  Something about food, I think it was.

If you jabbed at my eyes with a wooden spoon until I was bleeding and blind and was screaming “GET THAT SPOON OUT OF MY EYES YOU FLOPPY TONGUED MOCKNEY CHEF OH GOD I CAN’T SEE”, and then played me this schizo sonic collage, I would probably have a guess that a member of Black Dice was involved with its creation - “Wash Up”, with those weird bird and monkey noises, would have felt right at home in the zoo that is Creature Comforts - but there is a whole load of other ingredients mixed in amongst its layers too.  With all the crazy phasing and pulsating reverb throughout the album it can’t help but remind me of the illucidity of Growing’s dreamlike last album Vision Swim, while the keyboards on “La Booly Boo” sound as German as bratwurst mit kartoffelpuree und sauerkraut or, perhaps more accurately, as early Kraftwerk or Harmonia.  Oh and “Green Burrito” is a leftover dish from Panda Bear’s extraordinary Person Pitch, which beyond any doubt proves that point I was making earlier.  QED.

Hermaphrodite is available over at the Paw Tracks store.