Black Dice have come an awful long way from their early NYC art-loft roots, becoming something that's nearly unrecognizable from the sound of works like the early '00s-defining Beaches & Canyons released on James Murphy's DFA label. Almost a decade since their earliest forays, Dice's influence can now be heard on any number of Brooklyn groups currently radiating out from the shining spotlight that is the Panda Bear/Animal Collective/Paw Tracks imprint - but none of them has dared take their ideas as far from the post-Pet Sounds pop blueprint (or sound quite as ludicrously unhinged in the process) as Black Dice.

Theirs is still a music that is defiantly unspecific in it's genre-alignment, even with them employing the standard electric guitar, bass, drum kit, hardware electronics and effects. For all the 'traditional' instrumentation, the end result can't really be called anything, other than 'far out.' It just is. Far and out. And that's the appeal, right there. It's that simple. They venture with a sense of joyous headlong leaping into the unknown and you're welcome to come along.

Their newest here, Repo, takes their fusion of broken-riff-driven guitar, electronics and head-spinning beats to hitherto uncharted territories, even for them. They deliver more complex compositions than we've heard previous, consisting of a highly varied vocabulary of sounds that are utterly unhinged and all-at-once playful and *gasp*... 'fun'. Really. The F word. FUN. The absurd, brazen out-thereness of Repo is quite unlike the sort of decrepit, scuzzy fare you might hear in most of the avant underground these days. This is less an angry, antisocial dirge and more of an absurdist 'I dare you to come play with us' provocation. And they *do* play. And it *is* fun. That is, if you dare yourself to join them.