Black Dice at YU Contemporary

I received a few strange text messages at 2 AM Wednesday morning from my sister-in-law, Kate, suggesting that, for some reason, her and my brother, Trent, were up in Minneapolis hanging out with my other brother, Trevor, and his wife, Amber. This struck me as odd for a number of reasons.

1. Trent and Kate live in Iowa
2. Trevor and Amber live in Minnesota
3. All 4 of these people are adults with real jobs
4. The text messages were received on a Tuesday night/Wednesday morning
5. 2 AM??

As the sloppy text messages continued, I pieced together that Trevor had had a few drinks and was calling me Gregg. The 5 of them (Thurston included) were hanging out at Trevor and Amber's place up in Minnesota, and it had something to do with "Load Blown!!" and "Black Dice."

A quick google search of the Black Dice tour schedule brought me to the realization that Trent and Kate had taken Thurston with them up to Minneapolis to see Black Dice play and were likely staying at Trevor and Amber's place that night, after a little bit of drinking.

My jealousy was quickly squelched by scanning down the tour schedule and noticing a Portland, OR date on Saturday at a place I had never heard of simply called "YU", though my sense of family comradery was left unfulfilled.

Turns out, the YU was another one of those converted warehouse-type buildings holding strong in inner southeast Portland, and I'd actually ridden by it a number of times. The show took place upstairs in a large, empty loft area with huge windows looking out toward downtown Portland. The floor creaked and I noticed cracks of light from the room below shining up between the boards, making me ponder safety concerns in the event that this show gets out of hand.

Black Dice took the stage an hour later than I expected, led by no openers besides the crackling video footage projected behind the stage and a few scattered drone tracks falling softly out of the PA.

Most of the tracks reached some pretty upbeat highs, sending pockets of the all ages crowd into all out head-banging frenzies, and I kind of assumed most of what they played was from the new album, Mr. Impossible based on the 1 or 2 listens I managed to fit in before the show and the few reviews of the album I had browsed earlier in the week.

I had never seen Black Dice play before and, needless to say, they did not disappoint. The waves of distortion and reverse-fucked noise blaring from the 10 speakers set up on stage hit like the end of the eye of the storm. The best part is watching each of the 3 members of this band standing up in front of their table of electronics, turning knobs and pressing pedals, and being completely lost as to where the individual sounds you manage to discern from all the mess are actually coming from. I'll never get over loving that feeling.

Noise noise noise noise noise noise noise noise. MMMMMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.