Eric Copeland – Logo My Ego
Eric Copeland’s template for solo diabolic disco has always been impressively subversive; applying his cut-up/fuck-up techniques to the sex-appeal of disco creates something which at first seems strangely solitary, then increasingly sordid. A privately kept kind of sex as antithesis to the prevalent lust-airing in his source material which, judging by the consistent use of pornography in his visual cuts and the “masterbator” title for his DFA record last year, he’s all too aware of. This is music of sticky keyboards, creased pages and slurred processing from a protesting hard-drive crammed full. If there’s a spin on this it’s probably a puerile one, seeing Copeland’s affection for juvenile delirium that always propelled Black Dice and a lot of his previous solo work, but it could be concurrent with dance music that no longer lives and works for dancefloor. For those who watch boiler room, have a wank, go to bed. Probably not though, I think he’s just mucking about having fun making sticky loops – as ever.
Logo My Ego is probably the closest Copeland has come to making dance music so far, and the more outwardly house-like elements give tracks a new momentum that build on the foundations of Limbo and Joke In The Hole. It is all, of course, still thoroughly off-kilter and roughly stitched as you like. But dance music is a forgiving medium at the worst of times and it often seems as though the two-left-feet chaos has been carefully (un)c-ordinated by Copeland. His work in Black Dice seems more anarchically inclined than this, as if that project was about smashing things up and his solo work is about picking up the pieces and re-aligning them somehow. In that case Logo My Ego might be his most attractive mosaic to date.
As someone who’s growing increasingly weary of the format for dropping a loop in, then another, then another on top of that before doing the same again in subtraction as a music production technique – and wary of the implication that such a practice might be amplified by a sorcerer of the dark tape-loop arts – it was a pleasant surprise to find that Logo My Ego occasionally sidesteps that. Repetition is keystone of course, you know the suction power of a hellbent disco loop by now and Copeland sure does too, but when that suddenly dissolves into a breezy interlude of drum machine patter and relaxed guitar on “Uncle Sam’s Blues” it’s almost beautiful. Same with how the overdriven and butterfingered “Beat Box” quickly changes direction in the last minute or so to smooth sun-dried synths and melody. It’s amusingly sudden, like flicking from one radio station to another, and it is perfect. Nothing chugs along unless it’s meant to.
So yeah, Logo My Ego is still sexy in that dark, sleazy, occasionally oppressive sort of way, and is still driven by that typically childish (and brilliant) Copeland sense of humour – but it’s offset by new, purer moments of melody. Last track “Workin” might even be one of the most beautiful tracks L.I.E.S. has put out, with airy coils and tendrils (saxophone, I assume?) wrapped together in the kind of loose enthusiasm that those loom band things my younger cousin keeps giving me have – dropped stitches quintessential to the whole.
Matthew Kent
Tracklisting:
1. Logo My Ego
2. Uncle Sams Blues
3. Trophy Nuts
4. Beat Box
5. Workin