Flaccid Mojo is a new project from Bjorn Copeland and Aaron Warren of Black Dice. Like Black Dice, Flaccid Mojo deals in otherworldly sounds and grooves, off-balance beats and disguised vocals—though as Copeland mentioned, with Flaccid Mojo, he and Warren keep the songs a lot more open, with the effect that “FM,” Flaccid Mojo’s debut album, feels relaxed and curious, playfully moving from sound world to sound world in a really accessible way. There’s something that happens with both Flaccid Mojo and Black Dice—they give the listener something to hold onto: a groove, some percussive element, or a little melodic theme to anchor even the most wild tracks. “FM” is both mindbending and super enjoyable, a record that’s fun to think about and fun to listen to.
In some ways “FM” continues a lot of the good-time vibes from Black Dice’s great “Mod Prog Sic,” but the beats on this album are bigger, the vocals and samples are more tuned up, it all feels slightly more alive and present. Copeland mentioned that he and Warren wrote most of the album by playing the songs live over the course of a couple years, and you can definitely hear that element of it—these tunes feel crowd-pleasing, designed to get people amped up.
“Slow Psychics,” which I wrote about previously, sounds like something you’d hear at a sideshow on Mars, grinding, erupting, squealing, levitating. It’s a perfect example of what this record does so well: it’s sort of formed from the shapes of popular music, but the sounds it contains feel like they come from a different dimension.
“Dyslexic Uptalk” is another highlight on the album and has the biggest, most charismatic beat that I’ve heard in a while (reminds a little of the hard-edged beat on Excepter’s “Targets”). The song starts with some ghostly vocals, sped up then slowed down, a sample about KIAs, then the menacing beat. There’s a switch at the two-minute mark to something new, the big beat drops out or changes; bubbles of noise and other samples emerge, and then two minutes later it shifts to something sunnier, wilder, and happier. An absolutely unpredictable and totally satisfying trajectory.
There are so many pleasures to discover on “FM”—the Seussian sounds and disfigured Teddy Ruxpin vocals of “Moonwalk the Tomb;” the sweet tones of “Striped Pants,” which could sit right alongside the prettiest songs released by Black Dice; the lahar-like flow of noise erupting from “Straight Arrow” and its metallic beats; the slant-rhyme Jane Fonda 80s workout jam of “Garbage People; the possible “Do It Again”-referencing beginning of “FM Drive;” and the total high-RPM jam juggernaut of “Fried Muscles,” vocals sung from around the corner, a song that builds up a head of steam and never relents.
There’s a quote I half-remember from one of the members of Animal Collective (maybe Noah Lennox) in an interview they did a while back, something about being or playing inside the music—meant in a slightly different way than it’s usually used in jazz, more like the physical sensations of what it’s like to play the songs together with your bandmates. I feel like that’s something that could apply to both Flaccid Mojo and Black Dice too, where the qualities of performing the music matter just as much to them as hitting some aesthetic mark—that’s how you end up with a record like “FM” that’s both intellectually fascinating and a blast to spend time with.
[BUY FM]