Judging by his off-kilter approach to music-making, Eric Copeland has mixed feelings about straight-up beats. But they seem to like him just fine. After moving in and out of the shifting layers on his first few records, bumping grooves broke through the surface on last year's Waco Taco Combo. The six tracks on Limbo further that trend, sporting some body-moving rhythms that are practically clean and clear, at least relative to Copeland's gnarled sonic universe. This might even be his DJ album-- its sharp throbs flow together like he actually measured their BPMs beforehand.
At least that's the case for opener "Double Reverse Psychology", which sounds like a montage of ideas Copeland probably fleshed out into individual songs at some point, but decided they worked better mashed into a rubber-room dance-floor mix. Each section bounces off the other, woozily passing the beat-baton like a team of sleep-deprived relay runners. For someone prone to blurry sheets of sound, the track's sparseness-- there's often just a percussive pound and one or two other noises looping around it-- is impressively restrained, at times evoking early hip-hop reflected in a circus mirror.
But before you start writing rhymes to rap over Limbo, remember that nothing with Copeland is ever that easy. This might be his simplest album sonically, and there are some unashamedly melodic riffs coursing through it ("Tarzan and the Dizzy Devils" could pass for a lo-fi Fatboy Slim remix), but he still displays a wobbly, sideways vision of how songs should proceed. Some loops feel hacked together in a drunken rush. Others are almost too persistent, as if the same sound repeated is a melody itself (but then, Copeland's often right about that). Not much gets smoothed out; most of the cracks and seams are out in the open. And so many moments here-- all the growls, belches, whines, cartoon blurts, garbled voices, and awkward bass plunges-- are thoroughly hilarious.
In fact, maybe Limbo marks the point at which we can officially stop tilting discussions to the brainy side of Copeland's work-- both solo and with Black Dice-- and think of it as fun music first. Of course, everything here's intelligently made; Copeland's earned the right to that permanent assumption. But his music has gotten more viscerally enjoyable with every release. Springy songs like the carnival-riding "Louie, Louie, Louie" and "Fiesta Muerta", which sounds like a Chemical Brothers B-side played in a swimming pool, continue to raise that bar. Copeland may still live in a limbo of his own making, between idiosyncratic experimentalism and pop-tinged techno. But it's best to turn off those imaginary filters when you pump Limbo, and just let it be as entertaining as it clearly wants to be.
