Without longtime drummer Hisham Bharoocha, pedals 'n' electronics (now-)trio Black Dice no longer have a tether to the human world. Gone are the tribal beats and comforting acoustics of his boomy drums, so Dice are forced to create their own rhythmic matrix using an arsenal of icky toys, spiky noisemakers and loop pedals. Their album titles have always been annoyingly hyper-literal—from the tangerine dreams of Beaches And Canyons to the feral howls of Creature Comforts—and the broken beats of Broken Ear Record are no exception. They're using slightly off loops (no drum machines, thanks) to create broken crunk, broken M.I.A. and broken afrobeat ("Motorcycle" sounds like a dazed Thomas Mapfumo playing Dance Dance Revolution), even though all their usual farty timbres are still painting rainbows. The whole thing is a total Cluster-funk clusterfuck that lives up to that DFA association and leaves pastoral patches on the beach. Even if the beats are a little stiff.

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