This is a well-deserved and expanded vinyl reissue of the absolutely stellar My Body is A Dying Machine EP, which Justin Broadrick quietly released in digital-only format back in 2010. So quietly, in fact, that I completely missed it the first time around.  As with most expanded releases, the added material in this case is not exactly crucial, as most of the best songs were already on the original EP.  It is quite good though and the appeal of Black Dollars does not lie so much in its enhancements as it does in the fact that Downwards have resurrected some prime Broadrick material that snuck by most casual fans.  Stylistically, Black Dollars is very much in the "instrumental version of Jesu" vein, capturing Broadrick at his shoegaze-mode zenith.
Downwards
Black Dollars opens in fine fashion with its previous namesake, "My Body is a Dying Machine."  Built upon an insistent, overdriven bass throb, "Body" unfolds as a languorously swaying and sizzling haze of slow-moving guitar and synth tones.  The bass foundation is an essential part of the piece's success, as the deep undercurrent of dense, distorted rumble prevents the dreamy foreground from ever seeming too weightless.  Also, Broadrick makes some inspired textural choices, as the bass has a nice stuttering sizzle that sounds like a hapless amplifier being pushed to its limits.  Also, one of the many half-buried layers in the piece sounds like a vocal track that has been time-stretched and reversed.  That creates an extremely cool effect in which it seems like words are trying to fight their way through all the guitar shimmer, but never quite making it far enough to be intelligible.  It is an absolutely sublime and perfectly realized piece of music.
Happily, "Body" is not the only piece of that caliber birthed during that fertile creative period, as both "Gravity" and "Black Dollars" scale similar heights.  In fact, "Gravity" both reprises and improves upon the same formula of driving, distorted bass; drifting guitar shimmer; and buried vocals by ratcheting up the sizzle, hiss, and snarl.  "Black Dollars," however, goes in a bit of a different direction, pushing the bass deep into the background to make room for warmly hissing ambiance and a beautifully slow-moving, twinkling, and reverberant guitar melody.  The remainder of the original EP was rounded out by a live version of "My Body is a Dying Machine" (straight-up filler) and a likable bit of lazily glimmering treated-guitar drift ("A Slight Return").  Naturally, both appear on Black Dollars as well (albeit in different sequence).
Unexpectedly, one of the bonus tracks added for this reissue manages to be something of a highlight itself, as "Flow River Flow" reprises the territory of "A Slight Return" in considerably more gnarled, textured, and vibrant fashion.  In fact, it sounds a lot like a cool outro guitar solo on a classic shoegaze song being played over warped and pitch-shifted field recordings of church bells and a bubbling cauldron.  I sincerely hope that it births a hot new sub-genre.  "The World is Not Waiting for You" is yet another pleasantly surprising addition, returning to the more "rock" structure of Black Dollars' best songs, but doing it in a more soft-focus, burbling, melodic, and feminized way (the vocals are softened and pitch-shifted to the point of at least androgyny).  The remaining dreamy ambient-meets-feedback squall of "The Eternal Daydreamer" is also quite likable, if a bit less memorable than Black Dollars' more propulsive and structured pieces.
If Black Dollars can be said to have any flaws, they are not particularly significant ones.  For example, I do not see any need for the live version of "My Body is a Dying Machine" to be included, as it is not radically different from the studio version in any way.  However, the decision to bookend the album with two versions of one of its best songs is admittedly a nice sequencing move.  Also, the more "ambient" pieces are generally not on the same level as the rest of the album, but that is because the rest of the album is so great, not because the album is padded with substandard material.  I suppose I should not be surprised that Black Dollars boasts at least three instant classics, given Justin Broadrick's long history of excellent and innovative music, but…damn, I am.  Quite pleasantly so.  At its best, Black Dollars hits the absolute perfect balance between heaviness, hooks, and experimentation.  And at its worst, it is merely another very good release by a musical titan.  This is a hugely welcome reissue.
 
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