THE BLACK DOG
Liber Dogma
SOMACD92
Soma Recordings 2011
13 Tracks. 58mins05secs

Amazon UK: CD | DLD US: CD | DLD Boomkat: CD | DLD iTunes: DLD

In recent years, The Black Dog have tipped the balance which had defined pretty much all their work in the last decade, progressively abandoning the dance floor to focus increasingly on atmospheric and ambient forms. While Further Vexations (2009) still bore a healthy dose of techno influences, the trio of Ken Downie and Martin and Richard Dust had devoted the last three tracks of the album to much more atmospheric, beat-less, pieces. It is however with its follow-up, Music For Real Airports (2010), which aimed at creating a sonic environment from sounds sourced in and around various airports, and their recent series of collaborative efforts with former member of Dutch entity Psychic Warriors Ov Gaia as Dadavistic Orchestra, that they fully immersed themselves into deeply ambient and textural recordings, leaving any trace of danceable groove far behind them.

Compared to the rich soundscapes which formed most of the ambient structures of Further Vexation, Music For Real Airports and Dokument.01 and .02, Liber Dogma represents a radical shift toward dry minimalism, where the beat is pushed to the fore, served by pulsating bass lines and only a sprinkle of additional sounds for each piece. Continue Reading »

THE BLACK DOG
Music For Real Airports
SOMATBD003
Soma Recordings 2010
14 Tracks. 58mins51secs

Amazon UK: CD US: CD

Airports are funny places; hubs of intense activity, their cold and chaotic order is bound by contradicting sentiments of excitement, frustration, boredom, joy, exhaustion, anticipation, sadness; passengers caught in endless security queues, rushing through duty free shops or perpetually awaiting in concourses and lounges. All this forms the basis for Music For Real Airports, a collaborative project for art galleries soundtracked by The Black Dog, with visual media created by design studio Human, due to be premiered at La Sensoria festival in Sheffield later on this month. The Black Dog collected over two hundred hours of field recordings in various airports while on tour. These were then incorporated into lush atmospheric constructions to render the experience of passing through these thoroughly inhuman bustling nests of modern life.

Unlike Brian Eno’s seminal 1978 work Music For Airports, which was conceived as a soothing four part textural ambient piece destined to be used by airport authorities, the music collected here by Ken Downie and brothers Martin and Richard Dust, although ambient in nature, doesn’t seek to be used in airports, but rather brings a multitude of sonic elements of airport life into the work. Continue Reading »

THE BLACK DOG
Book Of Dogma
SOMACD057
Soma Recordings Ltd 2007
22 Tracks. 109mins01secs

The year is 1989. Electronica is in its infancy. The rulebook is still being written. Ken Downie, Ed Handley and Andy Turner release their first EP, Age Of Slack, under the Black Dog banner. Blending classic Detroit techno and hip-hop, the trio are shaping the sound of their generation. A handful of EPs later, they get picked up by then budding Sheffield-based Warp Records and go on to release the highly influential Bytes, as Black Dog Productions, the name of their early label. The album, which is part of Warp’s seminal Artificial Intelligence series of releases, is assembled as a compilation, with the trio acting under a variety of aliases (Xeper, Balil, Atypic, Plaid, I.A.O.). Continue Reading »