The noughties have seen probably the most radical changes in the music industries since the advent of the record. Consumption habits have dramatically moved from traditional to digital formats, music has been increasingly seen as something to steal rather than to buy, and listening habits means that nowadays, the album is becoming increasingly redundant. Or is it? Whereas it had, at least in some circles, become totally acceptable to fill records with substandard music, it is now essential for artists to create consistent pieces of work if they want to retain the attention of their audience. The last ten years have delivered their fair share of hits and misses, and this list doesn’t pretend to be in any way shape or form exhaustive. This is just, in no particular order, the definitive list of the 20 albums that have defined the noughties at themilkfactory.

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VARIOUS ARTISTS
In The North EP
DUSTV017
Dust Science Recordings 2009
04 Tracks. 20mins08secs
Format: Digital

Dubstore Digital: DLD | Amazon UK: DLD Boomkat: DLD iTunes: DLD

After a hiatus of a few months, Dust Science, the label ran by Black Dog current members Martin and Richard Dust, is back with a collective EP featuring tracks by The Black Dog, Grievous Angel, The Bass Soldier and Carl Taylor, each contributing one slice of mighty fine electronic music.

Opening the proceedings are the legendary Black Dog, who have, since the Dust brothers joined force with Ken Downie, wandered freely between classic Detroit-infused techno and more subtle and refined atmospheric electronica. With Tesco (Dark House), they are found on supremely minimal form, invoking the spirit of Perlon more than that of Plus 8 Record, especially in the first half of this rather moody, robust piece. Continue Reading »

VARIOUS ARTISTS
Warp20 (Box Set) / Warp20 (Recreated) / Warp20 (Chosen)
WARP20.0 / WARP201 / WARP 202
Warp Records 2009
– / 21 Tracks / 24 Tracks. – / 99mins13secs / 127mins18secs

Warp20 (Box Set)
Boomkat: BX

Warp20 (Recreated)
Amazon UK: CD Amazon US: CD Boomkat: CD iTunes: DLD

Warp20 (Chosen)
Amazon UK: CD Amazon US: CD Boomkat: CD iTunes: DLD

LFO. Three metallic blue letters, straddled by a ghostly shape, set on a black background. Three letters that changed things forever. The year was 1991, I was browsing through the new arrivals in my local records store, and the Designers Republic artwork of LFO’s Frequencies was standing out from the blur, calling out for my attention. An hour or so later, I was left baffled by a record which I was struggling to understand. On one side, the lush flow and shattering bass of LFO or Simon From Sydney irresistibly titillated my appetite for crisp evocative electronics, on the other, I had never experienced anything quite as bare as Mentok 1 or We Are Back. This album bore its influences on its sleeve, literally, and it took a few listens to ‘get it’. But ‘get it’ I did. More than I could have ever wished for. I was hooked. Not only on LFO, but also on Warp.

The brainchild of Steve Beckett and the late Rob Mitchell, who founded the label twenty years ago in the former metallurgic city of Sheffield, Warp found itself at a crossroad between the dying acid scene and the nascent UK techno/electronica movements Continue Reading »

THE BLACK DOG
Further Vexations
SOMA077
Soma Quality Recordings 2009
15 Tracks. 68mins26secs

Buy: CD

Almost a year to the day after the release of the rather impressive Radio Scarecrow, and twenty years on from Downie’s first ever release, The Black Dog is back, tail wagging, with another slice of dense and moody electronica, fuelled with classic Detroit flavours and self-styled Northern electronic soul attitude.

While Radio Scarecrow represented quite a departure from its predecessor, Further Vexations appears in many ways as a more in-depth exploration of a particular groove, as if the stones turned on Radio Scarecrow had, with times, brought to the surface much more subterranean life than originally found. Continue Reading »

THE BLACK DOG
Vexing EP
SOMA263
Soma Quality Recordings 2009
03 Tracks. 17mins36secs
Format: 12″/Digital

In recent years, The Black Dog have appeared rejuvenated and has found a new energy and dimension in brother Martin and Richard Dust, delivering albums and EPs with the confidence Ken Downie demonstrated in the early nineties. With a new album, Further Vexations, ready to be unleashed, the trio launch a first missive with this three track EP comprising of two tracks (0093 and You’re Only SQL) lifted from the album and beefed up to dance floor musculature, plus a third exclusive ambient piece, Plinth. Continue Reading »

The Black Dog will be releasing the follow-up to last year’s Radio Scarecrow on 9 April on Scottish imprint Soma. The album, entitled Further Vexations, is announced as a continuation of the themes running through its predecessor, with a slight orientation toward ‘dark club atmosphere’, due in part to the extensive touring the band did during last year.

The album was inspired by ‘the amount of personal freedoms being surrendered under the banner of “for your own safety”’ says The Black Dog’s Martin Dust about the album’s political aspect, evoking the rise of CCTV, biometrics and world wide databases and the apathy of the general public to react against these.

The band will be playing a string of live dates in the run up to the album release, as follow:

06/02: Berlin, Germany
20/02: Ljubuanja, Slovenia
21/03: Brussels, Belgium
4/04: Derry, Ireland

Additional dates to be added.

The Black Dog | Soma Quality Recordings

THE BLACK DOG
Radio Scarecrow
SOMACD67
Soma Quality Recordings 2008
17 Tracks. 68mins57secs

Since The Black Dog has become a fully functioning tri-headed cell again, it has delivered new and reconditioned material with insistent regularity, sourcing in the beast’s rich past the necessary fuel to move forward and adapt its visionary electronica to a different era through a series of classic EPs and the underrated 2005 Silenced album, while some of the long unavailable back catalogue dating back from the original Black Dog days got dusted off and polished to once again spread their wings and regain their .

Radio Scarecrow is a much more ambitious and confident affair than its predecessor as Ken Downie and brothers Richard and Martin Dust move away from the introvert ambient textures of Silenced and venture into more substantial terrains. Continue Reading »

The legendary Black Dog are back with a new album, Radio Scarecrow, released on Soma Recordings on 7 April. Two years in the making, Radio Scarecrow is the follow up to the mighty fine Silenced album, which was Ken Downie’s first full length with Martin and Richard Dust.

Talking about the album, the band said ‘the beats are faster and the bass is much’ and is also said to contain embedded coded messages and curses. More information about the album is due to be made available via a dedicated website imminently. Track listing as follow:

1. Transmission Start
2. Train By The Autobahn (Part 1)
3. Train By The Autobahn (Part 2)
4. Riphead v9
5. UV Sine
6. …Short Wave Lies
7. Siiiipher
8. Digital Poacher
9. Coda
10. Set To Receive
11. EVP Echoes
12. Floods v3.9
13. Beep
14. Witches Ov
15. Dials & Dialers 1
16. Ghost Vexations
17. Dials & Dialers 2

The album follows a string of re-releases of early Black Dog material released during their collaboration with General Production Recording and reissue by Soma.

The Black Dog | Radio Scarecrow | Soma Quality Recordings

THE BLACK DOG
Temple Of Transparent Balls
SOMACD063
GPR 1993 / Soma Quality Recordings 2007
11 Tracks. 62mins09secs

Temple Of Transparent Balls was originally released on General Production Recordings (GPR) a few months after the seminal Bytes (1993, Warp), and was followed a couple of years later by Parallel, which collected three of the band’s early EPs. Following the demise of the label in 1996, original copies of both albums became very difficult to track down. They were both reissued in 2002, but the poor quality of the artwork likened them to cheap bootlegs, making this a long awaited re-release.

Earlier this year, Scottish imprint Soma Quality Recordings released Book Of Dogma, a double album collecting Parallel and a handful of other early EPs, all in full remastered glory. Now, Temple Of Transparent Balls gets the same treatment. Continue Reading »

Following the release of the Book Of Dogma album and the reissue of Techno Playtime and The Cost Virtual EPs earlier this year, Scottish imprint Soma will be releasing an entirely remastered version Black Dog’s lost classic Temple Of Transparent Balls album, originally issued in 1993 on now defunct General Production Recordings.

This album was the follow up to the seminal Bytes. The album was famously re-released in 2002, together with Parallel, with very poor quality copy of the original artwork. For this new edition, Soma provide a completely new artwork. The album is out on 15 October.

Soma Records
Buy: CD