Video Vexations

The Black Dog have put up a short movie with visualisations for musical excerpts from their upcoming "Further Vexations" album. It´s not especially spectacular, but it fits the very nice music.


As a friend of mine used to say: "Nothing new but normal".

Northern Electronic Soul

A message from Black Dog Towers:

Further Vexations is our artistic response to 21st century rat on your neighbour smokefree britain. It is an attempt to capture and express our emotional frustrations, and the trials and tribulations of living in an un-democratic surveillance society.

The seeds of nihilist despair and apathy are well and truly sown amongst the citizens of Airstrip One. We've helplessly watched with mounting horror, while the government trashed the country, signed away it's sovereignty to Brussels (with a flourish of a specially minted silver pen), sold off precious national industries and assets at next to bargain basement prices, and indulged itself with two utterly pointless wars which it couldn't afford. We were promised a vote. A referendum. A chance to change things but an unelected politician chancellor man decided not to bother. To say we are pissed off about it, would be an understatement.

Only one year after their "Radio Scarecrow" release, The Black Dog bites back with new album "Further Vexations" on April 27.

Filled with rage and desperation of the current state of society and politics whose apathy resembles Plato´s allegory of the cave and Orwell rolled into a delicious pill that we are all too happy to swallow repeatedly.

"Further Vexations" is said to be a bit more aggressive and upbeat in its dark cynicism. There is more of a club vibe throughout the tracks, which can be streamed here or here.

International Heaven

What an international mix: American Michael Arias (aka Maikeru Ariasu), a SFX specialist who would become the first foreign director of a major anime-movie in Japan ("Tekkon Kinkreet") has now finished his first live-action movie: A remake of a German tragic-comedy.

Arias´"Heaven´s Door" is a take on "Knocking on Heaven´s Door" by German taxi-driver-turned-director-turned-hack Thomas Jahn. The soundtrack is once more delivered by British electronica duo Plaid. The original movie is set in Germany, the remake is relocated to Tokyo.


Plaid also did the very impressive music for Arias´ "Tekkon Kinkreet" which was released as a regular soundtrack and as a remix album.

Plaid, who were once part of The Black Dog, have specialised their music as a mix of pseudo-oriental, fractal melodies with lots of exotic, polyrhythmic percussion.
On "Tekkon..." Plaid were the perfect match to the fantastic, overwhelming vision of a clattered, futuristic metropolis. Especially the fist and last tracks ("This City" and "White´s Dream") are some of their best compositions.


It could be said that that the music for "Heaven´s Door" is a bit Plaid-by-numbers, but that would be unfair without having seen the movie. Have a listen to Hydrosphere (click the arrow for embedded stream) which has those trademark fragile, fluttering melodies that sound like ice-crystals melting away in the sun. It´s clearly one of the highlights of the album.


"Knocking on Heaven´s Door" is the story of two people who meet at a hospital, discovering that they are both terminally ill. When one of them claims that he has never seen the ocean, they decide to run away, fulfilling this last wish. The German original is a classic buddy-movie with two guys as the protagonists. The Japanese remake changes the setting to a boy/girl scenario, which surely adds some romantic possibilities to the drama.

BlackUndergroundDogResistance

The Black Dog of today is really different from the Black Dog Productions of the nineties.

With the Plaid-boys moving out and the brothers Dust moving in, the trio has actively changed from being an enigmatic, mysterious entity to an omnipresent band of blokes next door. Instead of being reclusive, they now post in many forums and tell everybody what they are up to.

This change has also affected their music. While their latest release "Radio Scarecrow" is not exactly an "open" and "easy" album, it is far away from the milestone of imagination that was "Spanners". But the Black Dog wants to look ahead, it doesn´t want dig out the same old bones over and over again.

Anyway, when it comes to old bones from other dogs, the Black Dogs likes to dig deep. RA - Resident Advisor asked The Black Dog to do one of their famous podcasts and the dog decided to mix-up a full hour of Underground Resistance.


The legendary Detroit label that was always interested in being a collective of free, radical cells who cared about their music and an activist attitude, rather than adapting to various fashions and gimmicks. "The other side of bling" UR had this very gritty, urban, political attitude, while Black Dog were more escapists who disappeared behind a quasi-alien/ancient mysticism. But despite these differences, both projects have much in common as innovators and creators of incredibly advanced and forward thinking, electronic music.

The 60 minute mix is a great trip through the UR-catalogue. Over the course of two weeks, the Black Dog mixed and spliced the mix into its final form while trying to fit in all their personal favourites without losing form and flow.
It´s a great mix of energetic, electrifying techno that is never abrasive or stupid. It does get a bit mental towards the end, but that is exactly the point. N0?!

Bitten by The Black Dog again

The Black Dog are about to release a new album Radio Scarecrow in early April. Yikes!

I am a bit undecided about the new, reformed Black Dog, since their last album "Silenced" somehow flew past my ears. I was trying to get into it, but it somehow didn´t click with me.

After all, Black Dog mk1 are responsible for my favourite electronic music ever. Especially the enourmous "Spanners" is -for me- the best electronic album ever recorded and nothing that was released under this name ever came close to this dense and fantastic work.

Listen to "Psil-cosyin", one of the main track from "Spanners" that goes to places in 10 minutes that other aural wallpaper creators can only hint at in their whole career. This is not "close your eyes and drift"-music as it will transform everthing you see while you hear it.

After the split of the trio, Plaid were trying to continue with the alien-exoctica sound and they had some brilliant moments, especially on "Rest Proof Clockwork", "Double Figure" and lately they had some great tracks on the "Tekkon Kinkreet"-Soundtrack ("White´s dream" is easily their best piece). Comparing their sound aesthetic to the old Black Dog stuff, it is quite clear that the two Plaid guys were the ones who were responsible for the far-out sound design.

But this morning I came across this Interview, Black Dog gave to Fact Magazine. And they are dropping references like Cabaret Voltaire and R.H. Kirk in his "Virtual State"-phase, they tell that they ate Prozac to record under the influence and hint at colossal low frequency experiments during the recording sessions. Suddenly I was all giddy for it!

"Radio Scarecrow" can be streamed (in one minute bites at least) here and what I have heard so far is very, very pleasing and exiting.
A succession of 17 tracks, mostly relaxing with an uptempo track here and there and interspersed with strange radio transmissions. The sound is absolutely clear and sparkling, the drum patterns are once again shuffling and complex.

Here is "UV Sine" in full (not much to see, but anyway)