Warp Records is a British independent record label founded in Sheffield in 1989 by record store employees Steve Beckett and Rob Mitchell and record producer Robert Gordon. It is currently based in London.
The Black Dog is a British electronic music group, founded in 1989 by Ken Downie along with Ed Handley and Andy Turner. The group are considered pioneering figures of techno's ruminative "home-listening" aesthetic in the early 1990s.
"Another One Bites the Dust" is a song by the British rock band Queen. Written by bassist John Deacon, the song was featured on the group's eighth studio album The Game (1980). It was a worldwide hit, charting number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 for three weeks, from 4 October to 18 October. The song spent 15 weeks in the Billboard top 10, including 13 weeks in the top five, and 31 weeks total on the chart. It reached number two on the Hot Soul Singles chart and the Disco Top 100 chart, and number seven on the UK Singles Chart. The song is credited as Queen's best-selling single, with sales of over 7 million copies. This version was ranked at number 34 on Billboard's All-Time Top Songs.
"The Future" is a song from American musician Prince's 1989 Batman soundtrack, and the final single released from the album. The single was not the album version, but a remixed version by S'Express' Mark Moore and William Orbit. "The Future" was released as a single only in Europe. The standard European 7-inch single was backed with the album version of "Electric Chair", but on the maxi-single, "Electric Chair" was also remixed by Moore and Orbit. Moore and Orbit's remix of "The Future" is house-inspired, whereas Prince's original is minimalistic. Moore and Orbit substituted a muted, pulsating beat in place of the original elements of Prince's song. Moore and Orbit also removed Prince's original bassline, synthline, and snippets of sampled dialogue. This would be the last time Orbit would work with Prince for several years. In most countries, neither "The Future" nor its B-side were a hit on the pop or dance floors. The single peaked at #9 in the Dutch charts.
"Enjoy the Silence" is a song by English electronic music band Depeche Mode. Recorded in 1989, it was released as the second single from their seventh studio album, Violator (1990), on 5 February 1990. The single is certified Gold in the US and Germany. The song won Best British Single at the 1991 Brit Awards.
Blind Dog at St. Dunstans is the seventh studio album by Canterbury Scene rock band Caravan. It was released in 1976.
Live at the Fairfield Halls, 1974 is a live album by Caravan. It remained unreleased in the UK until 2002, though most of the set was issued as a double vinyl LP in France and Germany called The Best of Caravan "Live" in 1980. This issue is now very rare and was only available for 3 years. This live set happened to be the first time Mike Wedgwood had played bass for the band.
Truelove's Gutter is the sixth studio album from musician Richard Hawley, released on 21 September 2009 in the UK and on 22 September 2009 in the US. The album title refers to an ancient street in Hawley's native Sheffield, now thought to be the location of present-day Castle Street, which was allegedly named after 18th-century innkeeper Thomas Truelove, who used to charge local people to dump their rubbish in the gutter in the street that then flowed down to the River Don. Thematically, Truelove's Gutter is Hawley's darkest album to date. Hawley told the BBC that the album was inspired by particularly dark periods in his life and those of others. The album features some uncommon instrumentation, such as the waterphone, megabass, and cristal baschet.
The Martyr Mantras is the only studio album by Jesus Loves You and the fourth studio album by Boy George. It was credited to Jesus Loves You worldwide except in North America, where it was credited to Boy George upon its release there in 1991.
Skyline is the seventh studio album by Yann Tiersen. The album was published by Everything's Calm and released through Mute Records on 17 October 2011 in Europe, and six months later, on 17 April 2012, via ANTI- in North America.
Temple of Transparent Balls is the second album by Ed Handley, Andy Turner and Ken Downie, the first under the name The Black Dog, and was released on double vinyl, cassette and CD in 1993. It continued to delight their hardcore followers but confused many with its complexity and inaccessibility. “From the opening digital skank of ‘Cost I’ to the closing circuit board tears on ‘The Crete that Crete Made,’” critic Peter McIntyre wrote, it “took every single strand of modern music, mixed it all up and produced something that sounded like nothing else on the planet.”
The second effort had been recorded at Techno Island Studio, the sonic forge of R&S Records, during an extended stay in Ghent, Belgium. "Temple is filled with tinker toy melodies and drunken electronics, at times astray in a sad metropolis or jumping for joy in a sonic junkyard of the future."
Music for Adverts (and Short Films) is the first solo album by Ken Downie under the name The Black Dog which was released in 1996 on double vinyl, cassette, and CD. It was the first without participation by Ed Handley and Andy Turner who left to continue their work as Plaid.
Silenced is the sixth full-length studio album by The Black Dog released in 2005 on CD. It's the first album Ken Downie recorded and produced together with Martin and Richard Dust, owners of the label Dust Science Recordings.
It harks back to Black Dog's debut Bytes, a record that remains a landmark album in electronic music's development. Martin Dust explained: "We never set off to make it like Bytes. My idea was to create something that you could come home to after you'd just been to a club or gig, that would start at the right pace and then just wind down into a great album and just chill out."
Martin Dust had been "friends with Ken for probably nine or ten years. The main connection is that we both had an interest in internet bulletin board systems and punk. I used to run a bulletin board with an old style modem and communication and information file exchange and hacking and stuff, so right from the beginning I've always been talking to Ken, about that, about music, about everything really. We just struck a friendship up like that and swapped music and ideas and continue from there."
Radio Scarecrow is the seventh studio album by The Black Dog released in 2008 on CD and vinyl. It was written and produced by Ken Downie, Martin and Richard Dust.
Further Vexations is the eighth full-length studio album by The Black Dog released in 2009 on CD and vinyl. It was written and produced by Ken Downie, Martin and Richard Dust.
There is a political dimension to the album, which is revealed through some of the track titles. "'Biomantric L-if-e' and 'You’re Only SQL' hint at the powerful information databases being used by governments in the name of security, while 'CCTV Nation' spells out unequivocally how Britain especially has become a nation under constant surveillance. To complete the picture, the cover shows part of a fingerprint on a backdrop of video surveillance images and electronic voices can be heard saying, among other things, "ID card," "biometric measures," and "computer world" at the end of 'Northern Electronic Soul '.
Music for Real Airports is the ninth full-length studio album by The Black Dog released in 2010 on CD, vinyl and as FLAC file download. It was written and produced by Ken Downie, Martin and Richard Dust. The album's title and concept of sound reference the 1978 ambient release Music for Airports, created by Brian Eno. Despite the similarities, the band mentions in a press release: "Airports have some of the glossiest surfaces in modern culture, but the fear underneath remains. Hence this record is not a utilitarian accompaniment to airports, in the sense of reinforcing the false utopia and fake idealism of air travel. Unlike Eno's Music for Airports, this is not a record to be used by airport authorities to lull their customers. ... While on tour, the Black Dog made 200 hours of field recordings, much of which was processed and combined with new music in the airport itself, waiting for the next flight. This vast amount of content has been slowly distilled into a set of particularly evocative pieces of music."
Parallel is a compilation album by the intelligent dance music artists Ken Downie, Ed Handley and Andy Turner, aka The Black Dog. It was released in 1995 on double vinyl and CD. The album compiles three EPs released on the GPR label in 1991 and 1992.
Book of Dogma is a compilation by IDM artists Ken Downie, Ed Handley and Andy Turner aka The Black Dog which was released in 2007. The two CDs compile the band's first six EPs, the second CD in fact being a re-release of the 1995 compilation Parallel.
Forgemasters was a British electronic music act composed of Robert Gordon, Winston Hazel and Sean Maher. Their single "Track with No Name" was the first release by Warp Records and would help define the sound of Warp and bleep techno.
Michael Rhodes is an American bass player, known for his session work and touring in support of other artists, and his collaborations in bands and ensembles.
