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.
Louder Than Love is the second studio album and major-label debut by American rock band Soundgarden. It was released on September 5, 1989, by A&M Records. After touring in support of their debut album, Ultramega OK (1988), Soundgarden left SST, signed with A&M and began work on its first album for a major label. The songs on the album featured a metal-leaning grunge sound with some songs featuring unusual or unorthodox time signatures.
"Zero" is a song by American alternative rock band the Smashing Pumpkins, released as the third single from their third album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (1995). Written by Billy Corgan, it was the first song recorded for the album and features six rhythm guitars with two line-in 12-string acoustic guitars. The cover artwork and music video were created by Ukrainian photographer and Corgan's then-girlfriend Yelena Yemchuk.
Enter the Haggis is a Canadian Celtic rock band based in Toronto. The band was founded in 1995 by Craig Downie, the only remaining original member in the lineup, which currently consists of Downie, Brian Buchanan, Trevor Lewington, Caroline Browning (bass), and Tom Barraco (drums). For about a year, starting in late 2014, they recorded and performed under the name Jubilee Riots, and released their eighth studio album Penny Black under that name, before returning to the original name.
Spirit Wind is an album by multi-instrumentalist David Arkenstone, released in 1997. Most of the music was written for a film called Legend of the Spirit Dog. A Native American feel is present on several tracks.
Fruit Tree is a box set by English singer/songwriter Nick Drake. It exists in several versions, all of which feature his three studio albums, plus additional material.
Dances with Wolves is the original soundtrack of the 1990 Academy Award and Golden Globe winning film Dances with Wolves produced, directed, and starring Kevin Costner. The original score and songs were composed and conducted by John Barry.
"My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama" is a song written by Frank Zappa and originally recorded by The Mothers of Invention in February 1969 at Criteria Studios (Miami), with overdubs recorded sometime between August and September 1969 at TTG Studios and Whitney Studios. This version was included on their 1970 album Weasels Ripped My Flesh, an LP that included various recordings by the band from 1967 to 1969. A second version was released as a single on the Bizarre and Reprise labels as "My Guitar." Despite the more conventional naming, "My Guitar" did not chart.
In the Future is the second album by Black Mountain, which was released January 21, 2008. It follows their eponymous debut album which was released in 2005. A "limited edition" of the album was released on the same day with three bonus tracks on a second disc. It debuted on the UK Album Chart at #72.
"Easy Livin'" is a song by the British rock band Uriah Heep, released as the second single from their 1972 album Demons and Wizards. The band also shot a basic music video for the song in 1972. It was the band's first hit in the United States and the only top 40 hit there, peaking at No. 39 on the Billboard Hot 100 in September 1972. The song's greatest success came in the Netherlands, where it reached No. 5, as well as reaching the Top 20 charts in Norway, Denmark, Finland and Germany. The song also peaked at No. 25 in Canada. In 1988, the band released a live version of the song, with new vocalist Bernie Shaw, as a UK single from the album Live in Moscow.
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."
Mr. C of The Shamen rated it as the best electronic album ever made.
Unsavoury Products is the fifth full-length studio album by The Black Dog featuring the Parisian spoken word artist Black Sifichi. It was released in 2002 on CD.
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."
Liber Dogma is the tenth full-length studio album by The Black Dog released in 2011 on CD and vinyl. It was written and produced by Ken Downie, Martin and Richard Dust.
The album "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. Closer by nature to Berlin’s minimal and hypnotic techno than to Detroit’s more luxurious sound, Liber Dogma has been devised with one aim and one aim only: the dance floor."
The title of the final track is in Japanese, read as "Kā Kurasshu Majutsu" and meaning loosely "car-crash sorcery". On streaming services, the title has been translated to "Car Crash Magick".
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.
