The Black Dog (band)

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The Black Dog
Also known asEcho Mike, Close Up Over, Xeper, Atypic, I.A.O., Balil, the Discordian Popes
Origin Sheffield, England
Genres
Years active1989–1995, 2005–present
Labels Soma, Dust Science, Warp, GPR, Black Dog Productions, BMG, Sire
MembersKen Downie
Martin Dust
Richard Dust
Past membersAndy Turner
Ed Handley
Steve Ash
Ross Knight

The Black Dog is a British electronic music group, founded in 1989 by Ken Downie along with Ed Handley and Andy Turner. [1] [2] The group are considered pioneering figures of techno's ruminative "home-listening" aesthetic in the early 1990s. [3] [4]

Contents

Following several self-released EPs, the group signed to Warp Records in 1993 and released albums such as Bytes (1993) and Spanners (1995). In 1995, Handley and Turner departed to work on their spin-off project Plaid. Downie continued recording under the band name The Black Dog, with Richard and Martin Dust joining. The band's early EPs were collected on the 2007 compilation Book of Dogma .

Biography

Early career

In 1989, The Black Dog was unable to find a label to back its releases and started its own, Black Dog Productions, which released four vinyl records including the acclaimed Virtual . [5] These were followed by a number of EPs on the General Production Recordings label. The Black Dog released their first full-length album Bytes on Warp Records on 15 March 1993. The albums Temple of Transparent Balls (GPR) and Spanners (Warp) followed. The music was often produced under a number of different names, such as Close Up Over, Xeper, Atypic, I.A.O., Balil and the Discordian Popes. The group did numerous remixes, notably for Björk, with whom it collaborated on "'Sweet Intuition" (a B-side on the "Army of Me" CD single) and "Charlene" (a b side on the "Isobel" CD single). [6]

In the early 1990s, Downie was also running a bulletin board system called Black Dog Towers. [7]

In 1995, Handley and Turner left to focus on Plaid [8] but Downie continued working as The Black Dog on his own for a while, releasing the solo album Music for Adverts (and Short Films) . With new management, and an increased vigour, Downie then teamed up with Steve 'Hotdog' Ash and Ross Knight ("thek1d"). Though they completed over a dozen critically acclaimed remixes during this period, only one album was ever released: Unsavoury Products featured the talents of Parisian beat poet Black Sifichi on vocals.

Current line-up

In 2001, Downie teamed up with Richard and Martin Dust, owners of the label Dust Science Recordings. [9] Since then, they have started to play live again and have released eight EPs and four full-length albums on Dust Science. [10] Their first album, Silenced , was released in 2005. The second, Radio Scarecrow , was released in 2008 and was very well received [11] and nominated for DJ Mag's Best of British 2008. [12]

The follow-up to Radio Scarecrow, Further Vexations , was released in 2009. It was described as having a dark cynicism of Orwellian practices of government and the passivity of the general public. [13] "We’ve helplessly watched with mounting horror, while the government trashed the country, signed away its 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," the group stated on their home page. [14]

In May 2010, the Black Dog teamed with creative agency "Human" [15] to create Music for Real Airports , [16] described by them as "a contemporary reply to Brian Eno's work from the 70s". While Eno's album is well known for being peaceful and sedate, The Black Dog intend theirs to be tense and bittersweet, saying "This record is not necessarily a comfortable listen. But it captures the spectrum of emotions stirred by airports." [17]

Side projects

The initial lineup kept themselves busy with numerous alter-egos and side-projects, including Echo Mike, Close Up Over, Xeper, Atypic, I.A.O., Plaid, Balil and the Discordian Popes. 1993's Bytes compiles an album's worth of tracks by these side projects under the mantle of Black Dog Productions. Of these side-projects, only Plaid continues to be active.

More recently, the current lineup of The Black Dog (Ken Downie with Martin and Richard Dust) have collaborated with Psychick Warriors ov Gaia on a new ambient project called Dadavistic Orchestra. Taking inspiration from the Dada artists of the early 1900s, Dadavistic Orchestra have issued an album and two EPs, offering limited edition gelatin silver prints in homage to avant-garde photographer Man Ray with early copies sold via mail order. [18]

Discography

Albums

Ken Downie with Ed Handley and Andy Turner:

Ken Downie solo:

Ken Downie with Steve Ash and Ross Knight:

Ken Downie with Martin Dust and Richard Dust:

EPs

Ken Downie with Ed Handley and Andy Turner:
  • 1989 Virtual
  • 1989 Age of Slack
  • 1990 Techno Playtime
  • 1991 Parallel
  • 1992 Vir²l
  • 1992 Vanttool
  • 1999 Peel Session (recorded 1995)

Ken Downie solo:

Ken Downie with Martin Dust and Richard Dust:

  • 2005 Bite Thee Back
  • 2005 Trojan Horus
  • 2005 Remote Viewing
  • 2005 The Remixes
  • 2006 Riphead
  • 2007 Floods
  • 2008 Set to Receive
  • 2008 Detroit vs. Sheffield
  • 2009 Vexing
  • 2009 We Are Sheffield
  • 2009 The Vexing Remixes
  • 2010 Thee Lounge
  • 2010 Subject to Delays
  • 2011 Liber Kult (Book 1 ov 3)
  • 2011 Liber Temple (Book 2 ov 3)
  • 2011 Liber Nox (Book 3 ov 3)
  • 2011 Liber Chaos (Book ov Aiwass)
  • 2013 The Return ov Bleep
  • 2013 Darkhaus Vol. 01
  • 2013 Darkhaus Vol. 02
  • 2013 The Return Ov Bleep
  • 2014 Werk+Play
  • 2014 Exhibit 1 & 2
  • 2018 Shards Ov Light
  • 2020 Allegory 1 (Red)
  • 2020 Allegory 2 (Green)
  • 2020 Allegory 3 (Blue)
  • 2020 Further Fragments
  • 2021 Dubs: Volume 1
  • 2021 Dubs: Volume 2
  • 2021 Dubs: Volume 3
  • 2022 Brutal Minimalism
  • 2022 Concrete Reasoning
  • 2022 Fighting Modernism
  • 2023 The Reproduce EP

Compilations and live albums

Ken Downie with Ed Handley and Andy Turner:

Ken Downie with Steve Ash and Ross Knight:

Ken Downie with Martin Dust and Richard Dust:
  • 2006 Thee Singles
  • 2008 Thee Singles Volume 2
  • 2010 Final Collected Vexations
  • 2014 Liber Collected – Book Ov Law

Related Research Articles

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Plaid are an English electronic music duo composed of Andy Turner and Ed Handley. They were founding members of The Black Dog and used many other names, such as Atypic and Balil, before settling on Plaid. They have collaborated with female singers Mara Carlyle, Nicolette and Björk, and have released records on the labels Clear, Peacefrog, Black Dog Productions, and Warp.

<i>Bytes</i> (album) 1993 studio album by Black Dog Productions

Bytes is the debut studio album by English electronic music group The Black Dog, credited under the name Black Dog Productions. It was released on Warp on 8 March 1993. The album consists of tracks produced by the members of the group – Ed Handley, Andy Turner, and Ken Downie – under various aliases, including Plaid, Close Up Over, Xeper, Atypic, I.A.O., Discordian Popes and Balil. Black Dog Productions is also the name of their own record label.

<i>Spanners</i> (album) 1995 studio album by The Black Dog

Spanners is the third studio album by English electronic music group The Black Dog. It was released via Warp on 16 January 1995. It peaked at number 30 on the UK Albums Chart.

<i>Not for Threes</i> 1997 studio album by Plaid

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<i>Temple of Transparent Balls</i> 1993 studio album by The Black Dog

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."

<i>Music for Adverts (and Short Films)</i> 1996 studio album by The Black Dog

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.

<i>Unsavoury Products</i> 2002 studio album by The Black Dog & Black Sifichi

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.

<i>Silenced</i> (album) 2005 studio album by The Black Dog

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."

<i>Radio Scarecrow</i> 2008 studio album by The Black Dog

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.

<i>Further Vexations</i> 2009 studio album by The Black Dog

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 '.

<i>Music for Real Airports</i> 2010 studio album by The Black Dog

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."

<i>Liber Dogma</i> 2011 studio album by The Black Dog

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.
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References

  1. Black dog biography on NME.com
  2. The Black Dog profile on BBC Radio 1
  3. Cooper, Sean. "Biography". AllMusic. Retrieved 6 June 2021.
  4. "FACT mix 144: The Black Dog". FACT Magazine. 26 April 2010. Retrieved 27 January 2017.
  5. "RA Reviews: Rewind: The Black Dog - Virtual on Black Dog Productions (Single)". Resident Advisor. 4 May 2019.
  6. "P.3 – Bitten By The Black Dog - News - The Black Dog". The Black Dog.
  7. "Interview: The Black Dog - FACT Magazine". FACT Magazine. January 2009.
  8. Plaid biography on NME.com
  9. "THE BLACK DOG Interview". The Milk Factory. 1 September 2005. Archived from the original on 19 February 2009. Retrieved 9 February 2009.
  10. The Black Dog profile on the Dust Science website
  11. Reviews Archived 6 October 2011 at the Wayback Machine at dogsquad.co.uk
  12. "DJMag.com". DJMag.com. 24 January 2022.
  13. Jones, Simon (19 January 2009). "The Black Dog - Further Vexations". Progressive-Sounds. Retrieved 9 February 2009.
  14. "The Black Dog – Further Vexations – Released 27/04/09 - Releases - The Black Dog". The Black Dog.
  15. "Human". www.humanstudio.com.
  16. Music For Real Airports - The Project Archived 10 April 2010 at the Wayback Machine
  17. Music For Real Airports - The Project Archived 11 February 2010 at the Wayback Machine
  18. "身体に優しい設計|自然素材を使って家を建てるメリットとは". www.dadavisticorchestra.com.