Here’s the interview we did with Robert Hood for iDJ magazine this month. Clicky Here

Check out the short interview we did for DJ Mag when we played up in Glasgow last month. Click here for the small “browser friendly” version or here for a massive jpg

It was possible that the Black Dog Mark 2 would simply take up where the original line-up left off but ‘Vexations’ — the third album from the new members — proves once again that there’s no danger of The Black Dog ever standing still. There is some reference to their last two albums ‘Silenced’ and ‘Radio Scarecrow’ on the deep electronic textures of ‘Biomantric L-if-E’ but that’s where any similarities end. ‘You’re Only SQL’ could be the accompanying music as the hero chases the villain up a skyscraper in a Hollywood blockbuster — its chilling strings and clipped breaks adding to the sense of drama. Meanwhile, ‘Northern Electronic Soul Parts 1-3’ pursues a different agenda with their stripped back rhythms, subtle bass pulses and acid gurgles providing a considered take on minimal techno. That’s not to suggest that the dogs have mellowed out. ‘Tunnels Ov Set’ is a bleak serving of bassy techno while the muttered vocals, cut-up rhythms and stop-start nature of ‘Skin Clock’ and ‘Dada Mindstab’ are closer in ideology than sound to the ‘Bytes’ and ‘Spanners’-era Black Dog. ‘Cctv Nation’, contrastingly, is an epic, Kenny Larkin-inspired Detroit techno anthem. And that they manage to use the whole thing as an opportunity to put their bugbears about modern society under their own spotlight proves yet again that there’s more bite to their bark than expected.

“I think they want to turn us all into numbers, and know what we are up to 24 hours a day. If you spend something, they want to know about it. If you read a book, they want to know about it. If you send an email, they want to read it.”

Chatting about the parallels between George Orwell’s 1984 and the Britain of today, Black Dog founder member Ken Downie admits he’s alarmed.

“Oh, and they have your individual fingerprints and DNA data in their files, too,” he points out. “Nobody voted for the surveillance society, as I recall. But step by step it has crept into our lives.”

Black Dog’s new album ‘Further Vexations’ is underlined by ‘a dark cynicism of the Orwellian practices being carried out by the Government’, the accompanying press release explains, though fellow TBD man Martin Dust is anything but resigned.

“This surveillance society is pretty frightening and the other thing is, it won’t stop “terrorism”. They’ve learnt nothing and they treat people as if they’re stupid though as far as I can see most people are doing nothing about it,” he observes.

“We need to bring back a sense of community to the working classes and rise up and fuck these upper class twits off – they are fucking everything up, they’ve been riding our backs for too long and I for one have had enough of the cunts,” he storms. (more…)

Apparently we are the 74th reason to have been cheerful in 2008, nice little mention in DJ mag this month.

The video for Sudden Intake has been nominated in The International Festival of Cinema and Technology in Los Angeles. The video for the track was created by the fantastic Hazel Baird from Your Mother Ate My Dog