Shaun Bloodworth – Sonar 12 from Electronic Supper Club on Vimeo.

Excellent video from Shaun who we’ve been working with for 4yrs now, you need to check out his work at http://www.shaunbloodworth.com/ The track is an edit of Internal Collapse by The Black Dog. The track is on our new album Tranklements, due for release on May 20th 2013.

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

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Graff at?deep inside?Sheffield – cheers Rich.

Dog Bites Back
[ extract of an interview with The Black Dog ]

[The Black Dog]: “Every human is capable of feeling a whole heap of emotions, but so little contemporary music seems to address them.”

[DJ Magazine]: So can ‘Music For Adverts’ address this heap of emotions? Especially when many of the tracks are very short (the tribal ambiance of ‘Harpo’ is a mere 0:40, whereas the penultimate blipvert ‘Wot’ clocks in at just 0:34). Why is this, do you get bored easily? Or did you have to edit out one hundred other ideas to fit 20 on one album?

“The ‘short tracks’ are an attempt to show that you can have a short simple piece of music that will communicate Itself fully within 38 seconds. About the length of an average advert. Too many people stretch their Ideas out Into boring fifteen minute megamixes. I prefer not to. As David Byrne says In ‘Psycho Killer’ by Talking Heads: ‘Say something once, why say it again?’.
(more…)

This is an interview we did for Beats magazine early this year. Enjoy.

tBd Beats Magazine Interview

This is a remix we are working on for Slam, the track is called Azure and?this is?the first time we’ve played it out – Slam still haven’t heard it cos it’s not finished yet.

This is an interview we did with our friends in Glasgow from EQtv, well worth bookmarking and supporting these guys. They?work tirelessly and everytime we’ve visited Glasgow over the last 2yrs they are always there,?busy filming and interviewing everyone they can, supporting the scene – props due.

Check EQtv out here CLICK

Seems things have picked up at bit since Sonar, two interviews in one day. Here’s the one in our local paper, some of the names and facts are a bit blurred but it’s the first time a local paper has contacted us in 5yrs, linkage here?.

We’re just setting off for Cardiff as I type, always a good place to play and the local Holodeck crew?always get our full support, here’s the interview we did for the Metro. We should have the Sonar report sorted for when we get back but lets just say we smashed it.

See you down the front.

Short interview with Clash Magazine, just say No To Music To Wash Hair By

Click on the image for large version.

Short movie using 7 loops from dream machines and William S. Burroughs. Clips selected at random by software, no human edits

‘The Vault’ turns 13 years old this month!

For this year’s annual celebration, I will be airing an exclusive set by THE BLACK DOG. I’ll also be taking a trip down memory lane and playing some of the classic tracks that got me hooked on techno.

The show will air on January 16, 2008 at 9:30pm (GMT -5:00) Eastern US Time. Listen live at www.wesufm.org

Streams

Windows

http://www.wesleyan.edu/liveradio/wesu-low.asx

iTunes
http://radio.wesleyan.edu:8000/listen.pls

Nice little surprise for us this morning in the post, we’re not really sure what “Electro/Disco-Punk” is but we’ll give anything a try twice!!! Cheers DJ Mag.

Click on the image to see the full size version of the review.

We also get a mention in 2007′s Players Of The Year, we are back from the dead apparently but nice to get some props for work old and new. Click here to read the little mention.

And to round it all off, here’s a load of cuttings from things we’ve been involved in one way or another – Click.

Found this on Youtube, looks like good fun

Check out the video we worked on with Hazel Baird from Your Mother Ate My Dog. It took over a week to render and the final file was 7gig!!!!!