The Black Dog are pleased to announce a series of new 12″s entitled Darkhaus and a new studio album called Tranklements.

The Darkhaus series will be released across four volumes and with different labels, with first released on 25 /03/13 through Ostgut Ton’s sister label Unterton and includes a remix from Luke Slater under his L.B. Dub Corp guise. Volume 02 will follow shortly afterwards featuring a remix from Regis. All the Darkhaus releases feature unique tracks, none are repeated on the album mentioned below.

Tranklements is a body of work created as 16 unique and individual tracks. Each one is its own little object, something we’ve created to externalise, explain and express the world we find ourselves in. It encompasses many thoughts, emotions and desires from the last eighteen months. There is an individual story and internal message behind each. They’ve all been discussed and fought for. However, we really don’t want to explain them, we don’t expect those personal rationals to translate to others. We’d rather you gazed upon the objects yourself and come to your own conclusions. Nobody likes to be told what to think.

In many ways our work with the eSC (http://www.electronicsupperclub.tv) project has helped us to reconnect with many things and each other. The creative talent and desires of the younger generation have never gone away. The real underground is still as vibrant as ever, not lost to false values, over-sized egos and ladder climbing brands. We’ve always respected that energy and individuality that exists beyond the bland compliant mainstream.

The truth is we’ve always felt like the awkward outsiders.

tBd

The Black Dog – Darkhaus Vol. 01 – 12″ Unterton 25/03/13
Tracklisting:
A1: Council Flat Emptiness (stripped)
A2: Council Flat Emptiness
B: Council Flat Emptiness (L.B. Dub Corp Remix)

The Black Dog – Tranklements – 3×12″ and CD – Dust Science 20/05/13
Tracklisting:
1. Alien Boys Bolt No.6 2. Atavistic Resurgence Bolt 11b 3. Cult Mentality 4. Hymn For SoYo Bolt 3533f 5. Pray Crash I 6. Pray Crash II Bolt 57w 7. Internal Collapse 8.  First Cut Bolt 9>3 9. Death Bingo 10. Mind Object 11. Spatchka

Bolts are small bits of music that help or disrupt the transition between tracks.

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.

Check out all the latest reviews and quotes on our new release on this one single post, we’ll be posting the good, the bad and the ugly here for everyone to read.

If you find any reviews or postings please hit us up on Contact or post a link in the comments sections.

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After the cerebral trampoline of last year’s Radio Scarecrow, The Black Dog humped a punishing gigging schedule which has galvanised them into a more floor-friendly follow-up, but with an underlying message attacking increasingly-Orwellian Government tactics and public complacency at how our lives are monitored and controlled. This punk-style discontent manifests in the pressure cooker grooves underpinning piledriving tech-kneesups like ’0093′ and ‘We Are Haunted’, the mix of boiling anger in the complex rhythms and spatial beauty of the strings often recalling Underground Resistance.

Seething emotions soar in tracks like ‘Stempel’ and ‘CCTV Nation’, the pounding grooves and intertwining textures swelling into glorious meteor-storms of rafter-swinging proportions which sometimes manage to enter the realms of avant classical. ‘You’re Only SQL’ carves a monolithic acid-funk path slashed with eerie strings and ‘Tunnels Ov Set’ hammers a slo-mo industrial dub-crash soundscape which closes the album on a suitably-ominous note. The timeless Dog have produced a work of astounding vision, terrible beauty and merciless dancefloor carnage, cocking a leg to techno glory once more but squirting out possibly their most complete work yet. Not mincing words, Further Vexations ranks among the great UK electronic albums.

We are pleased to announce that our latest album is being mastered and will drop on 09/04/09 on Soma. More news, website and samples to follow.

The Black Dog – Further Vexations
1. Biomantric L-if-e
2. 0093
3. Phil: Because Ov, indeed
4. You’re Only SQL
5. We Are Haunted
6. CCTV Nation
7. Stempel
8. Northern Electronic Soul [Part 1]
9. Northern Electronic Soul [Part 2]
10. Northern Electronic Soul [Part 3]
11. Skin Clock
12. Dada Mindstab
13. Tunnels Ov Set
14. Later Vexations
15. Kissing Someone Else’s D.O.G

http://www.furthervexations.com

What better way to sign off this years releases than this – chufty badges for all

# “Radio Scarecrow” incorporates production techniques like EVP and number stations. What is the idea behind it, did you just decide ‘oh, let’s do that’, or is there a underlying theme?

[Martin] I’ve been interested in EVP recordings for many years and Numbers Station still hold a lot of fascination to me, so I’ve been collecting and swapping recordings for around 10 years. When Radio Scarecrow started to manifest and it seemed like the ideal project to pour all this information and data into the music we where writing at the time ? it felt right. Plus I wanted to put some curses into the project because there’s a couple of people I’d like to see die in hotel fires and using Morse and number ciphers it allowed me to do that. Things happen naturally in Black Dog, there?s no stupid ?back-story? or PR stunts. If we?d had more time and space we would have also put some of our Satie pieces in as well. Things with us manifest by their own nature, we?ve learned to live that over the last four years

[Ken] The album is a soundtrack for a real person. the production technique was akin to knitting the web of wyrd, or splicing disparate strands of rope together, to lead us through the labyrinth. It’s up to the listener to discern “the idea” behind the album. Summing it all up here in 50 words, would be too cheap, and too easy. Like much of our stuff, you’re asked to arrive at your own conclusions.

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There’s a new interview up on FACT, one where I seem to swear a lot Click Here?

Reviews and Quotes are starting to come back in for Radio Scarecrow, so we thought we’d share what’s coming in with the dogsquad – we don’t have a massive PR machine and do much of the PR ourselves with Don from Soma. We’ll be adding to this thread as things come in.

DJ Magazine – Album Of The Month
The Black Dog – Radio Scarecrow – Soma
If any one UK outfit was responsible for taking the Detroitian templates and blending ? rather than bastardising ? their boundaries into something genuinely innovative, then that would be The Black Dog. Remaining as invigorating as ever, visionary early-?90s works like ?Temple of Transparent Balls? and ?Spanners? might have been tagged ?intelligent techno? but their cutting edges bled influences into d&b, ambient and electronica. Now a reshaped trio (Ed Handley and Andy Turner long departed to continue their Plaid project), original member Ken Downie and kindred underground spirits Martin and Richard Dust have spent three years labouring on this latest sonic masterpiece.

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This is the second part of the interview we did with Jonty Skrufff about the Radio Scarecrow and various other bits and bobs.

1. Starting with the press release: it says ?since the release of Silenced in October 2005 The Black Dog have been working delicately on its successor?: ?working delicately? is an unusual phrase: why ?delicate?: what does the term mean in practical terms?

[Martin] It doesn?t seem that unusual to me, music and the whole creative process is delicate by its very nature. The slightest thing can throw it completely off, even if you are making the most violent kind of music. This is why we created special mixes

[Ken] To me, it means “carefully crafted” and hand stitched with love. This was not the time to say “fuck it, that will do”. A lot of extra tweaking beyond the call of duty went into the album. It took six months to put the tracks into their correct (and final) order, for instance.

[Martin] Jesus, I still have 67 cdr?s in the car with all the different tracks and track orders on them, that was a real quest but it?s something that you have to do if you love music. It has to be right.

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Radio Scarecrow

Since the release of Silenced in October 2005 The Black Dog have been working delicately on its successor. Two years in the making and the first album to be completed in their new Sheffield Lab.

Radio Scarecrow has been over two years in the making, constantly developing and building, culminating in a masterpiece work that flows delightfully and hits hard. A true progression on Silenced, the trio are keen to note ?the beats are faster and the bass is much heavier ? so much so that it was making us ill working with the low frequencies for hours on end, we could only do 3 hours at a time on some parts?.

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