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.

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

From Soma…

While Americans are busy voting who their next president is going to be, in Britain we’ve got more important things to worry about. Like who made the best album this year for example??

The Black Dog’s ‘Radio Scarecrow’ album has been nominated for DJ Mag’s Best of British 2008. Please help the act win Best British Album by making your vote count at:
http://www.djmag.com/index.php?op=bestofbritish

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

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…)

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.