Bleep

Legendary pioneers of ambient techno The Black Dog continue to explore the reflective electronics mapped out on the Further Vexations and Radio Scarecrow LP's with the fifteen track proposition to fight back against the powers that oppose us (with the group citing the Tories’ election propaganda to David Icke as part of this) with the Nether/Neither album. Starting life in 89 with the beat poet Allen Ginsberg's Europe! Europe! sample track Virtual they have maintained their place at the forefront of UK electronica with no less than twelve or so albums of richly textured ambient techno that carry more bite than most. Things have almost come full circle with Neither/Neither though, with the information released surrounding the album referencing another member of the beat movement in William Burroughs "we are now living in a world that is nothing short of a total information war" being the sign-off for the groups information surrounding the recordings. So as you can see The Black Dog are here to stay and are always evolving and taking inspiration from the world around them to channel into the otherworldly sounds they create so well. Neither/Neither starts off with Non Linear Information Life where a thick coat of ambience falls lightly at first before enveloping into a wall of digital texture and emptying itself into Phil 3 to 5 to 3 which echos the late night announcements called out in the departure lounge of the Music For Real Airports while the smoke of Non Linear... still holds tight. Neither/Neither brings in the first beats of the LP, its raw woodblock percussion tightly coiling itself around the gaseous synths to devastating effect before dropping into a solid slow steppers riddim akin to Karl O'Connor's CUB trax. The rest of the LP follows suit with more drifting transmissions and Sandwell buried drums and cloudy atmospheres of tense release as on Control Needs Time or the melodic roller Them (Everyone Is A Liar But) through to the glitch-lead melancholy Shut Eye. TBD show they can still make club bangers like the best of them on Self Organising Sealed Systems and Commodification mixing a sound somewhere between classic Surgeon with the all night computer crash of Monolake but never losing site of the fact that this is pure Black Dog techno. Neither/Neither shows the group at the top of their game from blinding club tracks to subdued passages that as a whole perfectly steps the line between club techno and home listening electronics, but all with an underlining message throughout of stark anger and frustration at the world around them and no way of a silent escape.