The Black Dog

You may or may not remember last year that I mentioned that this website is one of the sponsors of the Bloc Weekend, which takes place from March 14th to 16th at Pontin’s Holiday Park in Hemsby, Norfolk, UK. It’s the second year of the festival, which again this year has a killer line up -  the full details are available on the Bloc website. It’s a small festival limited to a few thousand tickets and everyone who attends stays in the chalets at the holiday camp. It’s exactly the kind of messy fun that I like. Anyway, that means there will be loads of Bloc-related interviews running on the site over the next few months. To get the ball rolling, here’s a Q&A with The Black Dog, who talk about their new album, ‘Radio Scarecrow’ as well as their plans for their labels and why you won’t find them moving to Berlin. If you have any questions you would like me to ask some of the other festival acts, please email me.

You recently released a retrospective compilation:  do you think that there is a whole new generation of techno fans who had never heard the dog’s back catalogue?

“We know there’s still a generation of people who aren’t aware that the current tBd line-up has been in place for over four years now, many still think that it’s just Ken.The whole point of putting older tracks and albums out was part of getting our house in order really. Some people will have missed these the first time around and the re-mastered versions sound a lot better than the originals so we thought the project was very worth while, but it's not our main focus and we won't be repeating any of it.”

Should it matter to the new audience that the dog’s line-up has changed radically since then? What do you make of the music that the former members of the dog are making now?

“We don't feel that the line-up should matter at all, it's primarily about the music. tBd is a collective that’s been evolving both musically and personally for the last 20 years. Every track is a product of a certain time, place and the personalities involved. It’s quite obvious that we won't be making an album along the lines of ‘Bytes 2’. That time has long gone. Techno has always been forward thinking and we intend to move forward with it. For those who want that ‘old sound’, there are more than enough competent artists out there producing it, we’re just not interested in working towards a nostalgic revival of the past.
We do listen to the work of our peers, but feel that it’s not important to pass comment on former members work. They do their own thing and we do ours.”

The dog’s earlier stuff fused Detroit techno with jazz and pre-jungle break beat and sounded like nothing else at the time - do you think it’s still possible to come up with that kind of innovation? If so, who do you think is doing this kind of innovative music nowadays?

“Innovation, the final frontier! Music is either good or bad, but innovation often comes across as the emperor's new clothing. Electronic music lays down many claims to it, but what has often passed as innovation has been nothing more than a lazy PR back-story.Innovation most often occurs as small incremental steps, not an entire re-invention. There's loads of people out there we enjoy: Rob Hall, Andy Stott, Stars Of The Lid, Autechre, UR, Richie, DNCN, Orlando Voorn, Bass Soldier, Slit, Benga etc. It changes all the time, but there's still enough to get us excited. Touchin’ Bass have put out some great stuff this year and so have lots of the smaller labels. There’s lots of good people around if you dig deep enough and now more than ever, we feel it's time to get behind the small labels and up and coming DJs/artists.”

You have a new album out next year - tell me about it. What does it sound like: is it similar to your previous work ‘Silenced’ and how long did it take to make?

“ ‘Radio Scarecrow’ is being mastered as we type this but we actually started it in late 2005 (immediately after ‘Silenced’), so that's over two years from start to finish. New material was being written all the time, but the vibe of the album only really started to take shape in the last six months. It's been a difficult album to work on simply because it refused to be rushed. We spent a long time trying to make some sense of all the different ideas within the early tracks. We even took months away from other work just to try and finish the album but we couldn't force it. We seemed to end up sitting around in the studio “talking” about it rather than “doing” it. We eventually returned to techno basics, stripping things back to a more fundamental level and moving away from the eastern and breaks influences that have been present over the last few years. We'd also been researching things like Numbers Stations and EVP recordings for a long time because both topics interest us a great deal. These transmissions and recordings (and people’s interpretations of them) had a strong influence on many of the final concepts and compositions, to the point where we’ve been embedding coded messages and curses deep inside the tracks.
In the end, it does sound like real progression from ‘Silenced’. The beats are faster and the bass is heavier - so much so that it was making us ill working with the low frequencies for hours on end, we could only do three hours at a time on some parts. It's difficult to describe our own work we’re so close to it personally. It’s almost impossible to articulate our ideas and feelings into any other form than the album itself. It feels complete and we’re very proud of the results. “

How come you signed to Soma - did you want their clout behind you when you were releasing the retrospective album and the new album? Would it have been more difficult to put out on Dust Science?

“It all came about by accident really, we'd been working on tracks that didn't really fit with the tBd sound on Dust Science, so we approached Soma. We also wanted to find a label that was pretty neutral for the ex-members of the band as well. Soma have been great with us and they do have more clout than Dust Science, but it was more a matter of finding good people to work with - we get on with them very well and that alone makes a lot difference to us. It means we can spend more time focusing on the music.”

Are you guys facing the same difficulties that most small dance labels are at the moment – falling sales, distros going bust - do you see any light at the end of the tunnel, any sign of stuff changing for the better? What’s next on the label?

“We’ve been hit several times by distributors going bust with our stock and money, it makes it really hard to carry on and it drains your energy and soul. Talking to the legal receiver is not really how we’d choose to spend our days, but something good would often happen after every fall so we'd always get our faith back.  We never set up the label to be a cash cow, it was always intended to be way of doing what we wanted in the way we want – a way for us to work with artists and material that we believed in. Breaking even and being able to pay the studio rent/artists is the basic goal, anything else is a bonus.
As far as the music industry as a whole is concerned, we don't think there's any light at the end of the tunnel just yet. Vinyl and CD sales are down and downloads don’t yet make up the difference. There's a lot of education and many changes to be made but that alone it keeps it interesting. We don't have the answer to the current woes of running a record label, the whole machine is being eaten from the inside. It may take another generation before everything falls into place, but it is a fucking mess. We’re actually more concerned with real life - CCTV, ID cards and the general apathy of this island. To be honest, it's surprising that people are so passionate talking about one industry while they are being filmed hundreds of times a day, need ID to buy a can of beans and probably won't have a pension when they hit 65. Just what does it take to get people angry these days? MP3s apparently. Anyway, Dust Science is putting together its schedule for 2008 and DS:93 is mastering 002 (Vector Lovers) for release in January 2008 – this year is going to be hard work, but we’re up for it.”

Given these circumstances, is the sub-label a labour of love  - it certainly seems to be going in the face of the rather soulless penchant for net labels and the big focus on downloads . Did you lose a lot of money on it? What is next for it?

“We do what we do. We live in an ‘on demand’ society and felt that it was time to question the current mentality, that’s why we said no to doing represses, licenses, compilations and downloads for DS:93. It was important to create something and that be the ‘end’ of it, which could be called arrogant but it’s a statement that needed to be made. In response people called us elitist and all kinds shit but we figured fuck it. Some of the hate mail is quite funny and we even got an offer from a big label to do a ‘best of’ CD.  We said no. We often wonder if people are actually interested in art anymore.
It's a labour of love but one that is worthwhile. And no, we didn't lose any money but there isn’t much to be made on a vinyl pressing that small either. Vector Lovers, Scan 7 and Orlando Voorn are up next, so we are busy mastering tracks, hand printing sleeves and making new rubberstamps.”

Sheffield has a notable electronic music heritage, but it doesn’t seem like there is much going on now – do you ever feel the temptation to move to a hub like London or a trendy spot like Berlin to further your careers?

“The grey skies and rain in Sheffield can be fucking grim sometimes, but that can also be a great influence. There’s always something going on, it's just not in your face as much these days and everyone is busy trying to find the next Arctic Monkeys. Kid Acne, Richard H. Kirk, Hiem, Carl Taylor, SND, Aitcho and iPassenger are all doing some great stuff and to be honest, we don't want the spotlight and all the shit that goes with it. In this day and age we fail to see the point in moving at all, it's a shame people fall for the me too thing, but we don't feel there's any need to move anywhere. Moving to Berlin wouldn't help our careers, Have you heard Bowie's ‘Low’ [laughs]? We've always been outsiders and just like to visit I guess.

On that note, what do you make of the popularity of minimal techno? Do you think it has taken attention away from the deeper side of techno that you guys make?

“Do we make deeper techno? We just make techno don't we? There’s good and bad, at least the trend puts some focus back onto the techno crowd again, but we're not concerned about ‘hair dos and don’ts’.”

Will your set at Bloc be like the one in Dublin? A mixture of old and new?

“We only played a few old songs in Dublin and they’d all been editing heavily by us. We don't have a problem dropping the odd old track but the new stuff is where it's at for us. Some of the old ones have been around for nearly 20 years, they left home a long time ago! We have plenty of new material lined up, far more than what appears on ‘Radio Scarecrow’, so we'll just see where the night takes us. We don’t generally plan the sets in advance as we like to have adapt to the mood of the crowd and the night, we’ve got enough material and flexibility. However, we do plan to a have a great time and to bring the party, so we'll see you down the front.”

Comments

[Chymera]

great interview! very interesting! Richard can you pretty please put some formatting into your posts? Just put the questions in bold and it makes it so much easier to distinguish between question and answer ;) Cheers!!

[Martin Dust]

Yeah formatting would help it a little.