The Black Dog - "Music For Adverts (And Short Films)" (Warp PUP CD2)
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Dumb And Dumber / The Wind Spirit / Jordan / Tzaddi / Pod #1 / No Lamers
/ Edgar Allan / Harpo / Strange Hill / The Big Issue / Crayola / Horny /
AGW / Seti / Darkness / Euthanasia / Gerry Norman / Meditation No #4 /
Stratus / Dissidence / As Clouds Go By / Disench / Minour / Mo / Wot /
Kheprit
This record verges on sensual overkill. The twenty six tracks present,
each one very different from all the others, run together seamlessly and
take the listener on a psychedelic journey through a middle eastern,
ethnic and synthetic aural wilderness. The sheer number and variety of
sounds and styles make the album impossible to pin down or pigeonhole.
"Music For Adverts" is perhaps best likened to a famous Greek culinary
experience wherein the diner is bombarded with a seemingly endless
stream of small, diverse (and very tasty) dishes: what I'm talking about
here is the meze. The new Black Dog album is a taste explosion for your
ears.
Opener "Dumb and Dumber" is weird; sounds like someone messing around on
a church organ, but there's also an old-fashioned circus feel to the
track as well. The bare, tribal drumming of "The Wind Spirit" follows
and is quite hypnotic, while the aptly titled "Jordan" gives us the
first strong hint of middle-eastern influence. Things don't really get
going until "Tzaddi," however, a funky, bass-driven number which
features a rather prominent pair of dueting saxophones. "No Lamers" is
instantly one of the high-lights of the record and easily the best so
far, bearing substantial resemblance to The Black Dog of old. The very
existence of "Edgar Allen" puzzles me: up-front, vulgar slap-bass (think
Level 42, Grace Jones and other AOR todge) combines with a minimal bongo
rhythm, intermittent strings and voice samples to produce a track which
is truly odd. The more conventional, soothing ambience of "Harpo," on
the other hand, is blessed with an innate charm and it seems a shame to
me that this wasn't developed further in place of the "Edgar Allen" ugly
duckling. "Strange Hill" is, in a word, FUNK; lumbering and bassy,
pianos tumble whilst eerie synths drone and hum, leaving strings and
further pianos to etch out the melodies above. Monochromatic strings a
la B12 cut through the melee like a knife and make way for the laid-back
melancholia of "The Big Issue." "Crayola" (Ah, now there's a word which
takes me back!) sees The Black Dog in jungle mode as frantic, generic
percussion combines with distinctive melodies to good effect. A brief,
blissed-out respite from the beats comes in the form of "Horny" before
"AGW" (which, incidentally, sounds like it was all played on a child's
Casio synthesiser) breaks the spell. "Seti" is just plain-weird spacer,
whilst the booming bass piano of "Darkness" merely serves to pave the
way for the arrival of one of the album's high-points and another slab
of vintage Black Dog: "Euthanasia."
A couple more weirdos pass me by before the arrival of a clutch of real
gems (which at this stage of the proceedings are becoming rather thick
on the ground). "Stratus" has a fantastic film sound-track feel (think
"sad bit," dramatic strings etc.) and breaks down rather abruptly into
the contrastingly percussive and strongly Arabic "Dissidence." Things
move on equally quickly into "As Clouds Go By," which has a strange
Celtic folk music feel about it, before "Disench" provides us with more
of the soothing, throbbing synths characterised by B12. "Minour" is a
nice tuneful mid-tempo piece which again sports the overriding feeling
of sadness which pervades so much of "Music For Adverts." Rather plunky,
percussive beginnings mutate abruptly as an avalanche of lush Egyptian
strings explode from nowhere and make "Mo" one of my favourites here.
Finally, haunting melodies hang on the air over pulsating bass as
"Kheprit" wraps "Music For Adverts" up rather nicely.
The verdict then is good. An accomplished and varied record which
adequately confirms the continued vitality of The Black Dog, despite the
departure of two thirds of its membership. "Music For Adverts (And Short
Films)" is definitely better than the last album "Spanners" (which I
found to be rather disjointed), but I would probably still point
beginners seeking to discover The Black Dog in the direction of 1993's
"Bytes."
Out now.
The Table - "Infinitino III" (Demo CD)
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Suigeneris / Maclife / Stargazer / Werther / Meetchow / Goblet / G.I.G.
Plus Interactive CD-ROM.
This is a disc which I received some time ago now and somehow, for
reasons which I won't go into, have never got around to reviewing. I
feel particularly bad about this as they are an unsigned group (or were
at any rate!) and presumably need all the publicity they can get. They
refer to themselves as an "independent multimedia entity" and have been
involved in the production of a number of films and videos since 1988.
The CD-ROM component here is interesting by virtue of its novelty, but
that aside is little more than a bit of fun which I can take or leave;
my feeling is (based on this CD) that the technology needs to progress
further before such things become really viable. These people can be
contacted at gcleis@tinet.ch and they have web pages at
http://www.tinet.ch/table.
On to the music then, which after all is the most important aspect.
Overall, this is a competent record, although it does very little (if
anything) that could be called new or innovative. The sound is fairly
familiar: easy-listening, sugared techno with an indefinably euro feel
about it (they're from Switzerland). Warm and honeyed with a smooth,
polished veneer; muffled heart-beats and soft, soothing keyboard sounds
abound. This music would probably feel most at home on the next Cafe Del
Mar compilation. Particularly nice is track number two "Maclife" which
subtly combines all of the above ingredients with a constantly mutating
stream of (acid) chirps and squirts. "Stargazer" features a
drum'n'bass-style sampled snare drum loop and a rather naff female vocal
sample (English, but with a foreign accent - like the lyrics to any one
of the thirty odd thousand songs Stereolab wrote last year) whereas
"Werther" has a loose, laid-back, rather casual feel about it.
"Meetchow" is the only number which really lets the side down, and its
the vocals here which are almost wholly responsible, since other
elements of the track are quite nice: purring cat noise and more sampled
drums. The refrain "I don't want more time, I don't want more time, I
don't want more time" is truly, truly rubbish. The last two tracks are
again competent enough with "Gobelet" probably taking second place after
"Maclife." A hidden track at the end seems to amount to a reprise of the
last listed track "G.I.G." which is a funky, quasi-ambient affair.
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s e n d c d s f o r r e v i e w t o :
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||||\\ //|||| ___ //////////////////////
|||| \\// |||| ||// \\ /////
|||| |||| |||. ____ ///// Paul Jarvis,
\\\\\ ///// John Innes Centre,
\\\\\ ///// Norwich Research Park,
jarvisr@bbsrc.ac.uk \\\\\// Colney, Norwich NR4 7UH,
England, United Kingdom.
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