REVIEW : Black Dog
Evolver
+ DJ Mark Broom & Off-Yer-Face DJs
@ University of East Anglia, Norwich, England
12.11.1994
Black Dog! Fuck me! Their only English live PA! In _Norwich_ of all
places! I thought I was dreaming when I saw the flyers... Initial
efforts to secure a ticket proved pretty tricky though; mainly due to
the fact that the original venue (the Norwich Arts Centre) was forced
to close. Pretty damn luckily though, the venue changed to the
University LCR and the gig itself changed to a fund-raiser to keep the
Arts Centre open (which it now is). 'kin A.
Initial impressions were pretty poor as we entered the LCR. Crap Megadog
rejected flurescent drapes adorned the walls and the music was some
happy club stuff. All very well of course but we were expecting full-on
techno right from the start, what with the promise of a Broom set and
Black Dog later. Having winced through an hour of piano breakdowns,
Evolver then made their entrance. Initially, it looked quite promising;
a few synths, a mixing desk and most interestingly, some 'natural'
percussion (bongos, bells, maracas, etc). A shame then that the new
Planet Dog signees turned out to be the biggest load of cack imaginable.
The natural percussion was played awkwardly over the top of their lame
trancey melodies and uninspired 4/4 beats. One of the keyboard 'players'
also had the most horrendous hairstyle yet seen in the world of techno
(after Kris Needs'). Truly abysmal. It wasn't helped by the fire
swallower and robot dancer either.
More Off-Yer-Face club malarky then followed but soon eased into a more
minimal techno set. Mark Broom (Fat Cat records, A13, ...) then picked
it up with a (slightly too) hard Basic Channel-esque sound. My knee
joints had sealed together as a result of sitting around during Ev*lver
and began to unglue just as Mark Broom finished his set, so I was all
nice and ready for the Dog.
As it turned out, it was a wasted effort. I didn't dance once during
Black Dog. This was not because I didn't want to, it was exactly the
opposite; I _really_ wanted to dance. Seriously. The only problem
was that I was too busy listening. Oh, and trying to stop my jaw from
continually dropping to the floor. You see, Black Dog were fucking
amazing. I've never heard anything like it before in my life. You could
tell it was Black Dog all-right; the fractured rhythms and dischordant
sounds were in abundance, but it was a _tighter_ Black Dog sound. It was
also bloody acidic. One 303/808 workout lasted 15 minutes and was
comprised of the same loop over and over (with filter tweakery,
naturally). But it never seemed to get boring; how the hell can they do
that? I wasn't even dancing and it blew me away.
The other tracks? Well, there were none that I recognised, although
there were one or two that could easily have been on _Bytes_ or from
their ART releases. Suffice to say that they were amazing too; gorgeous
chords and sublime melodies, all dipped in their trademark hip-hop/
techno offspring rhythms. Only Black Dog can make melodies sound like
hi-hats one minute and then morph a booming percussion sound into a
bass-line the next. On paper, their seemingly random technique of fusing
different melodies and drum patterns together shouldn't meld so well. In
practice however, it just seems to _work_. I can't explain it; you're
probably aware of how Black Dog tracks seem to mutate from chaos one
minute into ordered beauty the next. If you're not, buy _Bytes_ or
_Temple..._ and witness it for yourself; it's amazing. An example of
this at the gig was a track that meshed a light, fuzzy rhythm with
random notes played by some analogue synths. It must have gone on for
about eight minutes; just these bizarre random notes. Sounds shit,
doesn't it? Bzzzt, incorrect answer; it was phenomenal. It was also
indescribable; I've got absolutely no idea how they did it :-(
There were also a variety of mind-shagging acid tracks, all of them
giving a fresh feel to this tired (IMHO) genre. They worked excellently
alongside the more 'traditional' (is there such a thing?) Black Dog
tracks. The gig ended on one of these acid monsters; a stretched out
bastard of a track. It finished and I was finally able to connect my jaw
just below my mouth, where it rightfully belongs. This was the only
problem I had with the gig; it would have worked so much better if they
had finished with one of their more thoughtful, placid tracks. But then
again what do I know? I think I'll let them get away with this one,
then ;-)
Quote of the Week:
"If people are impotent, they've been listening to FSOL"
- FSOL (on the Rave New World program)
[CiM] s.walley@sys.uea.ac.uk
http://www.sys.uea.ac.uk/~u9323899/