The Black Dog

A lot of people love music. A lot of musicians love music, despite it being their job. After all, how many bin men love black bags? How many salesmen love their target? For musicians, work means another day in the studio, another set of A&R men to make happy, another day knowing you've sold your soul for a strapon! Working in music is poisonous. Yet a lot of musicians love music anyway.

But what if music loves you? Looking back - and forward - at The Black Dog, that's the feeling you get: The beauty, and sophistication, of The Black Dog's work doesn't come from their being music lovers who are really good at making tracks. It comes from music itself loving them, making them an outlet for itself. That's why The Black Dog don't play industry games. They don't need to.

The Black Dog are universally respected, not least for their classic Bytes, Spanners and Radio Scarecrow albums, which literally created new fields of music. With new personnel added to the line up, we now see output that is stronger and darker. They form new links in the chain of ideas and rhythm between dance music and older forms. The Black Dog's innovation is grounded in previous generations of artists and musicians, to the beats, the Bohemians, and further back.

Yet their music appeals to a huge spectrum of people. Famously reticent of the press and other apparatus of the industry, The Black Dog on record evoke a curious bitter sweetness, at once tender and distant, while delivering incredible rhythmic inventiveness. Some call it "intelligent", and it is, but the word denies the music's visceral, overpowering sensuousness.