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The Grey Album

by The Black Dog

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gbloodpart1
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gbloodpart1 This is one of my favourite Black dog albums. I love the strong, bouncy melodies in this album. A must for any fan of electronic music. Favorite track: Thee Difference Ov Girls.
Thomas Beers
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Thomas Beers Another gem from my hero’s The Black Dog.
Black belt electronics, and a lot of diversity.
The sounds are thick as concrete walls as well delicate.
Please come to the Netherlands for a live performance! Favorite track: You've Heard This One Before.
Satori Rotors
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Satori Rotors Has that signature Ken Downie sound (especially 98 Russell Street) that I always loved since the early days of Bytes, Temple and Spanners. This is a great album! Favorite track: Empire Statement Humanoid.
themilkman
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themilkman Resolutely more techno-infused than some of their recent output, this is another example of how The Black Dog effortlessly go from the chillout room to the dancefloor and back. Special mention to This Is Phil Talking, which is pure bliss. Favorite track: This Is Phil Talking.
Paul Watt
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Paul Watt This isn't Techno.
This is high quality Techno.
It's proper. Favorite track: Ghosts Of Decay.
F700
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F700 The BD did it again! Favorite track: Empire Statement Humanoid.
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  • Full Digital Discography Full Digital Discography

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    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality downloads of Silenced (Remastered), Nybrutalism EP, Music For Moore Street Substation, Scarecrow Collected, Radio Scarecrow (Remastered), My Brutal Life, Being Brutal EP, Bytes, and 95 more. , and , .

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  • The Grey Album (2 x 12")
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I Dare You 05:50
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about

Sometimes, things "just happen". For months, we’d been working away on various projects and then, without really thinking about it, The Black EP just happened. It seemingly appeared from nowhere.

We’d been talking about the old days; making music with friends and dodgy kit, renting small practice rooms and using makeshift recording studios. It was such a common thing back then, you could pick a dusty space in a half-derelict building for as little as £25 a month. In those days, the Cabs and Human League had studios with posh-sounding names, but in reality, they were the same old workspaces long abandoned by the industries they were built for. Nevertheless, the grand names made them sound magical.

Sheffield had thousands of these spaces, and some still exist today, but their abundance and low-cost made Sheffield a very active place. Someone was always doing something. They’d exploded onto the scene in a flurry of excitement before disappearing just as quickly.

There’s something about these little mesters (workshops) that we believe lives in the very consciousness of Sheffield. It’s one of the reasons we never really had big scenes like Manchester or Leeds. The Hacienda would've never been built here.

We don’t really do big gangs or have that kind of mentality. We tend to exist in little pockets, often leaving each other alone. It would be 30 years before any member of The Black Dog talked to Cabaret Voltaire. Sure, we’d stood outside their practice room as kids, trying to listen in, but never felt any reason to approach. Sheffield is like that.

Once we had the first two tracks of the Black EP, we set off to see Jon at Do It Theesen, where he manually cut the tracks to an extremely limited set of 7" singles using a vinyl lathe. It just felt right to go back to the old ways; a small gang creating something special in workshops and sheds. There’s something very satisfying about it, a perfect circle, if you will.

We pushed further by adopting old practices, working with one synth per person and limiting the use of our computers. We only stopped short of putting everything on beer crates. It seems like madness these days, but there is raw creativity within these confines. Pretty much every band started this way. Depeche Mode travelled to the studio on the London Underground for their first appearance on Top Of The Pops, all lugging a synth each. That's how we approached the creation of this album; stripped back, raw and minimal - it just felt so right.

And then there’s the competitive element that was influenced when the original Human League split and became Human League MK II and Heaven 17. Both continued to use the same studio to write what became the albums "Dare" and "Penthouse and Pavement". There is something about that drive that is very Sheffield, just making stuff and hoping everything falls into place.

In Sheffield, we do things differently, because that’s how we are built.

credits

released May 12, 2023

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The Black Dog Sheffield

We make techno.

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