It feels like an aeon since music existed in a culture of scarcity, but, yes, up until about the year 2000 there were actually large swathes of music that were inaccessible and required people to spend inordinate amounts of time making small talk with unfriendly record store staff just to get a listen. These days though everything is everywhere. Looking for an obscure 7″ from 1969? Well, almost certainly you can not only make contact with someone who has it, but is also willing to share it with you. Whilst this has encouraged a massive explosion in eclecticism – just pick up someone’s iPod and scan through its contents – and has certainly removed almost all barrier to access for the even slightly internet-savvy, it has come at a price.
The obvious price is for people trying to make a living from the sale of theirs (eg. artists) or others music (eg. labels, distributors, music press etc). Arguably other models for once-again monetising the exchange of music, a historical anomaly lasting little more than the last 100 years actually, will be found. Most probably these involve a return to the pre-1900s model of musicians earning income from performing, combined with complicated licensing schemes.
There is another price though – a cultural price. With ‘everything’ a mouse-click away it is too easy to slip into a relativism where everything is of the same ‘value’ as everything else, and emotional and temporal investment in specifics is frowned upon. On the other hand along with this new ‘ease of access’ comes an overthrowing of the traditional gatekeepers of music – notably surly record store clerks and antisocial eBay collectors.
Finally reissued, no doubt much to the cursing of the aforementioned Ebay hoarders, record store snobs and collectors, The Black Dog’s seminal earliest works get a full re-release as The Book of Dogma. This is music that deserved a much wider audience in its day. It says ‘remastered’ – perhaps as a way of keeping the original pressing’s trade prices artificially inflated – this is more likely just means re-equalising for CD. Packaged as a double CD, the second of which is the entirety of 1994’s Parallel album from the long defunct GPR (also home to the long missed Beaumont Hannant), this album collects the three early 1989/90 EPs from group as well. These early works capture a moment when Detroit techno was being fused with acid house, electro, hip hop and protean forms of ‘ardkore – futuristic vistas crashing headlong into urban realism, soaring plaintive synths, street beats and sampledelia. The sample from ‘Virtual’ – “well well well, I sit in my room imagining the future” captures the era perfectly. Even this early on you can hear the germination of the sound that Black Dog offshoot/post-breakup duo Plaid has become known for. ‘Ambience With Teeth’ is a great piece of late 80s party-sampledelia (cf early Coldcut) sampling Mantronix amongst others, whilst ‘Techno Playtime’ is Detroit-inspired early British techno. The later work of Parallel is late-first-phase IDM, where these themes have been a little more crystalised, and refined. Akin to Warp’s early Artificial Intelligence series the hip hop influences of the early EPs are now channelled and not as evident. During Parallel‘s creation the second wave of rave was in full effect and the urgencies of the dancefloor and if anything the melodic patterns and synths bring back those long nights spent in warehouses.
As a long lost relic this release is an essential bit of British electronica.
