Submitted By: DSM

Genre: Electronic

Date of Set: Jul 27th, 2008

Filesize: 42.34 MB

Total Downloads: 8

Ken Downie (founder of Black Dog Productions) provides a glimpse into the history of The Black Dog

Forgive me ranting on - skip this page if you like - but a lot of people have asked what makes me tick over the years, so I thought this might be a good place to lay it all down, for free as it were, without writing a book, and then charging people for it.

From an early age, I’ve known that I was weird. When you know, you kind of resign yourself to it. I counted in Roman numerals when I was 5, and knew all the attributions of the Tarot by the time I was 10.

Sadly, they didn’t teach magic or philosophy at my school, and I wasn’t motivated to learn anything they had on offer. I was written off as an underachiever. I used to take the day off and go and sit in a field and listen to Beatle songs. Or admire trees. Anything, rather than sit in a room full of kids who mostly thought I was a geek.

weird adj.
1. suggestive of or relating to the supernatural; eerie.
2. strange or bizarre.
3. Arch. of or relating to fate or the Fates.

On the whole my childhood wasn’t happy, although I did get to live in Gibraltar and Morocco for a couple of years, and one of my teachers let me into the secret that art is more important than maths..

Coming back to England again after that, wasn’t very nice. I didn’t fit in with the ‘English’ kids. I’d been across the Sahara, and been subject to Mediterranean cultures, while they had remained in the one place, and stayed pretty much the same. Had the crap beaten out of them, I guess. I developed an active imagination, and made a few (b)older friends. Got into dub reggae about this time, and it’s given me inspiration ever since. Reggae is one of the wisest musics.

I managed to get a summer job picking Strawberries, and was initiated by a Sorceress. It was a glorious day, and she had the most magnificent breasts I have ever seen. She worked topless, and let me know about a few things.

She told me to get into Don Juan and the Castenda books, “they might or might not be forgeries”, she added, “but there’s plenty that’s worth checking for those that can read between the lines”. She was right. Which was handy, because I didn’t really fancy stitching a pair of lizard lips together

To escape the fate of having no qualifications and living down in darkest Devon (the countryside), I joined the Navy in a naive attempt to “see the world for free”. I saw a quite a bit of the northern hemisphere, sailed a few of the world’s oceans, and retraced a bit of Homer, which I was pleased about. What I didn’t like, was that there was no time for slack.

If you weren’t working, you were either sleeping, or doing some pointless task. No wonder sailors drink so much when they go ashore. Luckily I didn’t have to kill anyone, and I got out before I’d grown any barnacles. The exchange was that I left “normal things” behind in some way. The regime featured revolving timescales based around different routines, there were no fixed day lengths for weeks sometimes.

Anyway, back to the plot. The Navy sent me to Denmark for two years. Don’t ask me why. I can’t tell you. Whilst there, in the middle of winter, I experienced a weird dream that culminated in me painting the image of the Egyptian God Anubis on a freshly plastered white wall. I’d never interacted in anything this vivid before. There were other people there, but I wasn’t interested in them, my task was to paint the wall with the Godform. It’s hard to describe things as visceral as dreams with words, but suffice to say, this was truly a dream of dreams, and it let me know what I should be doing with my life.

Denmark has an excellent library system, where you can get pristine copies of old hard to get or even deleted records from the 60’s and 70’s in mint condition. They have the biggest dub reggae collection I’ve ever seen, and it was all on a free loan basis. Despite having been played in over 300+ different homes, they were as pristine as the day they were bought. A socialist country. Tuisand Tak.

My friends in England during this period, despite being accomplished musicians, failed to secure any deals from record companies, and had to either give up music totally, get bad jobs that they didn’t enjoy doing, or eek out a less than full life on the rapidly shrinking state welfare system, with the forlorn hope of “making it someday”.

The music business can be cruel like that.
I “woke up” to the real possibility that I could produce music myself in 1987, having been allowed to hang out in Jimmy Cauty’s kitchen at Trancentral, or the ben-io. A shout goes out to Jim.

The vibe at the time was “house IS a feeling”, we were getting the most _coolest_ cuts from Chicago and Detroit, the tempo hadn’t yet risen above 120bpm, and everything was chill and easy. Breakbeats were being used skillfully, funkily even (influencing our subsequent album “Bytes”). Not all of ‘the breaks’ had been found then. Slow Acid was almost as good as sex. Gay clubs were the most fun, and adventurous places to hang out in then, the more liberal ones had ‘mixed’ nights, when straight’s could get in. Soon everybody was going on about “acid house”, and before you knew it, oops, here comes a summer of love.

I got (more) into computers, got an Amiga, and started producing freeware demos featuring artwork that had all been done in-house. Sometimes with little jingle type tunes that could be easily be distributed on floppy disks. Feedback from the demo’s was encouraging. People did actually like the stuff I was producing, so I decided to go the whole way, and advertise for people to start a band with.

I also set up the “Black Dog Towers”, our bulletin board and network, at around this time. We made a lot of friends, and learnt a lot of interesting stuff, some of which really opened my eyes. The people were mostly nice, and were calling into it from around the globe. It was the bbs to be seen on for a while, until the hacker crackdown, then the whole scene died.

We formed the band in 1989. After placing an advertisement for a keyboard player in music technology magazine (now called “The Mix”) Ed phoned up, and struck up a conversation about how he had had his tapes played at warehouse parties (they weren’t called “raves” then).

I was really impressed, so we met and started working. We didn’t have much money or gear, because the bank had refused to loan us anything. The tunes we produced were strange, even for us at that time. We stashed everything on cassette, and moved on. A few months later, Ed brought Andy around, and he stayed.

We tossed several names around and settled on “Cheeba Smarties” for a week, until I suggested the name that had come from that vivid dream I told you about earlier. The Black Dog. Despite the initial reticence, and after allaying their fears that the image was racist, it stuck. Other people liked it too. Everyone had a different idea about what “The Black Dog” actually meant. We knew we had stumbled onto something.

Finished our first 4 tracks, and tried to secure a deal with “Black Market Records”, a record shop in London’s Soho, that was knocking out hackney hardcore at the time. Nod to Nicky. We hoped to get Mr Fingers to remix one of our tracks. We liked his stuff, and hoped he could help out. But, in a bizarre transatlantic telephone call he heard the mix, and said, quote “nah, that’s too weird for me”. Sadly he’s now retired from music, and works with computers.

Desperation and the rent set in, so we went to see “Big Life” (big larf) Records… they giggled a lot, called our material “Soundtrack Stuff”, and completely missed the point.

Skint and exasperated, we decided to hire in as much equipment as we could, and try to record a new four track EP at home, with the idea of releasing it ourselves. People obviously didn’t understand us, or the way our music worked, so it looked like we were on our own, and that we had to “do it ourselves”.

We recorded the “Virtual EP” in a weekend, from beginning to end. And with much trepidation and fondling of cash, pressed up the first 1,000 12 inchers. We hired a Van. Andy did the driving (he’s very good), and we spread them as far and wide as we could. Luckily, the people at the grass roots level, the underground record shops, were more tolerant, and they managed to shift it pretty quickly. Some shops even took a whole box (25 records), which was amazing after the lack of response we got from record companies. Repressed another 1,000 due to popular demand. Wehey! And then another 500 for “export” to Germany and the Netherworld

Some people in Europe obviously liked the Black Dog sound too.

Anyway, with a modest success under our belt, it was easier for us to ignore the “establishment” and persevere at our own methods of music making, and indie type distribution. For a while. A few months later, we started on a new project. The Age Of Slack EP. Indulgence set in, and sadly, it was less than it should be. Quirky, and uptight it may be, but a “dancefloor burner” it wasn’t. Some brave DJ’s still play it (big up to them), but not many. Just 1,000 of this one were made, and we barely managed to get our money back for the next project. It taught us a valuable lesson.

By the time of the third “Black Dog EP”, we were on a roll. We could write music that moved us much quicker than before, and soon had a whole bunch of new material. We decided to put out a six track EP. This gave us the most bass for DJ’s, and more than 4 tracks to listen to.

We were using Greyhound distribution then, a company that was doing the “van business” for us. We’re greatful for the help that they gave us in the early days. Promoting our dogism in Holland, Belgium, and the more understanding countries that weren’t hypnotized by hardcore. Mike McGuire gave us a lot of help, but one day (when he was on holiday), Greyhound informed us that they’d melted 500 of the EP, because they didn’t have the shelf space. I got called a “cold bastard”, when I asked for our money back. We were wiped out financially, and couldn’t afford to repress.

A.R.T records was just starting and Kirk (Ed’s and Andy’s friend from Ipswich) needed some tracks to bolster the initial releases. We helped out, and he’s flogged them all over the known universe. Kirk’s out there doing things with Carl Craig now. We’ve had a few cross words, but I’d still buy him a beer…it’s only showbusiness, and we’ve had a few laughs.

I had to go to Morocco to sort myself out. Find a bit of new inspiration out of the smoke and depression of London. I stayed in the Hotel in Tangier where William Burroughs had written Naked Lunch twenty years earlier, before heading off down south to look at the Neolithic, Roman, Phoenician, and Carthaginian monuments, or “old stones”. Doing a bit of magick on the way. Returning to England during this period wasn’t nice. Maybe it never is. “Shut up and Dance” were cool, at least they had less of a reliance on the already tired 4/4 kick drum thing. The fashion at the time was to steal some inane sample from an old children’s program or an advert, then slap in some 909 drums under it, and wait for the cash to flow.

Several unscrupulous people did this.

Luckily help (of sorts) was at hand in the form of Wayne Archbold. A DJ friend (Mark Broom) introduced us to him. He was full of enthusiasm for our sound, and said that he was starting up his own label called GPR. He was, and is, a likable character who has been around in dance music since the early days. We pitched our tent next to his, and started work on our next EP, which we decided to call the Parallel Squelch EP. Hats off to GPR. Amazingly, the next EP sold 7000 copies. We were “over the moon”, kabbalistically as well as otherwise.

Warp and R&S Records also became interested in us at this point. Renatt (R&S) paid for us to use his techno island studio for a week. Amazed at the sheer amount of equipment available, and the smooth crisp sound, we produced some of our most poignant tracks there. The toilet’s were stone age, and the roof leaked, but there were loads of different synths, and new sounds, so it didn’t matter. We had a brilliant time.

With great magnitude, Renatt let us keep the tracks to fulfill our recording comittments with GPR, possibly with the view of “picking us up” later… but if so, he never did. I’d like to express many thanks to Renatt and Sabine for their generosity, and say “Sorry I was a little too weird for you, but I’m very grateful.”

Sadly, the germs of the split manifested while working in Belgium. Ed and Andy wanted to work on light jazzy material, and I wanted to start writing things that mattered. At that point, there was still room to accomodate all of our styles within “The Black Dog” provided no one’s ego got too large. Maybe the differences would even help make us great? Anyway, they ultimately decided to listen to advice from their “friends”, rather than follow their own intuitions. Which is a big shame, because we worked well together. Techno island is well stocked with records, so it wasn’t a problem, we sort of took it in shifts, and came up with double the amount of goods that a ‘normal’ band would.

The tracks eventually saw light of day on the “Vantool” and “Cost II” EPs. Oh, and more recently on the imaginatively titled “Parallel” compilation album from GPR, which we couldn’t really do anything about. Because they’d been ’shafted’ by a previous business partner, they had to do the LP, or ‘go under’. It’s not that I don’t like the tracks on the album, but I would have released all the singles as a special album, instead of 2.5 EP’s worth. Taken a bit more time about it I suppose… anyway…

After that, the situation got even worse. Wayne (GPR) being a small label, couldn’t afford to pay large advances, and the little we got didn’t go very far between the three of us and our equipment needs. All of us had to get part time jobs, which meant we had less time for music. It was a horrible period. Ed and Andy ended up virtually giving their best material away to every leech with a label just to pay their rent, it was unfair. Wayne from GPR introduced us to Muff Winwood from Sony (he was Led Zeppelin’s manager for 12 years, and was in the Spencer Davis group, so we had a big respect for him) with a view to Sony helping us out with distribution, or maybe even a “full on” deal.

Sadly, we must have tried too hard or something, and we couldn’t convince him. He went off to sign lamer’s like SunScreem instead. Point, and giggle. “I May well sign you up in four years” he said. No you bloody won’t mate.

Then we recorded the Temple of Transparent Balls album for GPR. Originally, we were going to call it “The Temple Of Transparent Walls”, but being severely disillusioned with the music industry (and Sony) we changed the “Walls” to “Balls”. It seemed more appropriate. That was to be our last project with GPR, our commitment fulfilled, we were free to move on. To find somebody that could afford to have more than three colours printed on covers (just a joke Wayne).

We were all pretty desperate at this point, London’s an expensive city, and we needed a patron. Reluctantly, we signed on the dotted line with Warp records, who released “Bytes” our first album. Then we did a few gigs around Europe, some of which were *bloody amazing*, and some not. “Spanners” you’ll probably have heard, so there’s no need to go on about it here. Ed and Andy departed in 1995 to go and play in China with Bjork. Free Tibet, hey, Ed? LOL.

“The people who write to me are stupid.” ~ Bjork to Ken

After the split, I was pretty disillusioned and didn’t feel like trusting anyone, ever again. But I was helped out of this by Keir Jens-Smith, who agreed to be The Black Dog’s manager. I will forever be endebted to him for helping me through this period and enabling me to get out of London, out to somewhere where you can breathe, and see green things on a daily basis.

Drawing on thoughts and feelings from Morocco I put together the Music for Adverts (and short films) album, which warp released. Seems people love or hate it. The brave media readily supported it (film maker Gus Van Sant describes it as “advanced techno”). Sadly poor distribution made it rather hard to obtain.

The Blunder.
warp: Oh go on ken, sign it. Ed and Andy could really do with the money, and there is
no way that Nothing records will demand another 3 albums now that the band has split.
Ken: No, thanks, i’d rather not. I don’t want the money. And why should i help plaid?
warp: Oh go on. They could buy new equipment with it and set themselves up again.
Ken: sigh…oh, alright.

Six months later.
Ken: Right, i’ve delivered. Can i go now, please?
warp: No way, you owe us another 3 albums.

To be continued…

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