Black Dog

Artist: The Black Dog
P: 2010
Their latest release is -ambient’ in the loosest sense, composed and written over three years in airports while on tour. The hour-long continuous piece uses samples culled from 200 hours of field recordings to construct a nervy skeletal narrative, from the slamming doors, sirens and passing traffic on -M1′, to the grating Tannoy announcements on -Terminal EMA’ and beyond. Like Global Communication’s masterpiece 76:14, and their own Further Vexations and Radio Scarecrow, the album is awash with lush synths and a meticulous thread of abstract human input – although 76:14‘s hushed whispers are taken to the nth degree on -Lounge’, with the inhuman hive mind emitting a mere din.
The mood on Music For Real Airports ebbs and flows between detached reality, claustrophobia and occasional moments of sweet reprieve. Near the album’s centrepiece, the chattery metallic breakbeats on -Striplight Hate’ and the tinnitus hum on -Future Delay Thinking’ are absolved by the lone echo of a piano and elegiac strings on -Delay 9′, even if the milling voices and beeping phones recall the giddy time-lapse scenes in the movie Koyaanisqatsi. -Passport Control’ goes even further, the tense monotone bass pulse giving way to an audible exhaled sigh of relief after getting stamped. The respite is short-lived however, as the lumbering dub techno of -Sleep Deprivation’ caves in and embalms the listener in sleep paralysis. The disorientation lifts when the journey terminates at -Business Car Park 9′, a contemplative coda washed over with delicate synths, emerging into the hazy sunlight with a scrunched up face and a longing for your own bed.
It’s hard to say whether The Black Dog’s intention is to rage against the airport experience or to merely document it. Maybe it’s impossible to inject romanticism into the experience of modern day flying. Even transport fetishists Kraftwerk have ignored airports while their manifesto eulogises cycle paths, Autobahns and railways – you can even meet Iggy Pop and David Bowie while waiting for the Trans Europe Express. State recently tested Music For Real Airports on a 24-hour trip from Hamburg to Paris to London to Vancouver with flight delays galore – and the resulting hallucinations weren’t as pleasant as seeing Iggy and David. Suppose we don’t really need The Black Dog to tell us that airports are shit.