For The Grey Album, The Black Dog have gone back to basics. Inspired by electronic bands such as Depeche Mode and The Human League in their early years, they went back to much older ways of working, with one keyboard per person and a strict limit imposed on the use of the computers.
These were the confines for an album that continues a rich stream of creativity for the Sheffield trio. Proud of their heritage, they are continuing to explore music and architecture simultaneously – and this latest opus taps into both art forms for its inspiration.
What’sthemusiclike?
As its title implied, this is often an album of sombre colour – but there is also an impressive grandeur to the soundscapes The Black Dog conjure up.
That much is immediately evident from the stark outlines and imposing structure of Ghosts Of Decay, with steely synthesizer sounds reminiscent of the band’s city mates Cabaret Voltaire. As the beats arrive so too does an extra urgency, and the bumpy terrain of Let’s All Make Brutalism draws parallels with the trio’s love of 1980s architecture.
The faster tracks on this album are very impressive. Harder Times puts its pedal to the metal with an excellent, low slung groove, while the cleverly named (We Never Needed This) Fascist Groove Thang is excellent. Thee Difference Ov Girls drives forward with great purpose, as does the superb This Is Phil Talking and I Dare You. The last two are peppered with excellent riffs and generate great momentum – before the album subsides into the attractive coda, Borstal Communications sounding like the throb of steelpans.
Does it all work?
It does. The Black Dog are past masters at gauging the structure of an album and do so again here, moving effortlessly between mood and tempo and peaking with a couple of certified bangers.
Is it recommended?
Yes, enthusiastically – The Grey Album is a fine addition to The Black Dog discography, and confirmation that they are very much at the top of their game.
Steve Elcock String Quartets – The Girl from Marseille, Op. 17 (2010); The Cage of Opprobrium, Op. 22 (2014); Night after Night, Op. 27 (2017); The Aftermath of Longing, Op. 36 (2021)
Tippett Quartet [John Mills & Jeremy Isaac (violins), Lydia Lowndes-Northcott (viola), Božidar Vukotić (cello)]
Toccata Classics TOCC0688 [80’31”]
Producer Michael Ponder Engineer Adaq Khan
Recorded 6-8 October 2022, Studio TQHQ, Ruislip, London
Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse
What’s the story?
Toccata Classics continues its survey of Steve Elcock (b1957) – arguably its most important ongoing project – with this collection of his four (to date) string quartets, performed by the enterprising Tippett Quartet and reaffirming his stature among composers of his generation.
What’s the music like?
Elcock is not the first composer to eschew numbering his quartets (Daniel Jones, for instance, differentiated his eight by date), with The Girl from Marseille preceded by at least four such works (one of these refashioned into his Eighth Symphony). Coming after weighty pieces as the Second and Third Symphonies (the latter on TOCC0400), these eight diverse variations in search of a theme – its identity in the title – find his music at its most playful and entertaining, though the fractious final variation pointedly invokes the brutal origins of its source material.
It was the location of this work’s first performance that provided ‘inspiration’ for The Cage of Opprobrium, namely a 16th-century metal pillory used to incarcerate women found walking unaccompanied after dark. Its five continuous sections graphically evoke the imagined victim through alternate slow and fast sections – building towards a violent culmination (its alluding to a famous quartet less striking than the way in which this music is transformed into Elcock’s own), before subsiding into a postlude where mourning is informed by emotional exhaustion.
Emerging in a relatively long gap between Elcock’sFifth and Sixth Symphonies (TOCC0445 and TOCC0616), Night after Night takes its cue from the poem in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Songs of Travel. The first of its six continuous sections, entitled ‘Somniloquy’, evokes those unbidden thoughts of a chronic insomniac then returns between episodes of a more volatile nature. Its climax comes in the aggressive final ‘Incubus’ (later extended into an autonomous orchestral piece), which elides between sleep and wakefulness without hope of reconciliation.
Elcock’s most recent quartet, The Aftermath of Longing is likewise in six continuous sections but is very different in mood. It is also the most inherently abstract of these works, moving fitfully between varying degrees of emotional ambivalence to a penultimate episode whose releasing of the pent-up intensity results only in a desolate recollection of the initial music. Something of its character can be sensed in the composer’s subsequent symphonies, notably the Ninth that is his largest such work to date and may well prove to be his most impressive.
Does it all work?
Indeed, it does and not least because Elcock has put his formative years of playing the violin to profitable use with his idiomatic and resourceful writing for strings. For all their technical demands, nothing is left to chance in these quartets which are evidently building into a cycle scarcely less involving than that of the symphonies. Suffice to add the Tippett Quartet, which premiered Night after Night, proves an assured and persuasive exponent while the running order, of 2-1-4-3, makes for a programme well worth experiencing as a continuous sequence.
Is it recommended?
Very much so. Sound is vivid and detailed, if a little confined in more tumultuous passages, while the composer’s notes are informative without prejudicing the response of each listener. Hopefully these quartets will be taken up by other suitably equipped and inquiring ensembles.
This is a big year for the elusive minds behind Craven Faults. On the horizon is a debut live show in September, where their modular synthesisers, cables and organs will be extracted from the old textile mill where they work, and presented to the public.
Part of that presentation will surely include Standers, the outfit’s second album. A large scale piece, it moves towards a large scale approach that sees four of the six tracks clocking in at more than ten minutes each. Their approach is self-described as ‘a self-contained analogue electronic journey across northern Britain, viewed through the lens of a century in popular music.’ This time around the perspective around the landscapes they create in music is shifting, looking at how their outlines have been shaped by the elements and by human settlers. The interaction between the two provides plenty of raw material for composition.
What’sthemusiclike?
Rather like the artwork. Craven Faults make music of the exquisitely shaded black and white variety, with a combination of panoramic drones and detailed foreground work that makes a lasting impression and keeps the listener coming back for more.
The longer form of composition definitely suits Craven Faults’ music, as it allows each scene to be set, subtly shaded and crafted.
First track Hurrocstanes – which appears to be a historical name for Haddock Stones, in North Yorkshire – makes a striking start. Over the course of a quarter of an hour it emits a regular, tolling chime that is equal parts foreboding and comforting, as the musical landscape beneath pulses with activity, subtly shifting from the root note and back again.
Even more impressive is Sun Vein Strings, a blast of light from its massed banks of keyboards but also with plenty going on elsewhere. The 18-minute epic becomes a series of twisted electronic moves, the lines expanding and contracting with hypnotic regularity, and with the syncopation throwing the listener off the beat.
The shorter tracks are equally concentrated. Severals rises impressively from the depths, its synthesizer lines gaining in stature, while Odda Delf gains a probing piano line.
Descriptive writing is at the heart of Craven Faults work, and the outdoors certainly beckons on a track like Meers & Hushes, describing nature’s efforts to cover the trails of human industry. Its regular pulse suggests past activity, while the drones are highly descriptive. The music rises to a higher pitch, slow riffs playing off each other.
Does it all work?
Yes. Craven Faults have the ability to make music indoors that very clearly portrays the landscapes around them, and the blend of natural and mechanical elements feels just right.
Is it recommended?
Yes. On this evidence the live material will be fascinating to chart – but taken as a standalone work, Standers represents a very fine achievement and a cornerstone of this year’s British electronica.
James Ellis Ford has a most impressive musical CV, whether on the front line or behind the scenes. As an active member of Simian, Simian Mobile Disco and The Last Shadow Puppets, he has never been short of a burning riff or two. These two very different musical outfits enjoyed a more progressive form of rock and then a searing, acidic complement to The Chemical Brothers.
As a producer, Ford has lent production savvy to the likes of Arctic Monkeys, Foals, Klaxons and Jessie Ware among others, and most recently played a big part behind the scenes on Depeche Mode’s new album Memento Mori. He has also produced the upcoming Blur album, The Ballad Of Darren. With all that work in the bank, his first solo album proper – on which he plays all the instruments – could be seen as time off from the day job! Yet it is a meaningful achievement, and clearly good enough for a label as illustrious as Warp to sign him up.
What’s the music like?
Largely unscripted – in the best possible way. Ford’s musical diary to date has shown his ability to move between genres with no effort, and The Hum does this while sticking to a principle of pure musical enjoyment. On occasion the approach is reminiscent of his early days in Simian, when they used to support bands such as Emerson Lake & Palmer.
It is good to hear James singing as well as playing all the instruments, for his voice fits in well with either the psychedelic approach or the pastoral one. I Never Wanted Anything is quite sweetly harmonic in this regard, while The Yips is a brilliant contrast, its creeping riff leaning towards progressive rock.
Pink Floyd cast an attractive shadow – Us and Them especially – as Tape Loop #7 and Pillow Village establish the mood of the album, and on Golden Hour a rich multi-layered vocal comes forward. Squeaky Wheel glints with a touch of the industrial – with passing references that flit between pastoral contentment and the abrasion of Cabaret Voltaire.
A pair of instrumentals in the middle hit the spot. The woozy title track lulls the listener into a false sense of security before Ford goes all-out funk and prog in equal parts, a loping groove and chunky synthesizers giving Caterpillar rich slabs of colour.
Ford moves through the gears on Emptiness, another eventful number, before the soft, warm postlude Closing Time, with a melody that uncannily shadows the Neighbours theme tune.
Does it all work?
Yes. There is very little padding here, and Ford has plenty of interesting ideas – so the mind and ears are always stimulated.
Is it recommended?
Yes, with enthusiasm. Pretty much everything Ford has been involved with has musical vitality and progression, and this solo album is no exception. With any luck it is the start of a series, rather than a one-off.
Hazel Mills has built up an impressive body of work as a keyboard player and backing vocalist for Goldfrapp, Florence + The Machine and Blur’s Dave Rowntree, appearing on his fine album Radio Songs from earlier this year. As a live performer she has recent stints alongside Hannah Peel on her Fir Wave live dates under her belt, and is currently performing with Will Gregory’s Moog Ensemble in Australia.
This EP represents her first dip into solo waters, exercising her songwriting talent on a quartet of tracks that by her own admission take Eurythmics, Kate Bush, Steve Reich and Delia Darbyshire as part of their inspiration.
Joining Hazel is multi-instrumentalist TJ Allen and drummer Alex Thomas, while Gregory and Tim Bran add extra synths to Fragile Creature and Enclosure respectively.
What’sthemusiclike?
Richly evocative and full of character. The well-chosen songs follow a theme of nature vs modernity, and form a self-enclosed unit. They show Mills to be an impressive and urgent writer and vocalist.
The crushed velvet production of Enclosure is matched by Mills’ descriptive vocals, a combination of euphoria and regret. The Embrace is a complementary ballad, full of yearning and with more than a little drama. Mills’ voice has elements of Kate Bush for sure, but Alison Goldfrapp and Tori Amos are also to be found, while her work on the live circuit has given her a strong sense of timing in the musical storytelling.
Hold The Water is poised but tense, the multi-layered voices set against a harmonically restless, stuttering groove. Fragile Creature is certainly that, but there are hints of unrevealed menace, the wordless sighing of backing vocals adding an icy edge to the picture.
Does it all work?
It does. There is much to savour here, and repeated listening – preferably at volume – reveals impressive attention to detail in the sonics and the production, as well as the depth of Mills’ vocals.
Is it recommended?
Enthusiastically. Fans of all the acts mentioned above will want to hear this, for Hazel Mills has an original voice and intensity. It will be interesting to chart her progress for sure.
Arcana.fm 