Sheffield's techno culture is built on The Black Dog. Not that they've ever been interested in behaving like a heritage act.
Formed almost at the gestation of techno itself, the project helped define a new kind of British machine music. Records like Bytes and Spanners showed us a new kind of intricate and emotional music – unapologetically strange, but soon familiar, as others strived to catch up – that sat somewhere between techno, ambient and a future nobody had named yet. Our favourite tunes of today are still marked with their fingerprints.
For nearly 40 years, they've hunted for the next problem to pull apart. On Radio Scarecrow, Music for Real Airports, and Music for Photographers, they've explored surveillance, architecture, sleeplessness, and post-industrial collapse (who else, in an age of TikTok edits and AI playlists, could rule that a record "should be played in full when visiting any location"?). Then there's recent work such as Loud Ambient, which pushes ambient music away from the background and turns it into something huge, physical and slightly overwhelming. Brian Eno could never.
Their relationship with No Bounds runs deep, from commissioned work to live shows. This year, they're performing a special version of Loud Ambient at our opening concert. They'll feel the earth shake in Leeds as they test the Danley Subs.
