In the wrong hands, this imagery would adorn a cheesy trance release. The label art had no credits, but a pair of intricate and detailed fractal designs.
Richie cleverly pushed the D and G to the edges of the sleeve, giving a perception of space in which a fractal cube sat heavily in the centre of the design. An innovative user of fonts, he would go on to design the classic logo for my own ART label a year later. Richie B was like an unofficial member of The Black Dog collective. The art concept was designed by the graphics guru Richie Burridge. The computer-heavy theme was shown on the sleeve design and label art. That summer Ken, Ed and Andy finished a collection of tracks that they thought strong enough for their debut EP as The Black Dog. Sequencing was computer-based, as Ken would run an early MIDI sequencer program made by a company called Doctor Ts on an Atari ST, the computer of choice for early electronic musicians. Other equipment in the tiny studio included an Oberheim Matrix 1000 and a Fostex eight-channel mixer.
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I had no previous experience with musical equipment, and it was Ken who showed me how to program a Roland TR-808. My own involvement in the music amounted to a few sketches that were never finished. But in recent interviews, Ken has alluded to the other meaning of The Black Dog: a metaphor for the depression he's battled his entire life. I always assumed the name The Black Dog was a reference to a magical, folkloric animal. For him, it seemed a positive inspirational force. Ken talked a lot about magic, but never in a pretentious way. The studio walls were covered in Egyptian hieroglyph and occult references. He was quiet and mysterious, but also the dominant creative force behind The Black Dog. Ken would often send us out for obscure modem parts or computer chips. Ken was running an early form of social media called a "bulletin board." It was clear from my few visits that this was just as important as the music.
It hummed with the warm vibrations of computer drives and modems. It was in the shadow of the famous Post Office Tower in central London, and was quite unlike any room I'd seen. The studio, known as Black Dog Towers, was in a caretaker's office. One Saturday afternoon, Ed and Andy visited and told me they'd been working on some techno tracks at a small studio nearby, and invited me to come along and share some ideas. I had a part-time job at the secondhand store Reckless Records in Soho. Ed, Andy and myself found ourselves living in London in our late teens. I would often DJ at local breakdance battles, and our relationship began in those days. I knew Ed and Andy as part of a breakdance crew from a small village outside Ipswich. The Black Dog were the trio of Ken Downie, Ed Handley and Andy Turner. This techno-breaks hybrid was encapsulated best on Virtual, the first release by The Black Dog. EPs on DIY British labels would imitate Derrick May on one side and supply breaks-heavy rave tracks on the other. DJs such as Norman Jay straddled both camps at nights like High On Hope, but the most creative fusion of hip-hop's b-boy breaks and house and techno productions came with rave tunes that blended both. This rave scene developed parallel to an equally popular golden-era for hip-hop and rare groove.
There was Derrick May's "Strings Of Life" of course, but also the subtler aesthetic of "It Is What It Is," also by May under the name Rhythim Is Rhythim, or R-Tyme's "R-Theme." Among the acid house and rave classics, the occasional sound of melodic futurism would appear for those deeper moments of E-induced euphoria. The summer of 1989 was the second summer of love.
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