Black Dog Productions - Bytes, Spanners (reissue/remaster/repress, Warp)

Fresh pressings on coloured and black vinyl. You know what to do. Also available as a bundles from Bleep.

these two albums are the best Black dog projects to date. Spanners is one of my favorite albums of all time, absolute classics. This shit sounds so ahead of it's time. The way they fused psychedelic sounding weird ass shit with techno was amazing.

Amazing I had no idea! When did this get announced??

  On 6/15/2023 at 12:26 PM, thumbass said:

these two albums are the best Black dog projects to date.

There will never be anything like them from the source, natch. I'm also partial to the GPR releases, Temple Of Transparent Balls and the EP material, Cost II is one of the best tracks they've ever done.

  On 6/15/2023 at 12:52 PM, Friendly Stranger said:

Amazing I had no idea! When did this get announced??

I got the emails for both from Dust Store's Bandcamp about 40 minutes ago.

These albums are without question the pinnacle of The Black Dog's output (pre the Plaid split or not).  In fact they're two of the greatest albums of all time!  3/4 Heart and Psil-cosyin/Chase The Manhattan kill me to this day.  Sensational.

The email from The Black Dog says they have both been remastered.  I'm not clear on whether that's correct?  There's nothing in the blurb on bleep or bandcamp that mentions remastering, seems to be a simple a repress?  I'd buy these again if they were a remaster, the original mastering on Bytes in particular was very poor (clipping).  I guess that is part of the charm though.

  On 6/15/2023 at 2:46 PM, NewSchoolScience said:

These albums are without question the pinnacle of The Black Dog's output (pre the Plaid split or not).  In fact they're two of the greatest albums of all time!  3/4 Heart just kills me to this day.  Sensational.

The email from The Black Dog says they have both been remastered.  I'm not clear on whether that's correct?  There's nothing in the blurb on bleep or bandcamp that mentions remastering, seems to be a simple a repress?  I'd buy these again if they were a remaster, the original mastering on Bytes in particular was very poor (clipping).  I guess that is part of the charm though.

They said that the albums were remastered on insta and twitter as well so I think it's not just a reissue.

I was curious about the remaster part myself.  These were absolute top 10 albums for me growing up, with Spanners as my #1.  So especially if these are remastered, I'm in!

  On 6/15/2023 at 12:26 PM, thumbass said:

Spanners is one of my favorite albums of all time, absolute classics. This shit sounds so ahead of it's time. The way they fused psychedelic sounding weird ass shit with techno was amazing.

My sentiments exactly, it really is a timeless piece of work.  Such a beautiful and well paced album.  Raxmus just pulls you in and by the time you get to Chesh you're floating in the clouds.

Bleep’s response to the remaster question…

  On 6/15/2023 at 6:43 PM, hayhook said:

Bleep’s response to the remaster question…

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Thanks for clarifying @hayhook!

Colored vinyl already sold out?! Damn

  On 6/15/2023 at 8:06 PM, xox said:

Colored vinyl already sold out?! Damn

Bleep has them as a bundle.

  On 6/15/2023 at 8:08 PM, dcom said:

Bleep has them as a bundle.

Yes!

Ill probably have to buy them from bleep but I try to avoid buying records from the UK bc of crazy additional costs I usually have to pay (fees/taxes)

  On 6/15/2023 at 8:19 PM, xox said:

I try to avoid buying records from the UK bc of crazy additional costs I usually have to pay (fees/taxes)

I used to do almost all of my vinyl shopping from the UK, but after Brexit and the stricter EU import/customs laws everything from outside the EU is snapped up by (Finnish) customs and held captive until VAT (24 % on all costs, including p&p) and duties are paid, the Finnish Post takes 2,9 € per declared package or they'll not deliver etc. It's annoying AF, and some UK releases don't even make it to EU shops, and if they do, the markup is obscene, so usually the price is the same whether you get the items as imports from an EU shop or order from the UK and handle the customs hassle and VAT costs yourself. Unless, of course, the UK shop is part of IOSS, then you pay the VAT to the shop and they (hopefully) slap their IOSS code on the package and it just might come through customs on its own, but most of the time I'm forced to declare those as well, and trying to get the IOSS code from an arbitrary shop is like pulling teeth. But every once in a while, the system works and a package gets delivered directly, but it's a rare occasion indeed.The old method of marking the package as a gift does not work, because everything has value, even gifts, so they have to be declared as well, so I've become very proficient in the minutiae of customs declarations.

So Black Dog and Warp are saying different things about whether it's a remaster

mandela effect...could've swore that Spanners was remastered before. discogs just confirmed no dice... my brain must've tricked me into thinking the 2002 re-issue sounded clearer from some reason.

  On 6/15/2023 at 8:32 PM, dcom said:

I used to do almost all of my vinyl shopping from the UK, but after Brexit and the stricter EU import/customs laws everything from outside the EU is snapped up by (Finnish) customs and held captive until VAT (24 % on all costs, including p&p) and duties are paid, the Finnish Post takes 2,9 € per declared package or they'll not deliver etc. It's annoying AF, and some UK releases don't even make it to EU shops, and if they do, the markup is obscene, so usually the price is the same whether you get the items as imports from an EU shop or order from the UK and handle the customs hassle and VAT costs yourself. Unless, of course, the UK shop is part of IOSS, then you pay the VAT to the shop and they (hopefully) slap their IOSS code on the package and it just might come through customs on its own, but most of the time I'm forced to declare those as well, and trying to get the IOSS code from an arbitrary shop is like pulling teeth. But every once in a while, the system works and a package gets delivered directly, but it's a rare occasion indeed.The old method of marking the package as a gift does not work, because everything has value, even gifts, so they have to be declared as well, so I've become very proficient in the minutiae of customs declarations.

 

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Yeah brexit faqd us all! Now i need to pay 25% of vat, 10% for customs fees and sometimes additional few % for godknows what!
I used to order everything from the uk… records, music gear, clothes…

Wicked news.  Have the originals on vinyl but will buy the repress anyway,  will be really nice to have fresh copies.

BTW this means that the only AI series releases not repressed are Polygon Window's Surfing On Sine Waves, Speedy J's Ginger (although Speedy J did a digital re-release/remaster in 2021) and AiII.

  On 6/15/2023 at 12:54 PM, dcom said:

There will never be anything like them from the source, natch. I'm also partial to the GPR releases, Temple Of Transparent Balls and the EP material, Cost II is one of the best tracks they've ever done.

I got the emails for both from Dust Store's Bandcamp about 40 minutes ago.

Cost II is my jam! I've never heard it mentioned by anyone besides you but it deserves recognition. 

  On 6/15/2023 at 9:09 PM, atypic said:

So Black Dog and Warp are saying different things about whether it's a remaster

 

Yeah noticed that too, though I'd be inclined to trust the source:

  On 6/17/2023 at 12:28 PM, mcbpete said:

Yeah noticed that too, though I'd be inclined to trust the source:

 

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Interesting, I assume it was Ken working on it.  It would be odd if it was the Dust Science bros, considering they have nothing to do with the OG releases.

I wonder if the digitals will be the remastered version.  

Ok cool that's exciting news!  Deffobuy

Bandcamp has a couple of sample tracks up for each album.  Sounding so lush at first listen.  Haven't compared back to back on the remaster

Spanners stands out. No need for a remaster. Usually "remastered" means "Braindead modern days producer removes dynamics and makes all kinds of other mistakes".

Recent example with Squarepusher "Feed me the weird remaster" where they made some tracks mono. LOL.