Bigger, better, darker and wiser: the Black Dog serves up a fabulous EP of richly melodic but unstintingly inventive techno. The Black Dog are back with a fresh cadre of collaborators who alternately surprise and delight with this selection of tunes that shift and mutate in all the right places.

Tracklisting
a1. 4 3s 777
a2. Bite Thee Back
b1. Invoke
b2. Evoke

Throughout the EP, nagging glitches give way to insistent melodies that are themselves eclipsed by stuttering swathes of noise. “Bite Thee Back” seduces with gamelan tinkling that swells into delicious grooves. On “Evoke”, underwater pulses merge with syncopated bottle-tapping rhythms. The Black Dog’s mastery of atmospherics is richly evident on “Invoke”. The most obviously esoteric music on the EP, it is perversely the most accessible. An extremely well-judged soft, sweet electro blues, it expertly marries ear-bending acoustic instrumentation with cavernous dub.

Everywhere the Black Dog’s trademark sonic experimentation has been sharpened into sleek, tempered electronica that’s listenable, without taking the dancefloor’s attention for granted. A magisterial statement of intent from electronic music’s most compelling unnatural force.

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