Spanners was / is the second album from pioneering UK electronic outfit, The Black Dog. A follow-up to Temple Of Transparent Balls – the title a dig at their old label, GPR – it was their first for Warp. The LP opens banging, crashing, and clanking, with the head-nodding Raxmus – a former favourite of Mo Wax founder James Lavelle, who called it “abstrakt funk”. 

That sort of segues into Barbola Work, which picks up where Scoobs In Columbia, a previous single by Black Dog side project, Plaid, left off. A party of programmed patterns, that initially seem random, spiced up by looped latin chants and shouts. This “randomness” giving the rhythm a crazy live energy / feel. Resulting in a racing robotic rhumba, where Transmat’s complexity is taken two steps further. The dance dictated by the overlapping synergy of all its component wheels and cogs. 

Sine waves, stretched into snake-charming sounds, serenade the percussive Psil-cosyin, all clicking and clacking, computerised castanets. Blips and bleeps adding a Morse Code melody. A finale of frantic TB-303 flexing probably giving the track its lysergic-ally leaning name. Chase The Manhattan is also acidic. Its spoken word snippets discussing UFOs and alien intelligence, while tabla taps out a futuristic ritual. One of the disembodied voices talks about “Something altogether different” and I honestly think that upon its release Spanners was totally unique. Even now, nearly 30 years later, there are no obvious past reference points. 

Tahr takes the tempo down again – sounding like a score for a Martian market bazaar, tailored from treated, re-tuned, “world music” samples. A belly-dance in the Star Wars cantina. Playful and poly-rhythmic, Further Harm is the record’s first moment of relative calm. Nommo, though, a meditative march of rattling snares and trippy Tangerine Dream arpeggios is another very nice slice of sunset / sunrise introspection, and Pot Noodle also summons sonic serenity from a combination of keys like plucked acoustic guitar chords and  an oddly syncopated gentle handclap and cymbal loop. 

End Of Time – a bit of big room bionic boogie illuminated by euphoric fanfares / eruptions – is the most traditionally “techno” tune on offer. Riding, as it does, an uncharacteristically rigid, straight, linear, 4 / 4. The delicate, chiming, cascading, Chesh, with its pretty harp-like harmonics must surely have confused, confounded, plenty of folks who bought the album almost 3 decades ago, expecting to find a set of rave anthems / bangers. I’ll admit that I didn’t know what to make of it.* Now, with much hindsight, I’m totally taken aback by how beautiful the bulk of it is, and surprised at how mellow so many of the tracks are. Chock full of the copious counterpoint that became a trademark, there are incredible levels of imagination and invention on display. Each piece being pushed and pulled through multiple changes, mutations, like shape-shiting silicon chip suites. Spanners is a machine music masterpiece. There isn’t a dull, duff, moment on it. I’m still not sure about the Bolt interludes, mind. 

The Black Dog’s remastered, reissued Spanners is available directly from Warp. 

Notes

*My copy of Spanners was a gift from Mark Melton – who was a friend I met through The Lizard, and The Lizard’s brother, Paul. Mark was, and I’m sure still is, a music biz lawyer, who at the time was working for GPR. He later went on to represent Charlotte Church. I DJed at his wedding, following a sublime ambient set from Mixmaster Morris with a car crash of beloved house and Balearic classics, so “refreshed” I could hardly stand. 

**Without these interludes / interruptions the album would play like a perfectly smooth trip. The Bolts break you out of your reverie. Perhaps that’s their point. Pay attention. Don’t drift off.