Spanners

IDM, Intelligent Dance Music or it could be Loud Ambient or Ambient Techno. I think Ambient Techno fits better. I listened to the album a couple of time and was really unimpressed. Then I listened again with my earbuds... made a huge difference. This is one of those albums that is more about the subtle sounds along with the ambient beats. Chase the Manhattan seemed to be the best song based on my first listen. But this album doesn't seem to be about individual tracks, it's more of a complete package of sounds and style. I can see this album growing on my as time goes on. Standouts: Chase the Manhattan Rating: 3/5

Really great to listen to! I hope I can remember to go back to this band later because they’re perfect for a lot of occasions!

I'm surprised to see this one added to the list. I know it pretty well but it's probably pretty niche. The Black Dog were (at this point in time) made up of Ken Downie, Ed Handley and Andy Turner. Handley and Turner would depart shortly after to focus in their more successful side project Plaid. Downie continued with a changing lineup until his death in 2025 but never really made the same impact after this one. So if I'm honest, I've always thought of The Black Dog really more as the early version of Plaid with Turner and Handley being the real stars here. Indeed by the time of their full length debut album 'Not for Threes' (the title I assume alludes to them being a duo now), Plaid were working Bjork and attracting the attention of Trent Reznor who released the album in the US. But their rise definitely started as part of The Black Dog and this album in particular. 'Spanners' was released by Sheffield-based Warp Records around the time of their 'Artificial Intelligence' compilation series. Those releases were pretty significant for carving out a different kind of electronic music. Less for the dancing and more for the imagination. Kind of a revolutionary idea for the time. The series also included other artists who would become big within the genre, including Aphex Twin and Autechre, though both would push the boundaries to extremes shortly after. The Black Dog and Plaid stayed a bit more true to form, making music that sounded curious and oddly sweet. So I see the significance here. It's not the best example of this subgenre but it was a major release within it at the time. Does it hold up today? Yeah sort of. It's an interesting release. There are some great songs that helped pave the way for a lot of other artists. There also loads of filler in my opinion. I would have gone with a Plaid album personally but I get why someone might pick 'Spanners'.

I’m not familiar with Spanners, but I’m always down for some electronica music. When I was completing the main list, I thought that I was really going to love the electronica albums, but most of them were just fine to me. Hopefully Spanners can break through! The Black Dog is a little short of five stars for me, but I’d easily swap it for some of the electronica albums from the main list. The longer this album went on, the more I enjoyed and appreciated it, and even though each song managed to add something unique to the album, I felt like The Black Dog was a complete and cohesive album. While I didn’t like the first few songs or the last few songs that much, the middle part of this album was really fun. Some notes on the songs that I liked: I didn’t care for the way that “Barbola Work” started, but it wound up evolving into something really great, with a strong beat and fun looped sounds. I really enjoyed “Chase The Manhattan.” That last minute and a half or so really paid off. Longer songs are always a gamble in my opinion, because I want my investment in the song to be worth it, and on this song, I was definitely rewarded by the end. “Nommo” was really great. The beautiful sound really sucked me in, and the development and evolution of all the elements over the course of the song was outstanding. It earned every second of its run time. “Pot Noddle” was great too, and probably my favorite song on the album. I loved how gentle the arrangement was, which stood in contrast with the percussive elements, but created an overall sound that was excellent. I loved the beat on “End Of Time.” It had a strong pulsing to it that I really loved. The other parts of the music were great too, and everything worked in perfect harmony. While The Black Dog didn’t blow my doors off, I enjoyed branching out with a nineties electronica album from an artist that wasn’t as much of a household name for me.

Huge fan of Plaid's *Not For Threes* over here. So I guess whoever submitted this album now already knows I can be the target audience for this very nice Warp release from the mid-nineties, which saw Ed Handley and Andy Turner join Ken Downie for that early era in the IDM adventures of The Black Dog. Some of the sounds in this release aged a little, but if anything, such aging retrospectively brings an endearing patina to the electronic craft that's displayed in this LP. And speaking of assessing music in retrospect, it was very interesting for me to finally realize the stellar opening track of *Not For Threes*, "Abla Eedio", actually took a great deal of inspiration from "Psyl-Cosyin", the centerpiece of *Spanners* -- mutating into all sorts of off-kilter soundscapes and other crazy shapes during the span of its 10 minutes. Given that Handley and Turner co-wrote that track with Downie, maybe they only drew inspiration from themselves. One can sure sense the two programmers' very distinct sense of melodicism in some of the cuts comprised in the tracklist. Still, it's great that today's suggestion allowed me to broaden my understanding of the genealogy of IDM, at least for its early proponents. And we sure need some other savvy users suggest more recent representatives of that overall electronic music subgenre... It is such a vast continent to explore, and I still have so many "Here Be Monsters" mentions scribbled on the map I currently have for it. So a heartfelt "thank you" to the other explorer now attracting my attention to this record. 3.5/5 for the purposes of this list dedicated to essential albums, rounded up to 4. 8.5/10 for more general purposes (5 for the musicianship and production values + 3.5 for the artistry) ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 117 Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 122 Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 278 (including this one -- as much as I can personally enjoy the music on this album, and as much of a fan of the early Warp catalog as I am, I believe this selection might be a little too "niche" for a finite list of 1001 albums everyone should try to listen to -- and I would actually say the same thing about Plaid's *Not For Threes*, as much as I like this record as well...). ---- Émile, *quatre* nouveaux messages pour toi au dessus, du *Solid State Survivor* de Yellow Magic Orchestra au *Atrocity Exhibition* de Danny Brown

More low key electronica... I'm looking for a word to describe this and not finding it..Insular? Introspective? Anyway, I never mind the listen but I'm not quite sure what this kind of thing is for. Soundtrack for the interstitial interludes of life, maybe.

Música electrónica. Ni fu ni fa.

Ambient stuff. Not bad.

Fine

Electronic dipping into ambient. Overall pleasing but soo long

Its ok 3

It's a fine listen. 3/5

Rating: 6/10 Best songs: Tahr

Interesting one, thought this would be a slog but found myself slightly hypnotized by the blend of house/dance on this LP. Not every track is a winner (you either like the central repeated motif or you don’t), but the fact this album can sustain interest for most of its 75-minute runtime means something is working.

Not a wrench.

It's alright as background music, but mostly forgettable. 3 stars.

This is a very boring electronica album. I don't see what it adds to the list and I wouldn't even recommend it to my electronica-oriented friends.

Maybe it's the third day in a row of getting an album that is over 70 minutes, but damn was this generic. I've just finished listening to it and I've already completely forgotten everything about it. Cut 30 minutes off and you maybe have something I would consider somewhat interesting. My bar for EDM is very high since I dance to those genres and hear some of the very best of that genre around and all these pale in comparison. My personal rating: 3/5 My rating relative to the list: 2/5 Should this have been included on the original list? No.

Not really something I would listen to

Nice background music but forgettable

These ones are always hard to rate because it feels a bit silly of me to complain about an ambient techno album by calling it "background noise", because isn't that kinda what it's going for? It played and I listened. It was chill and I didn't hate it. I will now also proceed to never think about this album's existence ever again. Strong 2/5.

Not my kind of music so this was a hard listen.