Bytes [Import]

But production isn't everything, as I usually say when talking about electronica records. It's all about the songs, man, and this album sure contains some of those. The best tracks here have a refreshing, pristine sound that calls to mind the alpine landscape pictured on the cover; the best melodies have the feeling of walking around on a clear, breezy morning, with no destination in mind, and admiring nature. "Caz" is built on lovely synth-string melodies that actually benefit from the production - they sound just a little strained, but therein lies their charm. "Carceres Et Novum" starts off with an arresting, ghostly keyboard melody that I would have liked to see expanded into a whole track; of course it's soon subsumed by pounding drums, but soon some droning bass and a piano solo, of all things, are layered on top of them. "Focus Mel" plays short keyboard pulses against more drawn-out synthesizer textures in the background. These tracks develop slowly, but they don't stop developing, and they gradually draw one into a feeling of distant, cool melancholy.

The above three tracks are all arranged in a row at the very start, right after the pretty decent dancefloor opener "Object Orient," so the beginning of the album is very strong. But then comes "Olivine," which is just a repetition of one single little keyboard line for five minutes, and two more tracks later, just when the album kind of starts to regain its momentum, a very bad track called "Fight The Hits" kills it stone dead. In this track, the only non-percussive instrument is some kind of distortion that sounds like someone rhythmically dragging a giant piece of furniture across a room. Ten years since, whatever point this was supposed to make is good and lost. Fortunately, the album closes on a really high note, with "3/4 Heart," which has more harmonious synth-strings, and even an acoustic guitar towards the end. Also, the album contains seven short musical vignettes entitled "Phil." These are used as interludes in between the longer tracks, and they're actually quite good, adding some variety to the album.

Many reviews of this album mention the "polyrhythms," and indeed, the drum tracks here are not your average house beats. They're intricate, layered, and very prominent throughout the album. This can get a little overbearing sometimes - the melodies on the album are calm and reflective, and not very well suited to a whole wall of thumping drums, hissing, processed cymbals, and chirping bass, all going at some unusual time signature. The rhythms might be complex, but the very uniformity of this approach detracts from their originality, because nearly every single track has this kind of percussive craziness, without many breaks or much variance in tempo, sound and volume. The band put too much emphasis on this side of things, I think; aside from the drum tracks, there are good musical ideas kicking around on this album, as well as what rock journalists refer to as "hooks," but one can't help but think that the album would be much better if those ideas were taken even further. Every time I listen to Bytes, I like the good parts more and more, and I gradually become inured to the weaker parts, but I still think that excising at least "Fight The Hits," and probably "Olivine" as well, would make the record drag a lot less. Fifty-odd minutes, after all, is a perfectly reasonable length for an album, and there's no reason to make it longer if there just isn't enough good material. Ultimately, though, it may say a lot that the album is as good as it is, since it was never meant to be a cohesive statement - all of these songs started out as singles released independently of one another under different aliases.

Over time, Bytes has accrued the reputation of a lost classic, an early techno masterpiece from back in the day. Though out of print, it gets its share of name-checking and referencing, and sometimes makes surprise appearances on magazines' lists of the best techno albums ever. This might be due to the fact that two-thirds of Black Dog Productions later set out under the name Plaid, and garnered some critical acclaim. Additionally, Black Dog happened to be recording just as Warp Records, today the premier label for electronica, was getting started. At the time, Warp came out with a compilation called Artificial Intelligence, designed to promote the label as the place for the most groundbreaking new electronica, and followed it up with a series of albums by artists who appeared on that compilation. Bytes was third in this series, so perhaps the album's status has something to do with being at the right place at the right time. Still, the praise it has received is far from undeserved; if you see it in a used CD bin somewhere, by all means pick it up.

This is electronic music at its best. Ambient at times, always progressive and innovative. Black Dog showed techno didn't need to be aimed at the dancefloor. The drum programming on this album was also innovative for its time, few other artists having ventured to do it.