After The Black Dog’s original three-piece line up split up back in the late nineties, with Ed Handley and Andy Turner going on to form Plaid, sole remaining original member Ken Downie took a break from music for six years following the release of 1999’s Peel Session, a self-imposed exile eventually broken with the release of The Black Dog’s Silenced album through Soma in 2005. Like its predecessor, this follow-up Radio Scarecrow sees the revamped line-up of Downie along Dust Science Productions’ Martin and Richard Dust reconvening for a genuine new album in the wake of the recent reissues of the Dog’s nineties material, and as its spooky title suggests, sees the trio influenced heavily by their interest in Electronic Voice Phenomenon and Numbers Stations, with examples of both present amongst several of the 17 tracks collected here.

It’s also certainly a collection that slowly unfurls itself in layers, with opening segue track Transmission kicking things off with a two-minute long drift through blissful ambient pads and subtly dubbed-out percussion hits, only for Train By The Autobahn Part 1 to pick up the pace ever so very slightly, as crunching downbeat IDM rhythms lock into place like permafrost being broken, beneath a vast backdrop of ringing harmonic drones and warm bass swells, before the track’s second part takes things off on a retro-electro glide that’s pure Trans Europe Express.

Meanwhile, Riphead V9 offers up a seductively ominous crawl through streamlined techno snare programming and brooding sub-bass pulses that’s equal parts dubby and floor-oriented, calling to mind the ghost of earlier TBD high water-marks such as _Cost, while the self-explanatory EVP Echoes offers up one of this album’s most spooky subaquatic moments, sending spiky synth stabs ricocheting back and forth like bursts of sonar across a steel-edged backing of hissing electro rhythms before the spectral sound of an impassive Numbers Station voice flits through the mix like a ghost.

While Radio Scarecrow shows The Black Dog adding more detail to their established sonic palette rather than taking on any real divergent new directions, longtime fans should be well pleased by what’s in store for them here.

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