This is part of a series, posting between 30th December 2025 and 3rd January 2026
I’m dead arty, me. I own a watercolour set, and I have a pair of Mondrian-themed socks. I lied about the watercolour set. I appreciate a mooch around a gallery, and so it’s the art world we will turn for the next entry in my Top 20 Bangers of 2025.
The geometric work of the 20th century’s leading square pusher Mark Rothko was an inspiration for The Black Dog’s Loud Ambient. They used Rothko’s colour fields as the building blocks for the album’s varied tones. The Black Dog becomes Orange And Yellow Oblongs Dog.
As a result, their usual brutalist aesthetic has become, as visual metaphor, brilliant. Murky flows of befogged gloom are replaced by sunlit synth cycles. Several Rituals lays down a house beat with roof-raising claps. They Came For My Head is Global Communication surfing a rainbow.
They say they fell back in love with fall back in love with the 707, 808 and 909 while making this album. That’s a series of Roland drum machines, all with slightly different tones. The TR-707 is especially happy in tone, and has been used in italo-disco gubbins.
They did release another album this year, My Brutal Life 2, a continuation of their architecture-themed ambience. But it was this album that added colour to my 2025.
I don’t want to make a habit of this, but I should also acknowledge the upsetting death of The Black Dog’s founding member Ken Downie. Robin Rimbaud, the musician better know as Scanner, put it best in a social media post. I hope he doesn’t mind me quoting him here:
“As a founding presence within The Black Dog, Ken helped carve a language that refused easy spectacle, and his passing leaves a quiet, resonant space in electronic music—one shaped by intelligence, restraint, and an unwavering belief that machines could think, feel, and remember.”
A quiet, resonant space indeed. RIP Ken.
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