Stray Dog City

Founded by myself & Martin Taylor late-autumn 1996 after I answered Martins' ad in Future Music. We met soon after in Wolverhampton & the same night we went back to The Lab for the first of many Stray Dog City (SDC) jams. It was 23rd November 1996 - another 23!

Musically SDC was a clash of post-punk adulation, drone-work & a strong belief in improvisation - that last detail has been a mainstay ever since in any other projects we get involved in. If you can do it well... DO IT!

The only remit to any piece was that we both liked it & that we could play it live. This last point pushed us to do more with less & also made sure our performances would stand up.

From massive post-punk anthems to rainforest coctail jazz, much music was made & many ideas explored. We finally began to create a 'style' & were then able to construct pieces around several frameworks. Few stones were left unturned: we used random tape recordings/found sound, improv-friendly sequencers, vinyl manipulation through effects, loosely constructed drum-loops (to maximise our ability to improvise with machinery), processed vocals & live instrumentation with any number of processes applied. I can't remember it all. We also played with magnetic tape-loops, live-percussion & synthesis. As economy was all, I built a fair bit of the equipment - we got great recordings using very modest kit.


Officially we never released a damn thing, but we recorded a demo:

'Demo'

Intro	Rain Dealer	Stray Dog City	Bell Boy	Dyke Science	Home
Upstairs	Glue Factory	One Bulb	Saucers..	Channel 9	Heatwave

Recorded live in The Lab one heady weekend in March 1997, this was a successful collection of recordings. A number of these were given out to 'Unscene' friends, sent out to record companies, etc. Nothing came of it, which didn't help of course, but also didn't stop us churning out more gems.

Over the time SDC existed we built-up an archive of 46 x C90 tapes containing mostly improvised new material, re-works & run-thru's of existing material. Lots of tape. There are recordings of our first & last gigs. The last gig was part of Unscene#1.

We hope to be releasing some of this material on our STRAY Recordings label.

Anyways, eventually loads of personality shit went down & it became paranoia-tastic. Neither of us was all the ticket at the time. I couldn't say that this affected the music a great deal, just that we didn't want to be around each other to do the music anymore. Subsequently SDC finished early 1998. We both learnt a hell of a lot on both creative & technical levels & it was, all told, fucking boss.


There's some SDC MP3's & another bio on Myspace & STRAY Recordings.