'Images of Survival' by dogmarket

It was only a couple of days ago that I zoomed in on the dogmarket song "mousebites" as I took each track of our ‘Hot Music Live Presents' Volume Sixteen compilation in turn.

Yesterday their latest album ‘Images of Survival' came out to celebrate Valentines Day.

I'd love to describe its nine songs to you and although I've had a shot already as both "Give Up the Ghost" and "Stray Animal", the work of this deeply idiosyncratic & experimental musician is always going to present a challenged as far as finding the right words goes. Since dogmarket appears to be the only practitioner of  "SADGAYELECTRONICA" anywhere, there isn't much of a genre archive to borrow from. Though it's good to know that our area appears therefore to be the global hub of this style.

Another uniqueness involved is that it's all Thom Lea so the unity of vision here is total.

For fans of "mousebites" and their other previously released songs, these new ones ("for the Day", "the Light Comes from Over Me", "Young Man (Images of)", "to Thomas from David to Death", "the Shoreline", "Worship Song" and "Parting of the Sea" are the names of the others) can probably be said to share kindred sensibilities without actually sounding rigidly similar.

In fact they subvert any expectations of electronica & nothing but electronica with the album kicking off with an acoustic guitar (albeit a bit processed) on "for the Day": I'm sure this is an artist comfortable with subverting preconceptions.

It's one of those albums in which so many sounds have been incorporated from a variety of generating sources that identifying them all is impossible and frankly deconstructing to the minutest level seems a bit disrespectful to me: the artist after all wants you to hear & enjoy the final blend. What I can say however is this approach results in great internal variety. It's not an homogenous collection.

It is however a deeply personal one: the precise allusions to circumstances experienced by Thom are only fully comprehensible to them but you get the gist and the consequent emotional truth & depth informs the songs. The album title indeed hints at the stories within which may be seen as a really personal odyssey with the challenges inherent in such a journey.

So there is plenty of melancholy is ‘Images of Survival': dogmarket is an artist who seems most at home in the minor but also very assured at putting across the beauties of the form: the Soft Cell tribute here is totally apt and much appreciated by this writer.

However there is the term ‘survival' and despite the vicissitudes in their path (and there are some pretty raw episodes), here at the conclusion is dogmarket creating & being appreciated for their creations. And I think that's a good place to end up.