Review: Matthew Dear - Black City

Matthew Dear is electronica's ever-prolific chameleon. When he is not "himself", he works under his other pseudonyms Audion, False and Jabberjaw. The compartmentalizing of his multiple personalities allow him to keep an arms length from the music itself, working as more of a emotionless technician than a connected musician, considering his beats and blips in a more critical state. If there was a genre of music that self-imposed distance would be a strength, the wide umbrella of electronic music would find that quality a sheltered space. Yet Matthew Dear saves his most personal expressions for "Matthew Dear" where his tightly wound tracks are at their most organic and he allows his voice, albeit a deep and taciturn yet leeringly inviting one, opine on his hopes, loves, fears and inner demons.

The new album Black City on the label Ghostly International is Matthew Dear's fourth release of original music under his self-moniker. It picks up where his amazingly connected 2007 LP Asa Breed left off. Where Asa Breed was positive in feel, even joyous as times, Black City has a literal naming, feeling like a paranoid, shadowy crawl through a futuristic Urbania. As in the past, there is still sex appeal in this album. Rather than the comparatively relaxed, loving odes from past efforts, these are the encounters of leather and lather, straps and masks, aches and pain. Beginning with the track "Honey", a sweet breezy ballad slowly becomes creepy as night falls over. The darkness rolls into the next track " I Can't Feel" that insistently shuffles and hums featuring a funky slap bass as Dear flips between falsetto and that dirty and detached leer. It sets up the album's centerpiece "Little People (Black City)", a nine minute techno groove that reminds us of his Detroit roots. The silky synths slink around the dance floor as the vocals reflect the upbeat mood, then again take a turn from the brightly lit nightclub to a seedy underbelly where dancing is a remedy for a prevailing paranoia.

It is at this point when Black City stays on its dark path and becoming a challenge to the techno fan. The three track stretch of "You Put A Spell On Me", "Shortwave" and "Monkey" vacillates between expansive experimental and straight up industrial clank making the tone intriguing while forcing the astute listener to inquire on Dear's motives. The imprints are widely far flung as he recalls Wax Trax then nabs the slinky bass from The Beatles "Come Together" then envoking Talking Heads' Fear Of Music all in successive songs. It reveals that the influences for Black City's topics of isolation and fear can be found in the most varied of places. The listener is allowed to relax again when the machine pulse of "More Surgery" acts as a confessional on his unavoidable aging. Finally, the surprising piano ballad "Gem" brings the drawn out events of the evening to its final stop while Dear returns to his own humanity. Black City is a wild trip for Matthew Dear this time around and at times a temperamental mosaic, but not without it's strikingly intriguing benefits.

Listen to the entire album at Ghostly International here.

Purchase the album Black City here.

Read my reviews of Matthew Dear tracks Soil To Seed and I Can't Feel.