Matthew Dear
(Ghostly International)
So many Matthew Dears to choose from since in his time in the (mostly instrumental) sunshine of edgy electronic music. Big techno, teensy microhouse, muddled ambient(t) soundscapes, chipper vocal tech-pop a la Cale/Eno’s Wrong Way Up - under his name or some nom de plume - all fell under Dear’s jaggedly forward thinking domain since his start.
Black City marks a change in that it backs away from the sun and sounds a bleak call for industrial (albeit occasionally danceable) morass. Mostly dark and steely, corrosively crusty tracks like “You Put a Smell on Me” move with a fist-fucked seedy (yet sultry) vibe that an unholy combining of NIN and Depeche Mode might’ve had if both outfits weren’t truly twee pussies. Dear doesn’t quite round the corner toward Foetus country - the simmering sex soul of “Honey” and some of Dear’s odd lyrical triple entendres - but he’s that close.
By the time Dear drives through his bleak mechanistic City with its gear-grinding grooves and dirt-ball noise, he hits an intersection and finds himself back at the lush even beautiful Eno-pop of “Gem” - a near-epic that’s as sad and yearning as the rest of the album is salacious.
DOWNLOAD: “Little People (Black City),” “Honey” “You Put a Smell on Me” A.D. AMOROSI
