Matthew Dear - Black City

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4...according to our Ant on Thu 12 Aug, 2010.

The first time I clocked this record was actually by Matthew Dear I was shocked. I've not heard him do this dark experimental pop stuff before. It's a sort of blend of synth/ electro pop with some funky basslines and catchy hooks and some darker disco elements. A few of the tracks feel sorta sleazy and although there is a little dancefloor appeal I reckon it probably fits more into home listening. I'm reminded of everything from David Byrne to Hot Chip. I particularly like the slower tracks which have some lovely synth sounds. An album bursting with ideas, all of which are well realised.

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“I’m a gross machine… I’m in love with ghosts” - Matthew Dear, ‘More Surgery’

Depending on whom you ask, Matthew Dear is a DJ, a dance-music producer, an experimental pop artist, a bandleader. He co-founded both Ghostly International and its dancefloor offshoot Spectral Sound. He’s had remixes commissioned by The XX, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Spoon, Hot Chip, The Postal Service, and Chemical Brothers; he’s made mixes for the Fabric mix series and Get Physical’s Body Language. He maintains four aliases (Audion, False, Jabberjaw, and Matthew Dear), each with its own style and distinct visual identity. His highly anticipated fourth album, 2010’s Black City--the follow up to 2007's critically acclaimed Asa Breed-is the culmination of years of hard work and experimentation, a darkly playful sound-world that envelops the listener like the arms of a malevolent lover.

Matthew Dear’s Black City can’t be found on any map. It’s a composite, an imaginary metropolis peopled by desperate cases, lovelorn souls, and amoral motives. Like most literary Gothams, Black City is a place to love and hate, as seedy and seductive as a nightclub’s back room. Matthew Dear, the musician, may live in New York City, but the Matthew Dea rof Black City inhabits a sound-world unlike any other: a monument to the shadowy side of urban life that bumps and creaks, shudders and wakes up screaming in the middle of the night. Black City is Matthew Dear’s darkest and most engrossing work to date.

Black City arrives on Ghostly International 16th August. Now is Matthew Dear’s moment, and it sounds like nothing else. As well as the usual formats, Black City will also be released in a limited edition design package made by an award winning design firm Boym, who won the Cooper Hewitt Design Museum's National Design Award in 2009.

Tracklisting:

1. Honey 02. I Can’t Feel 03. Little People (Black City) 04. Slowdance 05. Soil To Seed 06. You Put A Smell On Me 07.Shortwave08. Monkey 09. More Surgery 10. Gem

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