It’s remarkable, and not coincidental, that both modern music’s most sincerely analog and most ruthless binary outputs escaped from of the same town. Motown’s multi-track walls of sound (and the soul therein) quickly relented to a deliberate, ruthless 4/4 404. Both sounds are now universally celebrated, while the town itself remains a gimmie punchline.
This is where Matthew Dear grew up. Matthew Dear; Ghostly International label upstarter, he of many monikers, and of remix royalty, has a new self-titled record called Black City.
It is dark. From the production, to the lyrics, to the album art, it is dark. Dark, in most circles, means bad. It connotes violence, gloom, the unknown, and moral decay. But also know that “dark”, as in dark bars, dark corners, and darkened windows, are just as likely to be agents of visceral (vice?) pleasure as they are menace.
This album shifts and seethes. It is unsettled, uneven, but a trip worth taking. It’s rife with warped and distended vocal cuts and samples — mostly Dear himself — double-tracking a low register and high register to haunting, disparate effectiveness.
Despite applying his birth name to this LP as opposed to his many pseudonyms (False, Audion, Jabberjaw), the album does not seem to mine Dear’s personal experience for lyrical content — at least not directly. It has narrative qualities but, save for the beautiful sunrise closing track “Gem,” our Black City tour guide pretty much keeps the guise of a cold-blooded kraut rocker or a club posturer for most of the midnight ride.
It’s especially evident in “You Put a Smell on Me” going all Biggie Smalls on us, talking game about big black cars and little red nightgowns. Dear oozes lines backed by hiccuping blips and organ. This moody, funky, plodding swagger actually succeeds earlier in the album with mid-tempo standout, “Slowdance”. In what sounds like a club track whose vocals, rhythm, and kit are slowed to a sexy trudge, Dear’s lines are slack, rhythmic, and effortlessly laid over a thick slice of distended synth and drum snare fill.
The centerpiece of the album is the title-referencing “Little People (Black City)” which is not so much a song as three movements – all a nod to D-town techno past. It starts as a fairly typical, albeit catchy, club track — not anthemic enough to be a dance floor standout, but it wasn’t intended to be one. A sole, tinny cowbell settles in, echoing over atmospherics and synthetic strings as Dear deftly transitions (as DJ/Producers are prone) to looped vocal clatter as the track segues into a second song section. With a vaguely tribal vocal pattern refrain, Dear’s content here is, as with most disco/techno, embellishment. As the repetition of “Love me like a clown” falls into an abyss of noise — a blackhole of noise swallowing the track — what appears on the other side is a ghostly disco vocal chorus with echo-canyon funk guitar that deftly slips into a hypnotic mix.
So what does it all mean? What prompts a musician with a wealth of A.K.A.’s to use his birth name when releasing a new album? It infers, accurately or not, that this album is a reflection themselves. Is that statement sincere? Ask Robert Allen Zimmerman. Is it affectation? Reggie Kenneth Dwight might know. Is it branding? Stefani Germanotta has a thought.
But what is here, if it’s not directly personal, are some motifs – acknowledgments of humanity — that sit obscured behind technology (in this case a drum sequencer). There’s monkeyness here, and tribalness … brooding and braggadocio … reality and drugs … bacchanalian nights and modern living. It’s a swath of murky content with a warm human core that rhythm always provides.
Black City drops on 8/17 and you can get some free MP3 at his site here.
Yeah yeah, so we’ve been busy and neglected Bembang, what with the holidays, moving, trips to Rome and Amsterdam (Brian), Taiwan and the Philippines (Lille), Chicago and Mexico (Araceli). But even from the remotest mountain in Baguio I have time to post the just-announced Coachella lineup. I’m not super excited about the lineup, but Sunday seems doable. See you guys there?
FRIDAY APRIL 16: Jay-Z, LCD Soundsystem, Them Crooked Vultures, Vampire Weekend, Deadmau5, Public Image Limited, The Specials, Grizzly Bear, Passion Pit, Echo and the Bunnymen, Benny Benassi, Fever Ray, Grace Jones, She & Him, Erol Alkan, The Avett Brothers, Calle 13, The Whitest Boy Alive, The Cribs, La Roux, Yeasayer, Lucero, DJ Lance Rock, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Proxy, Ra Ra Riot, Deer Tick, Wolfgang Gartner, Aeroplane, Iglu & Hartly, Sleigh Bells, P.O.S., Baroness, Hockey, Little Dragon, White Rabbits, Wale, Kate Miller-Heidke, As Tall as Lions, Jets Overhead, Alana Grace, Pablo Hassan.
SATURDAY, APRIL 17: Muse, Faith No More, Tiësto, MGMT, David Guetta, The Dead Weather, Hot Chip, Devo, Coheed and Cambria, Kaskade, 2Many DJ’s, Major Lazer, Dirty Projectors, Gossip, Z-Trip, The xx, John Waters, Les Claypool, The Raveonettes, Mew, Sia, Camera Obscura, Tokyo Police Club, Porcupine Tree, Old Crow Medicine Show, Aterciopalados, Bassnectar, Frightened Rabbit, Dirty South, Flying Lotus, Corinne Bailey Rae, Pretty Lights, Shooter Jennings, RX Bandits, The Almighty Defenders, Edward Sharp and the Magnetic Zeros, Craze & Klever, Zoe, The Temper Trap, Portugal. The Man, Band of Skulls, Girls, Beach House, Steel Train, Frank Turner.
SUNDAY, APRIL 18: Gorillaz, Pavement, Thom Yorke????, Phoenix, Orbital, Spoon, Sly and the Family Stone, De La Soul, Julian Casablancas, Plastikman, Gary Numan, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Sunny Day Real Estate, Yo La Tengo, MUTEMATH, Deerhunter, Infected Mushroom, Club 75, Matt & Kim, The Big Pink, Gil Scott-Heron, King Khan and the Shrines, Florence and the Machine, Yann Tiersen, Little Boots, Miike Snow, Talvin Singh, Ceu, B.o.B., Babasonicos, Owen Pallett, The Glitch Mob, Mayer Hawthorne, Local Natives, Rusko, The Middle East, Hadouken!, The Soft Pack, Kevin Devine, Paparazzi, Delphic, One EskimO.
Tickets for COACHELLA go on sale Friday, January 22 at 10 a.m. at all Ticketmaster locations and www.coachella.com. Three-day weekend passes are $269, plus surcharges. More details on layaway, camping options and up-to-the minute information, can be found at www.coachella.com.
I interviewed Peaches for The Onion here. In the interview she talks about Lady Gaga possibly ripping her off, and fans who try to touch her inapporpriately, however that goes for Peaches. Tonight she’s going to be in Chicago! Next week it will be Los Angeles. Here’s an outtake from the interview:
Lille/The AV Club: Most of the reviews of this tour talk about the high level of energy.
Peaches: It’s just something that I do, actually. I have an entertainment disease (laughs). I just think if you’re nervous and you hold it back if you’re doing a live show, it takes more energy [then letting it all out]. I think I’m on top of my game in my live show and my music. Right now I have a full band, costumes, homemade lasers.
11.20.2009 Chicago, Metro - Smart Bar
11.28.2009 Los Angeles, The Wiltern
In the club world, getting your song remixed by Fred Falke is the equivalent of Jesus himself descending on your warehouse party and licking your eyeball in appreciation of good electro.
Such is the honor bestowed on BURNS, who’s track “First Move” off of the Tecknique EP, received the Falke-First-Ask-Questions-Later treatment earlier this year. BURNS is doubly-blessed by touring with Deadmau5, whose reputation for killer beats was substantial enough to draw Lollapaloozers away from Sunday night headliners this year to the consistently impressive DJ Tent.
But BURNS himself is no Extenze — that is, all hype with questionable results — he has a killer feel for club music. He deftly swaps genres with a turgid middle-finger to dance label snobs. “Tecknique” starts the EP with loops you’d expect from a Matthew Dear track, while the bass and obligatory femme vocal sample fit it squarely in modern House. Two tracks later “In My Eyes” illuminates its thumps with enough funky clips and cuts that make you think he threw his turntables out the window and bought a laptop… because he wanted to make something real.
