Matthew Dear

"It is very sexual. It’s very aggressive."

Matthew Dear speaks in a laconic, but commanding baritone.

It’s the kind of voice that has stories to tell. Over the last eight years the shapeshifting poster boy of leftfield techno has created a nuanced body of work under a variety of guises, but revealed little of himself. That is, until now. On his extraordinary, soul-bearing new album Dear emerges as a master of ambiguous, brooding pop music. ‘Asa Breed’ is a tapestry of opaque insights and overheard arguments channelled into short, punchy songs: songs about relationships, heartbreak and even murder. “It’s about simple life,” he says. “Simple love.”

Dear was born in Texas, but grew up in Ann Arbour, Michigan, forty miles from the techno Mecca of Detroit. It was here he met Sam Valentini who would later set up Ghostly International, now one of the world’s most revered record labels and a hotbed of avant-garde sonic experimentation. “I met Sam about a year before he started the label. He told me all of his dreams, his mad aspirations, what he was going to do musically and I wanted in.” In 1999 Ghostly released its first record, a co-production between Dear and Disco D, the ghetto-tech pioneer who sadly passed away earlier this year. ‘Hands Up For Detroit’ was a deserved smash and bought Ghostly to the world’s attention. Last year, Dutch DJ Fedde Le Grand abhorrently resurrected the song’s vocal hook for his near-ubiquitous Ibiza anthem of the same name.

It was on ‘Dog Days’, Dear’s breakout single from 2003, that he first sung a full vocal. His 2004 album ‘Backstroke’ again featured his singing, but it felt like Dear was experimenting; testing himself and his listeners. “I couldn’t just turn up and make this album three years ago because I think it would’ve confused a few people,” he explains. “I had to slowly incorporate these sounds and ideas into my music.” He has largely spent the time since ‘Backstroke’ releasing blistering, minimal techno funk under his Audion guise. His 2005 album ‘Suckfish’ was a carnal tour de force. With song titles like ‘Titty Fuck’ and ‘Just Fucking’, as Audion, it seems, Dear has just one thing on his mind. “Yes,” he says. “It is very sexual. It’s very aggressive. But only because sex is raw and so is the music.”

Dear is a man of many faces. In the past he has recorded as Jabberjaw and will soon release an album of subversive, twisted techno under the pseudonym False. The splintering of his musical personality, he says, will stop there. “That’s how many personalities I have going on right now. They’re all totally different beasts. It all feeds different parts of me. Sometimes I like being a singer, front and centre, other times it’s fun just to play other people’s music. Just get the kick of mixing records together.”

‘Asa Breed’ is named after a character in Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, but was titled before the author’s recent death. Dear calls it “a sad coincidence.” However, the title of Vonnegut’s great book is useful when describing Dear’s new album. ‘Asa Breed’ is a puzzle of lyrics, an intricate web of loops. The infectious ‘Don & Sherri’; the mournful ‘Midnight Lovers’, it is an album full of feeling. Songs are largely cryptic, but strangely revealing. On the lovelorn ‘Give Me More’ he reveals, “There’s a big hole in my life”; while over the disco bounce of ‘Pom Pom’ he confesses, “I’ve got to figure out love”. “‘Give Me More’ is one of the older ones,” he explains. “There can be big holes in my life, but they can go away.” On ‘Death To Feelers’, Dear openly questions himself: “I was supposed to make grand observations, but I’ve lost my train of thought.” Writing songs is, he says, “a very cautious affair. I like to keep things very rhythmically oriented. It’s more attitude driven.”

It is very sexual. It’s very aggressive. But only because sex is raw and so is the music.

The album is still largely underpinned by the 4/4 thud and stabbing synthesizers that have become Dear’s trademark, but here the electronics make room for live drums, bass and guitar. “I tried to go back to a lot of the old rhythmic, afrobeat music. Pop music but very groove oriented,” he reveals. “Whether it be Talking Heads or Tony Allen or Fela Kuti: to me it’s very organic and real at the same time.” Yet it is Dear’s voice, front and centre, that is the real star. He is by no means a fantastic singer, but artful multi-tracking and clever phrasing help make him a compelling frontman. Dear is about to embark on a tour to support his new album. He will be playing with a drummer and a bass player as Matthew Dear’s Big Hands. “I think I’d be selling myself short and selling my audience short if I didn’t try to flush it out into a real live experience,” he says. “The name was Mark, my drummer’s idea. He was saying ‘we’re kind of like your helping hands.’ Then I remembered that on ‘Fleece On Brain’ [the album’s first track] the lyrics go “your big hands lift me up again”. I thought that was cool, you know, because without them I wouldn’t be able to do this.”

The album ends with ‘Vine To Vine’, a dusty, country-blues stomp in which our hero narrates his own death, a bloody murder in the old American south. “It’s the most detailed story on the album,” says Dear. “I learned that my father had an ancestor, I think it was his great grandfather, who was murdered in Texas by Texas Rangers. He was murdered for his land.” The song is unique in Dear’s canon for its straightforward narrative. “It’s pretty much the only song I’ve ever written that is about a single event. It definitely comes from the most honest place, the most hard, non-fiction place.” Matthew Dear has stories to tell. Are you sitting comfortably?

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