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Black City

Matthew Dear

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Album Review

Black City is Matthew Dear at his least penetrable and most alluring. If the David Bowie comparisons were to continue, the album would place him somewhere in Lodger territory. The dominance of inscrutable lyrics, peculiar characters and subjects, and alien rhythms makes the album more akin to the likes of Lodger's "African Night Flight," "Yassassin," and "Repetition" than the relatively straightforward "Boys Keep Swinging." Like Asa Breed, Dear's previous full-length, Black City is best described as avant pop, but there is an absence of lucidity, and no song sticks as quickly as "Don and Sherri" or "Deserter." It's all slippery, sleazy, murky sound-substance — knotted rhythms with irregular gaits made all the more surreal by Dear's generally vague, suggestive lyrics and wordless, droning background vocals. Depending on your taste, this will likely be instantly off-putting or progressively pleasurable. Either way, it will probably make you feel like you could use a shower. That Black City is Dear's most creative and individual album is not, however, up for debate.

Customer Reviews

Doom and Gloom for the Dancefloor

Matthew Dear is an electonic artist, a founder of the Ghostly International label, and this is his fourth album. When listening to "Black City" a lot of things will probably to come to mind: dark, sleek, futuristic, landscapes that just ooze mystery and seduction. "Black City" is defintely Matthew Dear's darkest work yet, his low, chilly vocals and airy synths give the album an atmosphere rarely seen in dance music. And while I don't really like comparing artists with each other, this album sounds (to me) like a really, really depressed version of LCD Soundsystem. If you need any evidence that this album was aiming for the dancefloor, just check out the first single "Little People (Black City)", that song is a nine-minute dance epic, it's constanly evolving and getting better and better, incorporating everthing from dance to shoegaze. Sadly, I cannot say that about most of the album, "Black City" tends to get a bit repetitive throughout, but then again you have to understand that is the point here, to get you to stop thinking and start shakin' that booty! Though what really turns me off on this album is the lyrics, with lines about big black cars, big black mansions, clowns, surgery and even monkeys, it all comes off sounding really cheesy, as if he really didn't really try when he wrote them. Although Matthew still manages to incorporate other elements into the album, such as the psychedelic-funk of "I Can't Feel" and the morose, mournful final track "Gem", which is a complete 180 change from the other, dancier tracks. Also, tracks such as "Shortwave" and "More Surgery" aren't as concerned with being 'club-bangers' as they are with producing subdued, electronic landscapes the likes of Thom Yorke's "The Eraser". Overall, if your looking for a dance album that's going to make you squirm uncomfortably on the dance floor, this is defintely worth checking out.
STANDOUT TRACKS: "I Can't Feel", "Little People (Black City)", "Gem"

Black City

Black City is definitely Matthew Dear's best album to date. It brings in Electronic/Indie/New Wave/Funk into one package. The whole album feels like a movie with so many styles. A must have album!

Two thumbs up!

Definitely the best album of the summer. M-Dear blows my mind once again...

Biography

Born: TX

Genre: Electronic

Years Active: '00s, '10s

It didn't take long for Matthew Dear to catapult himself into the front rank of microhouse producers, emerging in the early 2000s with a string of high-quality releases for Spectral Sound, Plus 8, and Perlon. Dear broke out in 2003 with the singsongy single "Dog Days," at once a DJ favorite and something of an indie crossover, and continued to switch between (and sometimes fuse together) track- and- song-oriented material. He wasn't just a constantly evolving producer but...
Full Bio
Black City, Matthew Dear
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