Released in 2010, nearly a decade into his craft, Black City was a watershed moment for Matthew Dear. A steely noir set that straddled electronic dance and indie rock classification, earning him Best New Music from Pitchfork and a worldwide tour with a besuited band, the album unlocked Dear's darkest and most engrossing ideas to date. The love-obsessed songwriter of 2007's Asa Breed had given way to a more existentially paranoid entity. Creeping disco tempos, cavernous atmospherics, and strange distortions brought his signature avant-pop sound to a moodier place. Black City wasn't to be found on any map. It was a composite, an imaginary metropolis peopled by desperate cases, lovelorn souls, and amoral motives, with flashes of sweetness and hope.

In Black City, nothing is at it seems: leadoff single "Little People (Black City)" is a nine-and-a-half minute disco odyssey, subverting its gleaming electronic lead with eerily giddy backing vocals and cryptic, ominous lyrics ("a frozen wasted heart / has died", "love me like a clown"); "You Put a Smell on Me" is a sordid sex romp set to hysterically chattering percussion and a serrated synth line that will set your teeth on edge; "More Surgery" at first recalls the barely-there Krautrock of Harmonia in its burbling minimalism, until Dear's chanted chorus of "Alter genetics / to make my body glow / I need more surgery / there's so much more to know" sends the track hurtling into a dystopian future.

And yet, for all the foreboding moods on Black City, it's the album's sweeter moments that illustrate Matthew Dear's growing maturity as a songwriter. "Slowdance" is a futuristic lullaby in which Dear articulates a lover's helplessness ("I can't be the one to tell you everything's wrong") over breathy, Arthur Russell-esque cello swishes; the album-closing "Gem" is an achingly simple, reverb-drenched piano ballad that ends with a long, slow fade.
"...it's not too surprising when Dear takes Reznor's ‘Closer’ pulse out for a moonless 4 a.m. test drive on ‘You Put a Smell on Me.’ With Black City, Dear offers a precisely thought-out guide to losing your mind.”
- in Pitchfork’s Top 50 Albums of 2010

Matthew Dear toured Black City worldwide with a full band, presenting a unique crossover between electronic and indie circles, landing support tours with Depeche Mode, Hot Chip, Interpol, and later, MGMT.

Matthew Dear's work traverses myriad musical worlds while belonging to none; he also helped shape the sound of Ghostly's dancefloor offshoot, Spectral Sound, with several releases under his techno alias Audion and DJ Mixes for DJ-Kicks, Fabric, and more.

Dear has collaborated with Tegan and Sara, The Drums, Protomartyr, and Ricardo Villalobos and released remix projects with Spoon, Charlotte Gainsbourg, The Postal Service, and MGMT.

TRACK LISTING

1. Honey
2. I Can’t Feel
3. Little People (Black City)
4. Slowdance
5. Soil To Seed
6. You Put A Spell On Me
7. Shortwave
8. Monkey
9. More Surgery
10. Gem

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2023 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

The launch of a brand new Record label by Skint Records Head honcho - Damian Harris ~ a rare never released on Vinyl remix of The Juan McClean classic "Happy House" Licensed from james Murphy's (LCD Soundsystem) DFA Records remixed by Matthew Dear, & Audion and then reimagined for 2023 by Mark E - A Happy House (Mark E remix of Matthew Dear v Audion Remix) AA Happy House (Matthew Dear V Audion Remix)

Twenty-plus years into his career, producer / vocalist / songwriter / DJ Matthew Dear remains artistically unpredictable in pursuit of his prescient strain of electronically-formed, organically-delivered indie pop. His work traverses myriad musical worlds, belonging to none. But these fluid moves have not been without a few forks in the road, decisive turns, and what-ifs. Most notable is the pivot-point following Dear’s acclaimed 2007 avant-pop LP, “Asa Breed”, in which he broke away from the 4/4 grid of his techno / house debut “Leave Luck To Heaven” and into something much more wild and idiosyncratic. Traveling between his adopted Detroit and his home state of Texas throughout 2008 and 2009, Dear amassed a set of personal, playful, looping guitar-centric recordings he’d consider for his next album. Given the new momentum of the hybrid electronic pop of “Asa Breed” which led to an opening slot for Hot Chip and remixes for ‘00 heroes like Spoon and Postal Service, Dear decided to shelf the material. He moved ahead to work on his watershed 2010 album, “Black City”, a steely noir set which earned him a Best New Music on Pitchfork and a worldwide tour with a besuited band. This lost album had a sound, a spirited country romp in the techno barn, and it had a rough title, a scribble on one of the CD-Rs passed to Ghostly label founder Sam Valenti IV, Preacher’s Sigh & Potion. He never fully walked away from it, and merely kept moving down the road, waiting for the audience to catch up. Over a decade later, that time is now.

“Preacher’s Sigh & Potion” finds Dear unknowingly at an intersection in his young run, a burgeoning songwriter at his most freewheeling and unaffected. In hindsight, there were hints of Preacher’s sound on “Asa Breed”, but the set still registers endearingly out of step with his eventual direction. This was the first time Dear tapped so directly into his late father’s influence as a fingerpicking guitar player in the 1960s and ‘70s and a gateway to the music of John Prine, Townes Van Zandt, and Emmylou Harris.

From the twang and tambourine stomp of album opener “Muscle Beach,” to the metronome-like pulse of “Hikers Y” complete with an unmistakable Matthew Dear dryly dismissive mantra, to the gloomy carnival-leaving-town pomp of “Gutters and Beyond”, “Preacher’s Sigh & Potion” is filled with the reckless notions of an artist dashing the history of pop and rock, the twang of country, the build and release of techno. Dear is an auteur, and in retrospect, so many of his signatures crop up in these relics from his former self. Dear remembers him well: ‘It’s crazy how music memory exists in a very deep and indescribable tangibility. I know the person who made all these, and remember glimpses of the desk, or studio set up for each recording. I know who wrote these lyrics, and where they were mentally during that process.’ Revisiting this material now also has Dear thinking about his father’s legacy.

STAFF COMMENTS

Matt says: A cosmic-acid, hillbilly-'tronica album anyone? It sounds pretty batshit, but I can't help thinking this was everything Moby was trying to achieve in 1999.

TRACK LISTING

01. Muscle Beach
02. Sow Down
03. Hikers Y
04. Never Divide
05. All Her Fits
06. Supper Times
07. Crash And Burn
08. Heart To Sing
09. Eye
10. Head
11. Gutters And Beyond

Matthew Dear is a shapeshifter, oscillating seamlessly between DJ, dance-music producer, and experimental pop auteur. He is a founding artist on both Ghostly International and its dancefloor offshoot, Spectral Sound. He writes, produces, and mixes all of his work. He straddles multiple musical worlds and belongs to none, now nearly 20 years into his kaleidoscopic career, with five albums and two dozen EPs plus millions of miles in the rearview of his biography.

Bunny is the name of Matthew Dear’s fifth album. His first since 2012, it bounces into plain sight preceded by two slyly different singles in 2017: the moody, urgent "Modafinil Blues” and the buoyant, blithe, Tegan and Sara-featuring “Bad Ones.” Bunny follows both modes, among others, parading down a rabbit hole of unhinged phrasings, dreams, and interludes. It saunters in the shadows; it stands brightly in the moonlight. Bunny is a dual vision of avant-pop; an artistic reckoning from a 21st-century polymath; persona splintered, paradox paraphrased, a riddle rendered.

TRACK LISTING

01. Bunny’s Dream
02. Calling
03. Can You Rush Them
04. Echo
05. Modafinil Blues
06. What You Don’t Know
07. Horses (feat. Tegan And Sara)
08. Moving Man
09. Bunny’s Interlude
10. Duke Of Dens
11. Electricity
12. Kiss Me Forever
13. Bad Ones (feat. Tegan And Sara)
14. Before I Go