Motherboard

“Afterward, come home with me/ to my big black house, on the big black sea/ And we’ll dance, dance, dance/ all, night, long.”

That’s Matthew Dear singing on his new techno-pop record Black City, a stroke of genius that salad-spins everything that makes this guy a brilliant artist over g-d knows how many records and singles: minimal techno late-hours body/head trips as Audion, techno house bangers, slinky/sexy/sad pop.

I talked to Dear (disclaimer, he’s kind of an idol) earlier this week not long after he’d rolled back into New York from an all-night drive home from Detroit. Anyhow, read this, buy the record, and dance, dance, dance. All. Night. Long.

Matthew Dear, Soil to Seed

Motherboard: What is the “black city” you’re writing about on this record?
Matthew Dear: I live in New York now and I’ve changed environments [from Detroit]. In that sense, Black City is a concept album because of this shift in my physical location and day-to-day. It’s a massive kind of organism, the living machine of the city. Some of the songs I’ve made I’ve definitely taken that [idea] into the studio with me. Like, right now I’m looking out at the Williamsburg Bridge and it’s totally packed with cars backed up. And I can see the FDR and there’s cars going back and forth. And I look up and see buildings and skyscrapers. It’s just this constant motion, you know? Sometimes it’s alive—like, right now there’s this traffic jam of people just trying to get in there. And sometimes totally desolate and kind of empty—and your’s for the taking. I think some of the songs reflect that. There is that isolation and desolation in the album. And there’s moments of great intensity.

Could Matthew Dear ever live not in a city?
MD: It’s a good question. I was in Big Sur recently. And coming from absolute nature back to absolute concrete, it’s a question I ask: what am I getting out of this? But I think just. . . that rush was very important to me—coming back and feeling that connectivity. It’s tough to describe. There’s that Talking Heads song [that goes], “find your city, find your city to live in.” It’s very applicable. I’m always trying to find the best city.

And Big Sur, it’s like it’s your world. You’re surrounded by the trees and the mountains and the ocean. And you’re within that. But you’re like one person—you don’t see very many people—and the trees and ocean. But, here, I just like park my car in a garage, and I’m walking back and immediately feel all these people around me at 7:30 in the morning. And you’re nobody, just part of this thing. It’s like, do you want to feel like you’re this one being in nature or do you want to be a thing surrounded by a lot of other things just doing the same thing you’re doing? Playing with that balance is very important. The key is always to have one foot on either side.

Could you make music not living in a city?
MD: I could make music, but I don’t know what it would sound like. I jokingly said [recently] that all my songs would sound like John Denver. That might be too far fetched. I’m sure I could make some pretty fun ambient music off in the wilderness.

I wonder if any of the pop kinda songs on Black City or Asa Breed ever started as Audion-style straight-up techno tracks and, like, evolved into Matthew Dear-the-songwriter tracks.
MD: Definitely. Sometimes I just sit down to work on something and it’s going to be a dance floor track. And then I’ll get a weird little sound in there or a little happy accident will change the course or direction of the song, and I think this could be really melodic if I sing something over this. And I’ll do that and slow it down 10 or 12 BPM and then all of a sudden it’s a vocal song. So, yeah, it’s definitely started in a different direction and changed on me.

Has it ever gone the other way? Like a pop song turning into a techno track?
MD: Not so much. Sometimes I’ll have like a techno loop and I’ll slow it down, pitch it down and the lower frequencies start coming out of the bass and it just sounds more rhythmic, slinkier as if gets slower. I do the opposite and speed things up and I just think it loses all of the characteristics of a loop if it gets sped up. I’m a sucker for slower, lower sounding things. It’s funny, I listened to Asa Breed recently, right before I finished Black City, and it’s fast—I wasn’t used to it. It’s interesting. I think it’s just an overall shift in my mood.

Is it that you’re getting older?
MD: It’s funny. I’m not like old by any means. I’m not like drinking tea and reading the newspaper and living a slow life. I dunno. I think it’s learning to appreciate the sounds in between the sounds more. Realizing that when music’s slower there’s a lot more room for it to breathe. It’s just been a gradual shift. I guess I’m listening to a lot more ambient music [and realizing] that space, that breadth is important.

How is your headspace different when you’re DJing or doing a live dance set versus when you’re playing these more pop songs in front of a room with a band?
MD: It’s absolutely different. Techno has always been faceless. It’s supposed to be faceless. It’s just about the energy of the room and the song. It’s absolutely different with a band, and people aren’t dancing. There’s an honesty, I think, when you open your mouth. You’re giving something very personal. In that sense, it’s totally different.

It takes a lot of getting used to as well. That shift in the beginning was jarring. People don’t really show their appreciation for the song during the song. When you’re DJing there’s people dancing and someone might scream and the breakdown comes on and you might hear a couple of whistles. There’s energy that’s constantly moving back and forth. With the band show, it’s pretty much you start, they watch, you finish, and then they clap. There’s not always this kind of constantness.