Matthew Dear - worthy of the hype?

the ghostly international website has some downloads

That was James Cotton though.

I sort of like Leave Luck to Heaven as well.

But yeah, Laguna Madre is great! And the album is quite nice too but doesn't really push boundaries like Villalobos' Alcachofa who I think has merged vocals and "microhouse" very well.

(As a tangential footnote, I wish it could've received half the amount of attention that was paid to that obnoxious Postal Service record.)

Or you could say that my love for the record is solely based on jingoism. I do roll around my neighborhood with this blaring from my General Lee-style SUV every day.

otm

also his music is the most well-done and idiosyncractic electronic stuff to come out of michigan in a lonnggg time (to these ears anyway) and for as moody or dry as the tunes can be they are so so funky

thirding the praise for "laguna madre"...

Thanks for the reminder

but really, i don't see where you find the pleasure in this. it's like you suck all the fun out of some good bouncy house and replace it with these post-isolee plug-ins. it was slightly boring by the tenth time i'd listened to the isolee album, let alone the tenth artist who was ripping off the style. and there's still all those weird american indie hangups about taste / restraint / underachieving.

the website, with the photo of them standing around all unsmiling in their sociology dept. hallway like they're posing for details or gq just makes me tense.

the mr. fingers comparison is extremely literal here, i think.

b-b-but dear has made some good bouncy house, it may be competely neurotic, but it's bouncy

the comparisons to postal service and dntel baffle me

maybe pop has become a worthless descriptor

but yeah, different strokes for different folks and all that

I mean I think if we use this liberal definition of pop then you could argue easily enough that a MASSIVE percentage of house music is pop or popist. I quite like this idea but maybe only because I like house music and pop music. I have some sense this might be taking too favourable a view of the music we like.

I sympathise with Vahid's position a bit here, only in a kind of irrational way though. I just think of the dance critics here in Dublin putting Dear and co at the top of all their end of year lists and then playing regular club house every weekend.

The Dear/Fingers thing is interesting because there is a great deal of snobbery from fans of both towards regular house music or whatever, in some sense though I empathise more with the Fingers lovers, there are surely alot of Matthew Dear/DNTEL/Kompakt people who are unaware of the existence of the rest of dance music

I am surely the anti-Mike T, but then again I have listened to almost nothing but that Derrick Carter mix and Ten City and stuff for the last few weeks.

I'm not really so it's speculation on my part.

This record is great, slept on by ILXors maybe?

Yes, I admit I slept on it. Am attempting to repent by wearing out the mp3s this month. Really fucking good album.

if you're on slsk these days i could even put together an 80 minute cd of pre-microhouse-not-microhouse. (hell, i'd mail it out if you want)

did you ever put this comp together vahid?

love this record. i figured ppl were talking about it in one of the bobbins threads

i really liked 'dog days' back in the day. saw this guy at sonotheque in like '04

this album is pretty different

dog days is a jam tho

gr8080 do u like the audion stuff?

dear has a tumblr btw -- he posts occasionally, usually just photos of food hes eating

http://mdear.tumblr.com/

hmm less food than i remember

jabberjaw singles are good too

Leave Luck to Heaven ('Dog Days'-era LP) & the latest one are the best Matt Dear records imo. Asa Breed got a lot of good press at the time, but imo leans too heavily on the indie vox side of what he does & not enough vaguely evil-sounding techno stuff. Of course, the Audion records are really good for that sort of thing.

yah i didnt like the asa breed lp at all

"mouth to mouth" is still the best thing ever

Been digging this lately

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tWuq-EySf4

(better to seek out the actual EP version)

Black City is def in my top ten on 2010 even though i didnt know it existed till last week

its like brian ferry producing a nine inch nails record

^^
a high compliment & accurate description

MD figured prominently into my best o 2010 as well

Black City is all right, I couldn't really get into it though, I wish it had more jams like the title track. Asa Breed was much better -- it struck a nice balance between "three-minute techno singles" and moody, late 70's David Bowie-esque stuff.

Agreed! Asa Breed completely nails the mix of Goth-Mooodiness and blissed-out-yet-dark dancey floor fillers!

Dear fans should also check out the new compilation out on Ghostly International. More dancefloor oriented than what Dear has been putting out under his own name for a while including Daniel Wang and Gold Panda who are both must-listens for anybody who likes great house music.

I would also recommend his Audion side project for more techno good-ness.

gold panda also one of my favorite records from last year

Yes! A really fantastic record, went on heavy rotation on this listener's iPod.

yeah gp album is dope. 'you.' is the jam!

I much preferred his XX remix to the original track. It makes up a lot of the meatiness and punch that I find lacking in The XX sound.

Asa Breed sucked so very badly that I, even in spite of my mid 00's fawning adoration for Leave Luck to Heaven, decided to not even bother with this one.

Also, I can't help but feel that the fact that dude always puts his own vocals on remixes just reeks of egotism.

yah feeling you there, i remember thinking it was weird that it was the one that picked up a load of hipster kisses. i think i have kindof overpraised Tide on this board before so i wont but I think the more this guy makes "the kind of music he wants to make" is the more i realise i have no interest in hearing it. xx remix was a p awful stodgy groove-free zone.

We definitely part company on that front, I will admit my initial encounter with his music was Asa Breed, and frankly I was somewhat disappointed to explore his previous incarnation as a more minimal producer, really found the rich sonics of his more current output lacking to great detriment.

the more this guy makes "the kind of music he wants to make" is the more i realise i have no interest in hearing it.

Yes! This is exactly how I feel about him.

I did buy the Little People (Black City) 12" (which I, pretty much without fail, always accidentally call "Little City, Black People), and it's alright.

boy i sure do hate it when artists make the kind of music they want to make

it is when it sucks ass!

well idk this record prolly doesnt suck ass but its not half as interesting to me as the stuff he was doing when he was tryna be trendy

yeah I found Asa Breed a bit ridiculous, think it was the vocals..

Heard Little People Black City on a car a few days ago and it wasn't bad.

Loved Asa Breed, I don't understand why people think there's a problem with vocals on this record. Black City hasn't left a great impression so far.

I deleted that album years ago but I remember the vocals being so DEEP and over the top it made me think of Bowie meets Type O Negative or something like that, and I was always about to laugh but it wasn't funny enough just vaguely unpleasant.

Asa Breed sucked so very badly that I, even in spite of my mid 00's fawning adoration for Leave Luck to Heaven, decided to not even bother with this one.

u have made a terrible decision

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q767FrWodRY

"FIRST OF ALL, THE MORSE CODE IN THE BACKGROUND HAS TO GO."

"This will be a failure."

episode FORTY SEVEN?????

Really good new track!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WawXqpqwRn0

New album is great - even better than Black City.

so good!

kind of a Madchester vibe but unmistakably him

this track is brilliant, heard it on bis a few weeks ago. he's really maturing as a songwriter.

I need to try again to get into Black City. I still like his first two albums the best? Probably will like the new one.

Wait, first two albums and the Audion one. Always the Audion one.

I've been listening to Black City on repeat to prepare myself for the new one, and "Slowdance" has finally clicked for me. So, so great.

Nobody should ever listen to what I say because it took me ten years to figure out that "Asa Breed" is realllllly good. TEN. YEARS.

Amazon or google or whatever search engine crawled its spiders into my computer says I should bu his dj kicks. What say you ilm search engine?

looks like it could be cool

fair amount of good tracks on there and new audion is always welcome