Artist: Matthew Dear
Album: Black City
Record Label: Ghostly International
Rating: 3.5 stars
Matthew Dear’s fourth full length studio album has left us a bit confused, and we’re not certain how we feel about this record. That is no surprise, really, if you’re any follower of the man with more aliases than one can count (Audion and False, for instance). In continuing tradition from his 2007 release Asa Breed, Dear delivers vocals on Black City as well. One minute, we are completely in love with his deep, droning – slightly disconnected if not robotic – Nick Cave reminiscent vocal delivery, and the other we’re not very sure how we feel about the 1980’s throwback of the Grace Jones kind. However, the sonic peculiarity of this record goes beyond that. Dear has taken Asa Breed’s gauze disco feel to a darker place and draws beautifully from the playfulness of Zappa, Bowie and Eno – and if deconstructed long enough, the daddies of them all, Kraftwerk (particularly in the swamptronica track Shortwave). But that’s not the end of the 80’s influence – You Put A Smell On Me brings back the New Beat with its hard-hitting industrial dance sound. Slowdance, on the other hand, is a bit disturbing with a dark vocal pattern in a peculiar retro-futuristic way. In Black City, Dear has produced a very engaging album, thoroughly enjoyable and most fun to dismember into all its various constituents. The latter, however, is what keeps us from being generous with our love for the record – once all the elements are separated from the tracks, there isn’t much left to love.
~
(Originally Published in The Sunday Guardian, Delhi: August 29, 2010)
No comments:
Post a Comment