Weekly Release Spotlight: Matthew Dear

Posted on 7/25/2007

Matthew Dear

Asa Breed

[Ghostly International]

Welcome to the new weekly release spotlight on the Radio K blog. In radio land, albums might be brought to your attention via single serving portions, but that doesn't mean we don't realize or appreciate the full-length album as an art form. Every week we will post about a record that has been getting some attention amongst the staff and volunteers here at the station and/or has burning up the Top 7 Songs of the Week chart, which you can hear every Monday morning at 7 a.m. with Dana on Rock 'n Roll Over and every Sunday afternoon at noon on The 770 Club.

This inaugural post highlights a release that manages to be just as immediately accessible as it is weirdly off-putting. Texas-born DJ/producer Matthew Dear is mostly well known for the warm and expansive microhouse of his debut album Leave Luck to Heaven and even more so for his sparser follow up Backstroke. It was the kind of music that wanders, bounces invitingly albeit quietly, and almost lulls you into a hypnotized state if you keep the headphones on for too long.

So when he got to releasing Asa Breed, his third album for the label he co-founded -- Ghostly International -- fans and critics were expecting more of the same. Instead, it comes across as a quasi-darkwave electro-pop thrust in the pants that wipes away any notions of "poptronica" starting to become a tired and trite sound for a one-man band. The Postal Service this is not. Dear's unforgettable baritone dominates multiple layers of the recording as his beats and bleeps sound like an army of shadowy robots descending upon a madman relentlessly pontificating not unlike a David Byrne on sedatives. Or a David Gahan on uppers. Whichever sounds more entertaining.

K hit "Pom Pom" shows Dear at his most stable and outwardly enjoyable, while more adventurous tracks like "Death to Feelers" and "Don and Sherri" assault the listener without ever insulting the pop fanatic, insulting the electronica whiz, or undermining the dark wave aesthetic. The cherry on top of this powerhouse of a record is the number of down tempo slow jams that don't detract or bore (like most ballads on otherwise upbeat albums) such as "Give Me More" or "Deserter." Instead, they wash over with acoustic guitar and bemoaned loneliness that is implied throughout the rest of the album, but never really tackled directly until these songs bring the party down a notch, differentiating the album and making it easily listenable all the way through in just one sitting. Hell, listen to it twice in one sitting and you'll still just start hearing all the subtle and beautiful noise Dear is making.

Stream: Matthew Dear - Pom Pom