“A conversation with a rambling,
incoherent psychopath who could lash out at any moment,” is
how the website of Ann Arbor’s exploding electronic/avant-rock/techno
music label, Ghostly International, describes the most recent work
of Matthew Dear under his pseudonym Audion. “The threat is
the intrigue.”
So it was not without some trepidation that I prepared for my meeting
with Dear, the man behind Audion, the knob-twisting, groove-grafting
DJ set to release his first full-length album, on Ghostly’s
dance floor offshoot label Spectral, later this year under the intriguing
and, yes, threatening, title Suckfish. Will he strike me
down if I let on that my first experience with electronic music
was Neil Young’s unfortunate album Tran in the early
‘80s? At home, I listen to clips from his three EPs released
earlier this year. Squint your eyes, and turn up your headphones,
and the faintest hint of a rave experience is possible. The optical
illusion of the cover art, dual color patterns looking like magnified
zebra stripes under a blacklight, or simply a bloody thumbprint,
provide the psychedelia. The music accompanies this visual mania,
soaring and fleeting, sucking in and blowing out, giving credence
to graceful song titles such as “T!tty F*ck” and “Just
F*cking” (censor punctuation mine.) Surely this man’s
hold on sanity is tenuous at best.
And then I arrive at the parking lot of his downtown Detroit residence.
Born in Texas 26 or 27 years ago (“After 25, it’s been
one big haze,” he says), he moved to Lake Orion with his mom
at the age of 16. He lived in Ann Arbor for six years, attending
the University of Michigan, before moving to Detroit two years ago.
Matthew Dear now lives on the second floor of a red brick apartment
complex nestled between the old Spalding Electric Company building
and “historic” Corktown Motel. Panes of warped wood
stretch along the balcony. Across the street looms Tiger Stadium,
empty and obsolete. Along the warping wood sits a single flower
box, the only one at the entire complex, filled with red and yellow
flowers. The door in front of this sole vestige of life opens, and
there is Dear.
After coming down to meet me, he explains how his girlfriend called
in sick from work, and wonders if we could go someplace else. I
say sure, hoping this isn’t some DJ ruse to avoid cleaning
the house when the journalist comes over. I was looking forward
to seeing his in-house studio, what books line his shelves, what
brand of peanut butter is on the counter. . . alas, no. We walk
to the small but bustling Brooklyn Street Grill and sit down. I
get a coffee; Dear orders an orange juice and his usual –
the #1, with two eggs over medium, ham, potatoes and toast.
Dear is not nearly as decisive with his musical identity. Over the
course of his career, he has recorded under four separate aliases:
his birth name, Audion, False, and Jawjabber. His sound, though
always within the vast realm of electronic music, vacillates widely
between aggressive, minimal techno and more singer-songwriter, verse/chorus/verse
structures. The pseudonyms allow him to explore the various avenues
of his personality through music, with each employing its own unique
vibe.
“An alias helps fans discern between different sounds and
different styles,” Dear explains. Audion showcases his most
aggressive side. The word “grit” seems to come up often
in articles trying to decipher Audion’s sound. Dear admits
“there’s definitely a sexual theme” to the new
album. He describes the sound as abrasive, and synthetic, but there
was no preconception to the album. The tracks are merely the result
of his feeling at the time. (Perhaps these were the final deep-seeded
longings of a bachelor on the outs – he married his high school
sweetheart of nine years in September.)
The man himself, though, at least on the surface, lacks any discernable
grit or grime. He’s stretched thinly over a 6’ 3”
frame, barely filling out his stretchy black t-shirt and worn jeans.
He smiles often, and appears curious and unselfish (our interview
began with him asking me about myself; at one point, as I attempted
to draw out a tangent on his upcoming tour dates in Berlin and Frankfurt,
he wondered if we should be talking more about Ann Arbor, “since
this is for the Ann Arbor Paper.”) His pale face is slightly
ruddied by a 5:00 shadow that I imagine never approaches noon. Black
hair waves and curls over his forehead.
While at U of M, he studied and ultimately graduated with a degree
in cultural anthropology. “Everybody is an observer,”
he says, waxing anthropologic. “Everybody likes to watch people,
to think about people.” As a freshman living in Markley, he
posted a note at a local record store, in hopes of contacting others
interested in electronic music. Though naïve at the time, he
eventually met several kids living in East Quad who introduced him
to the right records, and taught him more about techno culture.
It wasn’t until he attended a rave at a warehouse in downtown
Detroit that he understood – this wasn’t just music,
this was a lifestyle. One that he still lives today, and plans to
continue, even if the rave phenomenon from the mid-’90s has
died down.
“Back then there’d be up to 3,000 people at a club”
Dear reminisces. ”Now 300 in a bar is a big night.”
Techno itself is in an awkward cultural position; the fervor within
the niche has died down from the previous decade, though now it’s
more widespread than ever before. Case in point: before driving
to meet Dear, I poured myself a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. On
the box is Clyde McCinnamon, or whatever that guy’s name is,
scratching a record like DJ General Mills while holding a headphone
up to his ear, right under his cartoon baker’s toke. “Mix
Music Online!” the box says. The names of music genres, including
techno, are swirled along the back cover in a way mirroring the
cereal’s trademark cinnamon-sugar design. “Make your
own music mix – you be the DJ!” the box continues.
According to Dear, one of its most prolific young talents, techno
is “always changing, always evolving.” So even as the
club scene might not be as raucous as it once was, a whole new generation
of sugar cereal eaters will grow up with the genre in their musical
vocabulary.
For Dear, Ann Arbor was the ideal location for an artist to grow.
The community was full of like-minded, ambitious musicians. During
his sophomore year, he began working for Leonardo’s, delivering
pizzas. “It was a great job,” says Dear, “just
driving, listening to tunes I just made in my car. Plus the owners
were cool.” Cool enough to give their delivery boy time off
to go tour Europe.
In 1999, Dear’s single “Hands Up for Detroit,”
a lively, handclap-infused dance breakdown calling for unbridled
optimism in ‘our lovely city’ before it was trendy to
do so, (or warranted, some might say), was the first record for
a burgeoning music label based in Ann Arbor called Ghostly International.
Six years later, Ghostly and Spectral are all over the lips, and
in the headphones, of electronic music fans, critics and artists
alike. Much of this success is due to Dear. Sam Valenti IV, founder
the labels, met Dear at a party in Ann Arbor, and told him he liked
his music. Ghostly, though entirely Valenti’s vision and creation,
leaned on Dear’s records in the early going, providing an
outlet for the young beat maker. Now both labels have a steadily
growing and intriguing stable of acts, with Dear as their patriarchal
figure. His debut full-length album, Leave Luck to Heaven, shot
his techno cred skyward, receiving national recognition. In 2004,
XLR8R magazine named him Artist of the Year, on the strength of
his follow-up record “Backstroke” and an intensive touring
schedule. Now, as Audion, Dear looks ready to continue breaking
his clubbin’ companions into aggressive sweats with the release
of Suckfish.
This will be Dear’s first full-length release while wearing
the Audion hat. If headwear did connote musicality, Audion’s
would be a black leather burqa, studded with smoky diamonds and
plastic objects ambiguously sexual in nature. Suckfish is filled
with mysterious, pulsating, floor-cracking tracks. “Rubber”
bounces along, melting the sound of grinding machinery into a skipping,
bubble-popping carefree jaunt. The labial lunacy of “Kisses”
heightens the tension before album hump track “Wield”
slows the pace. We’re allowed to take a breath with some much-needed
ambience and spacey Doppler effects, the song a trippy eight minute
and fourteen second lull before the machine gun rat-ta-tat of “Taut”
takes over. The first Audion LP plays like a fully realized album,
with a fluidity and thoughtfulness to the mix rarely heard in techno
releases. The buildup reaches its climax in the final two tracks.
“The Pong,” a bass-heavy assault rife with constantly
altering tones and sequences, might be the soundtrack to those nights
you don’t remember, but wish you did. The aforementioned,
nonchalantly titled “Just F*cking” is a fitting end
to all this orgiastic madness. We are now inside the womb, a heart
beating somewhere above us, blood pulsing through nearby veins,
everything foreign and new… If that sounds pretentious and
overwrought, hey, just listen. You’ll feel awash in amniotic
fluid all over again, I swear.
From U of M cult anthro major to electronic music maven, from bachelor
to married man - the various evolutions of Dear continue. He’s
already laid down new material, at the Effigy studio in Ferndale,
for the next album under his birth-given name. It’s going
to be more experimental, yet not, a pop/rock record gone straight
to remix. He’s already recorded several drum tracks, with
guitar and vocals to come, after which he’ll layer and organize
the sounds as he would a techno track. He wants the new album to
be “lush… [while] still leaving lots of the grit”
from his recent Audion work.
With coffee grounds settled at the bottom of my mug, and his plate
a mess of torn toast and hash brown scraps, we rise to leave. Matthew
Dear is a genial, personable guy; it’s that Audion character
who’s the threatening one, and he only shows up when the floor
is packed and the lights go out. If you are lucky enough to find
yourself among the throng that night, worry not; this raw dog’s
got a bark with a beat.
|
|
