MATTHEW DEAR

Dec 1, 2003 12:00 PM, By Bill Murphy

           
 

Ask producer Matthew Dear about his adopted city of Detroit and about how the scene there has exerted an influence on his music, and he breaks it down like a native son. “Right now, our wave of young guys is reverbing back off of the European send-up,” he says, “so we're like Detroit affected by Europe affected by Detroit. We're getting the latest bounce-back.”

Leave Luck to Heaven (Spectral/Ghostly International, 2003) is Dear's first full-length release — at least, the first that's not under his False or Jabberjaw aliases — and it's unlike any techno record to have come out of the Motor City in years. With a deceptively dark and minimalist sound that grows more lush and inviting with repeated listens, Dear taps into the layered beats, melodies and complex synth arrangements embodied by the UK's “intelligent” movement and throws dirt on them, almost literally.

“I arrange everything on the computer [a Sony VAIO with Making Waves 3.2 and Sonic Foundry Sound Forge 6.0, as well as Native Instruments Absynth and Kontakt],” Dear says. “And, of course, I want to make intellectual, future-forward techno, but at the same time, I want it to be reminiscent of an analog, natural warmth. You can't mimic that with a synthesizer alone — you still have to work with it to get it warm and dirty with all of the imperfections. I mean, I used to run a lot of my stuff through an old Cakewalk guitar-amp simulator just because it brings out so much graininess without really distorting the sound.”

Dear's approach to manipulating sounds is so exploratory and exhaustive, in fact, that he boasts the ability to build an entire multilayered opus from a single audio source: “What people might not realize is that anybody can take, say, a two-second clip of a string patch, and all you have to do is make variations — you know, pitch it down 12 octaves, take one little section and reverse it — and each different track will be from a different part of that sound.” Even Dear's own singing voice (which he admits is “not great”) is fair game not only for multitracked melody lines and lyrics — as heard in the apocalyptic “It's Over Now” and the lead-off single, “Dog Days” — but also for the clicks, pops and static noise that he can pull from a simple vocal narration with “inverse declicking” using Sonic Foundry's Click and Crackle Removal plug-in.

For his live shows, Dear often shows up with little more than a Sony laptop equipped with Ableton Live software. “I like doing a lot of loop-based live mixing and bringing in different rhythmic loops and structures,” he says. “It's kind of like doing what a DJ might do with records but with your own sounds, loops and tracks. I'm never repeating the same set because I'm mixing the sounds differently every time. It's always changing, so it's never as boring as, say, if you were in a rock band doing the same exact show every night.”

Given his penchant for experimentation and spontaneity, it goes without saying that Dear eschews the staid, uptight knob-twiddling pose embraced by some of the self-appointed “protectors” of modern techno and other IDM styles. “I like to make people dance; that's definitely my goal,” he asserts. “I'm really not trying to sit there and start an art revolution where people are just stroking their chins. If they're going to insist on that, I'd rather they do it while they're moving their feet.”