photo: Alex Jacob
GDD™ SPOTHEADS.004 (40 track Spotify playlist)
We really took some care to select these 40 tracks, this playlist has been weeks in the making, take very good care of it, comment below and let us know what you think.
all our best,
Matthew Dear’s glossy, chilly R&B has been making waves thanks to 2010’s Black City, and in 2012 he’s back with new material – a record called Headcage and its electrifying first single “In the Middle (I Met You There).”
Continue reading: MP3: Matthew Dear – “In The Middle (I Met You There)”
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Tags: Matthew Dear
Matthew Dear – You Put A Smell On Me (Nicholas Jaar Remix)
Tonight, Chicago will enjoy one of Techno’s most obvious talents, Matthew Dear, performing at a TBA loft party. Those familiar around here know the name by now, those who aren’t are overdue for a few downloads of his, and his Audion moniker. Here’s a fav of mine remixed by Nico Jaar.
Tix: Matthew Dear @ TBA Loft Party, Chicago (10.21.11)
Vid: Matthew Dear performing Live at The Mid a bit ago
VIA radiozero.ca
Radiozero Mix 71 by Tyler Fedchuk [DL]
Tracklisting:
1. The Style Council – “Long Hot Summer”
2. Trust – “Candy Walls”
3. The Weeknd – “The Party & The After Party”
4. Chromatics – “Lady (Original Version)”
5. Gunnar Bjerk – “Back Then”
6. Kindness – “Swinging Party”
7. Gina X – “No G.D.M.”
8. Spectral Display – “It Takes A Muscle (Get A Room! edit)”
9. Grimes – “Vanessa”
10. Benoit & Sergio – “What I’ve Lost”
11. Clique Talk – “Wasted”
12. Matthew Dear – “Slowdance (How To Dress Well seance)”
13. Beach House – “Master Of None (from memory version)”
Original post at Radiozero here
Photo courtesy of Surfing On Heroin
VIA radiozero.ca
Radiozero Mix 71 by Tyler Fedchuk [DL]
Tracklisting:
1. The Style Council – “Long Hot Summer”
2. Trust – “Candy Walls”
3. The Weeknd – “The Party & The After Party”
4. Chromatics – “Lady (Original Version)”
5. Gunnar Bjerk – “Back Then”
6. Kindness – “Swinging Party”
7. Gina X – “No G.D.M.”
8. Spectral Display – “It Takes A Muscle (Get A Room! edit)”
9. Grimes – “Vanessa”
10. Benoit & Sergio – “What I’ve Lost”
11. Clique Talk – “Wasted”
12. Matthew Dear – “Slowdance (How To Dress Well seance)”
13. Beach House – “Master Of None (from memory version)”
Original post at Radiozero here
Photo courtesy of Surfing On Heroin
I compiled a super chill mix (podcast style) to try and help bring out/welcome Spring.
Ressort (Mix) by beauchampmusique
Tracklist:
Matthew Dear – Slowdance (How To Dress Well)
Two Bicycles – Window #6
Boy Friend – D’Arrest
Sleep ? Over – Casual Diamond
Purity Ring – Ungirthed (Depford Goth Remix)
Toro Y Moi – Divina
Panda Bear – Surfers Hymn
Bibio – Saint Christopher
Gold Panda – Lonely Owl
Braids – Native Speaker
Family Portrait – George
Below is the latest edition of our weekly feature, Stuck On Repeat. The premise is simple, we’ve asked all our contributors to submit one track and a brief write-up. The track can be new or it can be old, just whatever we could not stop listening to this week. These are the songs we’ve had Stuck On Repeat.
:: selected by: V :: Gang Gang Dance – Glass Jar
I struggle to find words to properly describe Gang Gang Dance‘s 11-minute “Glass Jar”. The track premiered earlier this week as the first taste of their upcoming album Eye Contact. I could list adjectives for days in an attempt to summarize the track’s colorful sprawl. But a much simpler summary is in 11 minutes, “Glass Jar” distills and encapsulates the experience of seeing Gang Gang Dance live. The washes of noise, the tribal breakdowns, the collaged spoken word, the desire to raise your hands to the sky and let your body take complete control of your being. It is bigger than big. It is redefine your life-sized.
:: selected by: BryanB :: Matthew Dear – Slowdance (How To Dress Well Seance)
I think perhaps I may be enamored with this track more so than How To Dress Well‘s other songs because I am so fond of the source material. Part of Matthew Dear‘s upcoming Black City remix compilation, this complete reinterpretation of “Slowdance” is about as far from the original’s glossy, plodding, waltzing-in-the-dark elegance as possible, replaced instead with hymnal choirs, howling wolves and repeating mantras over tinny, limp percussion and blown out synths. In a way H2DW has pushed the implied apocalyptic storyline of Black City to it’s next logical step, a band of survivors on the outskirts of an abandoned metropolis huddle around the last embers of a fire attempting to sing the only song they can remember.
:: selected by: Jams Dean :: Nalepa – Monday
This is a genre I can get behind: lots of little electronic clicks and washes rolling around organic, lush ambiance. I like Nalepa, he seems to understand my inner need for chill vibes to help me reach harmony with the universe. No for real though, don’t play this at a party, but this kind of music has started really working for me when I need to get something done with my brain. Fantastic music for thinking? I think so. The ambiance is so nice in fact, that when melodies do break through to the surface, my attention span is ruined and I’m slightly annoyed. At least he doesn’t sing. Nalepa (first name Steve) lives in LA, teaches at a university and works with other high caliber electronic music making people. This album, Flatlands was released in 2009, with a different music video for each song and an entire album of remixes. I haven’t watched the videos yet, but I’m impressed. What is it you guys call this? Ambient glitch? Whatever, I think it is pretty cool. Check out “Monday”, which…ends in a rainstorm? You guys are weird.
:: selected by: Moneyworth :: Syd tha Kyd & Lux – Flashlight
Oh you know, no biggie, just OFWGKTA‘s sole female member (plus mystery person Lux about whom I have zero information) sounding like GIRL DRAKE? SAY WHAT? It’s pretty nuts how between the time we last wrote about Odd Future and now, they’ve become like one hundred times more famous. They got a shoutout from Kanye for crying out loud. There’s too much to talk about in terms of “what will it be like if Odd Future get legitimately famous,” so let’s just focus on Syd, their sound engineer and token Cool Girl. I had no idea what to expect when I found this track off her blog which hasn’t been updated since 2009, but it most certainly was not this spaced-out, pretty (pretty!?!?), and undeniably Drake-y love song. “Drake-y” is in no way a knock but rather a compliment of the highest order, particularly considering that this is mid-2009, remember, and while “So Far Gone” had been out for a minute, he hadn’t quite taken over the world yet. Man, this is so good.
It’s that most horrible time of the year, the season of year-end lists. You’re most likely already sick of reading them. So, we offer you something different. Across this week we’ll be sharing reflections on the topic of ‘What We Fuckin’ Loved About 2010′. Today, BryanB takes you on a tour of some of his favorite acts, releases, breakthroughs and performances of the year.
If I had to wrap up what 2010 meant to me in terms of music and the music industry in a short phrase, it would be “Building Up and Breaking Down”. Artists and acts in 2010 in a lot of ways decided to build upon what was either previously created by contemporaries or by themselves and refine, tweak, finesse and slightly alter it, often with brilliant rewards. To my ears there wasn’t a clear mandate to attempt to create all news sounds and genres, but instead a merging and breaking down of existing ones that birthed bastards of many colors. These genreless genres then used new online tools to sideskirt the standard means of distribution to decide when and how their music would be released and received.
MATTHEW DEAR & NICHOLAS JAAR
Dark house and techno got a much needed jolt of fresh blood from 20-year-old Nicolas Jaar and the revamped stylings of Matthew Dear. Both brought incredibly sophisticated, seriously twisted vocal-centric productions to our ears in 2010. Dear’s Black City was on repeat for me for months on end and stands as one of the best albums of the year and my favorite house/techno album (followed closely by Jimmy Edgar‘s quality oozing XXX), full of ear-itching synths and midnight black beats, Matthew’s forlorn and pitched vocals set not only scenes of elegance amid the apocalypse, but also ones of deep misery and sorrow in tracks like “Slowdance” and “Gem”, creating a well rounded sustained suite covering a wide array of the emotional landscape. Nicolas Jaar, aided in this pursuit as well, in his fine take on Dear’s grinding “You Put a Smell On Me”, showcasing a refined well suited set of talents that he has become known for. Jaar has a way of stripping away elements, and taking what’s left and making it sound much more sinister and overwhelming. He’s also the Nicki Minaj of house music, unafraid to alter his vocals and create personas that fit the mood of his remixes and his own creations. He’s the shuffling Thin White Duke in Ellen Allien’s “Flashy Flashy” only to become some forgotten electro-jazz torch singer on his “A Time For Us”. Dear and Jaar are injecting a new noir into a somewhat stale generation of electronic music, with fantastic results.
Matthew Dear – You Put A Smell On Me (Nicolas Jaar Remix)
JONSI’S GO TOUR
I was fortunate enough to catch some some awesome live shows this year from acts that released some of 2010′s best music; Beach House, Ariel Pink, Matthew Dear, Phantogram, Shearwater, Janelle Monae just to name a few, but none, NONE OF THEM, prepared me for the visual, musical and emotional feast that was Jonsi‘s Go tour. Jonsi, of Sigur Ros (now on hiatus) fame, released the fragile but never timid solo album, Go just a couple months earlier and there had been sporadic reports that Jonsi and his backing band would put on a show like no other. Even these superlatives couldn’t match the majestic nature of getting to experience the “show” live. “Show” isn’t the proper word for a gig like this. Part performance art, part contemporary opera, the set was alive with spiritual and animalistic projections that weaved and built, burned down and fell apart perfectly in sync to the live music. During the entire evening there was a sense of building and momentum that erupted during the performance of “Tornado” into a maelstrom of noise and digital debris as the set seemed to fly apart and then reconstruct itself again. And Jonsi was in fine form as well, his precarious falsetto never failing him and seeming to soar above the rushing movements of sight and sound. Jonsi and his amazing traveling show have but a few dates left on their tour, but if you aren’t lucky enough to catch them, a live DVD has just been released that tries the best it can to capture something that had to be experienced to be believed.
ON THE BANDCAMP BUS
I love Bandcamp. 2010 became the year that alternatives to the iTunes, Amazon, MySpace stronghold gained huge ground. Soundcloud and Bandcamp both offered quick, easy streams of whole songs and downloading abilities. Bandcamp in particular grew in popularity among minor label, unsigned and foreign acts as a great way to quickly get music to fans ears, and the ability to “charge what you want”, with albums going for a dollar or sometimes completely free. Financially it made sense as well, as bands received a larger cut of whatever they chose to charge over similar schemes from Apple and eMusic. With dedicated URLs, nicely designed band pages, early bird free downloads, and linking that includes in-page streaming for Facebook, Bandcamp is quickly changing the landscape for artists and bands looking to easily connect and spread their music faster than ever. Glass Vaults, Star Slinger, Beat Connection, Cults, Wise Blood and Blackbird Blackbird (just to name a few) all used Bandcamp as their primary source of distribution and have found great success with it, being able to release their fantastic EPs, albums, remixes and singles in the best way they see fit. A win win in my book.
Wise Blood – Here Comes the Sun
NOAH “40″ SHEBIB
Call him 2010′s “Un-Producer”. I think there’s a reason Noah “40″ Shebib has created or been involved in some of the year’s most unsatisfied slow jams (“Unfortunate” “Unthinkable“, “Unforgettable“), the man has a gift for the melancholy side of life. Full of minor keys, carefully tickled pianos and well-curated percussion, most of the time resting a bed of thick, minimal, slowly descending synths, Shebib creates sonics that are the equivalent of scenes from Oscar-worthy Best Drama films. Over them Drake sounds triumphant, Trey somber and mature, Alicia Keys nostalgic and downright sultry, rare feats that elevate the vocalists and their lyrics into sounding more important, more urgent, more polished and tempered. His tracks are like an Inception style dream, all the action slowed down but still full of so much inertia and energy. Even “Fall For Your Type” Jamie Foxx’s newest single sounds so damn crestfallen but still epic. This is the new “grown folks R&B sound”, utilizing the newest sounds, beats and techniques but funneling them through a thoughtful, restrained filter. Unlike anything else out there right now.
Alicia Keys (ft. Drake) – Un-Thinkable (I’m Ready) (Remix)
THE RETURN OF ROBYN
Who could have imagined that Sweden’s pop tart Robyn would have had the year she had in 2010? Not even her zealous fans could have created a more potent scenario for indie pop domination than the one that was manifested over the last 12 months. Robyn had been, creatively speaking, busting at the seams for the last couple of years and with the seemingly endless promotion cycle for her self-titled album finally completed (seriously, it was four years long), she devised a plan to release three albums over the span of 2010 and launch a world tour. Now free from major label pressures and releasing them on her own Konichiwa imprint, the Body Talk series was not only a way to excise her pent up music but also a way to signal, in a big way, that Robyn was a major player on the global dancepop scene. Two completely new albums and a third wisely repacking the best bits (plus a couple of new tracks, right in time for Christmas) into a Body Talk Greatest Hits, and with tracks like the reggae-swinging “Dancing Queen“, “Love Kills” and the emotionally raw, instant classic “Dancing On My Own“, Robyn was pumping out the jams, and in promoting them in ever inventive ways. Witness her latest campaign for the new single “We Dance To The Beat” here. There was an strange ease surrounding these couple of dozen of tracks; Robyn in a way, had created her own genre, a merging of indie and new millennium electro sensibilities with the classic hooks and rhythms of disco and ’80s pop. She stayed true to her own course and the creative juices simply flowed. Her All Hearts tour (complimented by a newly glittering Kelis) was a nonstop dubbed out dance party, with Robyn at the center of it’s mirrorball universe, moving and shaking like no one was watching, even though she had everyone at attention.
Robyn – Indestructible (A-Trak Remix)
KANYE’S BEAUTIFUL DARK TWISTED YEAR
Kanye is America. America is Kanye. His rebel without a cause attitude is what I imagine the stuff of Manifest Destiny and invading far off countries must feel like. He’s the brazen, completely inappropriate, unmannered, carnival freak animal people love to criticize, but can’t stop watching, and to witness his lows earlier this year, as he (publicly) dealt with a (public) backlashing against him for being “Kanye”, and harnessing that frustration, taking time away and honing that into pure creativity was exhilarating. When he emerged in the fall his guns were blazing, he owned twitter with his often hilarious rants and envy inducing pics of him in Paris or purchasing some new insane piece of art, and musically he blazed new ground, becoming one of the first major label signed artists to give away his product for free, every week, through his G.O.O.D. Friday promotion. The tracks were, for the most part, in the classic rap battle style of extended beats and cameos, with hardly any hooks and a seemingly endless roster of return players. It was almost as if Kanye was attempting to alienate his more pop-minded fans by releasing one nine minute opus after another. Many didn’t know what to make of it (I personally find the method more interesting than the tracks themselves), but by the time “Power” dropped, touted as his first single from the new album it was clear Kanye had more than enough energy to spare for his proper release.
“Power” is, in a lot of ways an extension of “Jesus Walks” and other previous production work by Kanye, only pushed to its limits and refined to its essence. “Power” and the remainder of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, is everything Kanye has been celebrated and slammed for. It’s grand and dramatic and full of ego, dripping with gold, and an unending thirst to quench the creative demons inside Kanye. It sounds epic and not only because of all the expensive equipment and instruments used. His story, his journey, his torture and his pain, is ours as well. He has found a way to make his incredibly unique life relatable, almost inexplicably, through a series of meandering, strings and vocoder laced internal monologues and stomping, monstrous rants. While that in itself probably would have made for a fantastic listen, the fact that these tracks are also incredibly catchy and often, melodically driven, helps them transcend into the territory of the universal. It’s all hyperbole at this point, you either love it or you don’t, but I’m not the only one that thinks MBDTF is not only one of the best albums of the year, but perhaps one of the best albums hip-hop has ever delivered. Not that it needs it, but if this doesn’t get a wheelbarrow of Thriller level awards by the end of 2011, something is seriously wrong with this world.
Brooklyn based The Drums have emerged as one of the brightest new bands of 2010 with their debut record, crafting 80s pop rock that belongs on the shelf with Joy Division and The Smiths. Their newest single “Me and the Moon” has received the remix treatment from Twin Shadow, Clock Opera and Moonlight Matters, and now electronic/dance enthusiast Matthew Dear. Dear’s version entirely abolishes the cheerful guitar pop and speedy rhythms, chopping up and strongly reverberating lead singer Jonathan Pierce’s vocals till they’re unrecognizable. Instead, Dear makings it truly his own, stretching it to over seven minutes of soaring electronic riffs with an incredibly chilled out backdrop.
Continue reading: The Drums – “Me and the Moon” (Matthew Dear Remix)
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Tags: Matthew Dear, The Drums, Twin Shadow
