Black City

It's sonically peculiar, coolly melodic, relentlessly detailed and, frequently, exhilarating.

The resulting record is, given time to grow on you, really rather loveable. Like someone taking all of your favourite Eighties 12-inches, remastering them and making you your own extra special mixtape.

Black City overall is lean and upbeat, and Dear's gift for making an arrangement jump within snug confines continues to evolve.

The production is as inventive and immersive as ever, but what separates this album from the last is that Dear mostly sticks with one theme all the way through.

The cumulative results of his efforts are a masterpiece both dark and striking. Dear is putting forth an open invitation to tour these shadowed places of his imagination, and this is one offer too good to miss.

That Black City is Dear's most creative and individual album is not, however, up for debate.

Dear's tempos here are mostly slow, never rising above moderate, and the result is an anxious but exhilarating journey through the night.

He continues to chart new territory, using his latest album to highlight sonic textures and what they seem to suggest about a metaphorical city. Working within those constraints, he's captured the nuance of living in many real cities and, in so doing, has crafted one of the stronger releases you'll hear this year.

A firmer grasp of his limited range would have been welcome (i.e., "I Can't Feel"), but the N.Y.C. artist still manages to peek further out from his twitchy drum machines like an impish agent of darkness.

It's the sort of album which reaches back and forward in equal measure, applying what's known about past songwriting to invigorate the present day.

The lyrics themselves--overstocked with darkness, paranoia, and bodily fluids--are as indecipherable as the vocals are buried. They're scene-setters. It's the death-disco groove that intoxicates and defines this City.

Not surprisingly, disorientation is his leitmotif, and it can border on the oppressive, especially given his blunt limitations as a singer (and his habit of multitracking himself across two or more octaves). But the bass lines and beats sound great, and the passing textures--robotic percussion, synthesizer drones, sampled sounds--feel right, and carefully determined.

Black City is his thesis on how he's capable of delivering a dark, lustful album just as easy as he can mine more bubbly, melodic sounds. Beyond this, he's delivered one of the more cohesive and thematically sound albums of the year so far.

Black City doesn't reveal all its treasures on the first spin. Or the second. Matthew Dear, now more than ever, rewards you for devoted listening, with vocal tracks, minor melodies, and atmospheric shimmers that lay buried, waiting to be found.

The lyrical immediacy and intimacy lift Black City leagues above much of the disassociated drivel that's labeled vocal house.

Black City is the devil leering over Asa Breed's shoulder, a seedy, dirty place--but a fascinating one, too. [Sep 2010, p.99]

That a curdled, unifying groove undulates throughout this perverse collection is testament to Dear's abundant skills. [Sep 2010, p.91]