zelev+5
This album subtlety genre hops without breaking its character! Soo intoxicating yet cool, calm and collected! A landmark album for techno music!
Favorite track: I Can't Feel.
Levrikon
Matthew Dear's best, easy. Dark, suffocating electronically-treated new wave. Reminds me a lot of a lost Talking Heads album, but somehow even more menacing.
Favorite track: You Put A Smell On Me.
*This is a reissue of 2010's Black City, and will begin shipping on or around October 12th, 2018*
Matthew Dear's Black City can't be found on any map. It's a composite, an imaginary metropolis peopled by desperate cases, lovelorn souls, and amoral motives. Like most literary Gothams, Black City is a place to love and hate, as seedy as a nightclub's back room and as seductive as the promise of power. Matthew Dear, the musician, may live in New York City, but the Matthew Dear of Black City inhabits a sound-world unlike any other: a monument to the shadowy side of urban life that bumps and creaks, shudders and wakes up screaming in the middle of the night. _Black City_ is Matthew Dear's third album on Ghostly International, and it's his darkest and most engrossing work to date.
From the first notes of album opener "Honey", it's clear that the love-obsessed Matthew Dear of 2007's Asa Breed has given way to a more existentially paranoid entity, as creeping tempos dominate, cavernous atmospherics envelop the listener, and strange distortions crackle on the horizon. In Black City, nothing is at it seems: leadoff single "Little People (Black City)" is a nine-and-a-half minute disco odyssey, subverting its gleaming electronic lead with eerily giddy backing vocals and cryptic, ominous lyrics ("a frozen wasted heart / has died", "love me like a clown"); "You Put a Smell on Me" is a sordid sex romp set to hysterically chattering percussion and a serrated synth line that will set your teeth on edge; "More Surgery" at first recalls the barely-there Krautrock of Harmonia in its burbling minimalism, until Dear's chanted chorus of "Alter genetics / to make my body glow / I need more surgery / there's so much more to know" sends the track hurtling into a dystopian future.
And yet, for all the foreboding moods on Black City, it's the album's sweeter moments that illustrate Matthew Dear's growing maturity as a songwriter. "Slowdance" is a futuristic lullaby in which Dear articulates a lover's helplessness ("I can't be the one to tell you everything's wrong") over breathy, Arthur Russell-esque cello swishes; the album-closing "Gem" is an achingly simple, reverb-drenched piano ballad that ends with a long, slow fade. Even in Matthew Dear's Black City, there is hope.
My god, what an absolutely incredible Suite. I'll admit, I've struggled to get into Pharoah Sanders due to diving headfirst into some of his most challenging catalogue and that never worked. This is the perfect place to restart. Floating Points is new for me and I can honestly say I've never heard synthesizer music this lush and organic before. the LSO is just perfect. This is one of those albums that any serious music fan needs in their life. The perfect swan song for the great Pharaoh! 5/5 ClassyMusicSnob
I'm a bit anoid with my silf that I only just found this fantastic album yesterday, but also chuffed to fuck that I have at all. Love it so much what a wining collaboration 👊🔥🔥 Toblermone
A pair of beautifully ghostly songs from this Philly group that set haunting and mysterious melodies amidst drifting rivers of electronics. Bandcamp New & Notable Sep 25, 2022
This Bandcamp exclusive comes complete with a head-spinning background story (check the album notes) and eerie electronics. Bandcamp New & Notable Oct 29, 2023
Moodymann creates innovative soul funky music with deep 70s inspiration. The vocals are simply outstanding. A step back in time, 50 years ago! Superb. jef37