>He conjured up the ghosts of Bowie and Sylvian,
I didn't know that Bowie and David Sylvian were dead?
MEK
Greg Earle
<[EMAIL PROTECTED] To: 313@hyperreal.org
DNS.ORG> cc:
Subject: Re: (313) Tomorrow -
Detroit - 5 years of Ghostly
08/06/2004 04:01
PM
Please respond to
313
On Aug 6, 2004, at 1:54 PM EDT, Sam Valenti IV wrote:
> Ghostly International Presents...
>
> Music From The Wires For Ears, Vol. 5
> Five Years of Ghostly
>
> Featuring
>
> Matthew Dear (live vox)
> Dabrye
> Midwest Product
> SV4 (DJ)
Since no one seems to have reviewed the Ghostly tour, I'll have a
go ...
The Ghostly tour rolled into Los Angeles last Saturday night. I
got there at 11:30 and unfortunately missed out on seeing
Midwest Product.
Dabrye was up next. By the beard and the baseball cap I knew I
was in trouble. Another Whiteboy-does-Hip-Hop thang, yup. My
overall impression of him was that he's really good at cooking up
some phat basslines, breaks and beats, but he doesn't know what
to do with them. The songs have little structure above and beyond
the basslines/beats, and often ended so abruptly that the audience
was caught off-guard and didn't know to clap. My feeling is that
he'd do well to collaborate with someone (hasn't he done so with
Scott Herren, Mr. Prefuse 73?) that knows melodies and song structure
that can lay stuff over the top of his reasonably good underlying stuff.
Last year at Movement I saw Matthew Dear do a serviceable, if not
exactly memorable, set at the Underground Stage. This time around
things were completely different - there was a table on stage with a
PowerBook, a mic(!) in the middle, and a small stand with another
keyboard next to the mic.
Matthew strolled up on stage all swayve and de-boner wearing a
white v-neck shirt and a black suit jacket(!!!) - looking nothing so
much like a cross between Pete Sampras and John Tejada :) He was
followed by someone else wearing a casual brown sportcoat and a
bright off-white tie. Well, this should be interesting, I thought ...
And, indeed, it sure was! I don't know how to describe the "backing
tracks" per se, but they were sorta minimal Tech-House-y in that
sorta "Yeah, I'd recognize these as Matthew Dear" if you heard 'em
separately sort of way ... but the main surprise was, Matthew sang
on all of 'em!!! He conjured up the ghosts of Bowie and Sylvian,
in a deep voice singing lyrics that I could only make out snippets
of, but which conjured up the ghost of John Foxx in a detached,
angular, (dare I say it) Electroclash-ian fashion. Let me put it
this way - normally I really don't like vocals with my Techno (or
House) music, but this was brilliant! Somehow it all worked.
Highly recommended.
Matthew Dear, Crooner Extraordinaire - who'dathunkit?
- Greg
