Motor City Techhead

As a neo-Detroit techno auteur, Matthew Dear might be expected to be vehemently anti-'EDM' – even if, ironically, his early single, Hands Up For Detroit, with the ghetto-tech Disco D was cheesily sampled by Fedde Le Grand. But, he says, mainstream electronica has become “deeper” and “more leftfield” with acts like Disclosure and, yes, Lorde, its audience maturing. He's a convert: “I think it's fantastic that we are seeing that shift away from this over-the-top, insane, in-your-face, I-want-it-now dance music to something a bit more subtle and a bit more finely-crafted.”

In his teens Dear moved from Texas to Detroit and there, as a raver, embraced the spectrum of underground techno. The anthropology student was involved in the founding of Samuel Valenti IV's Ghostly International. In 2003 Dear, intrigued by Krautrock pioneers Can, unveiled his critically-acclaimed debut, Leave Luck To Heaven, casting himself as an avant-garde popster, combining songcraft, warped soul and micro-house. “What I did in the very beginning of my career – in 2004/2005, when I really started mixing vocals with the kind of oddball electronic stuff in my home studio – it was just a sign of the shifting technologies and how a lot of people were starting to make music at home. When I first started doing it, it was still really important to have a band… [Then] it just shifted within the last five years, where the idea of the bedroom producer... branching out into a full-song mode became really apparent and an obvious choice for so many people.”

Dear put out a fifth album, Beams, two years ago. Yet today Dear is more into airing club music under an old alias. “I really have shifted lately into the Audion monicker – the more techno-based stuff.” Indeed, Dear issued the 10-year “recap” Audion X, entailing 2006's cult hit, Mouth To Mouth, and has cut 'versus' bangers with Tiga, their latest, Fever. “But I can't stop making weird little pop songs – so that stuff's just kinda my doodling.”

Dear will DJ at the new boutique event HoleAndCorner alongside members of Hot Chip. Since 2012's Australian trek, he's remixed Jagwar Ma and Kylie Minogue, plus performed live at Detroit's inaugural Laneway Festival. Detroit's (electronic) scene can be political, but the Melbourne brand was widely welcomed. “We definitely need more of that kinda stuff in Detroit. I remember I saw Savages there – it was just fantastic, it was so cool to see a band that I really love on the same grounds that I did my high school graduation at (laughs).”

Currently living with his wife in Upstate New York - “the forest,” he quips – Detroit is “still home”, and a touchstone. “When I DJ, it's totally house music, techno music. I'm not much of a quick-cut, hands-in-the-air party record kinda guy – I'm more of a groove-based, slow-build, arcs and deep valleys [guy]. That's not to say that I don't get things pretty energetic at times, but I just like to take my time getting there.”