Deep Impressions

Dance and Electronica with Chris Honnery

The Texan techno titan – he also makes offbeat pop music, but that spoils the alliteration – Matthew Dear returns Down Under in June on the Queen’s Birthday long weekend. The Ghostly International main man is an extremely dexterous producer, exploring techno, minimal and pop soundscapes throughout his varied body of work. Dear is known to work under a range of different monikers, with his sound shifting depending on which of his aliases he is using. Dear stands out as something of an anomaly in the musical environ as he’s revered by both the Pitchfork-reading hipsters for his indie output – his Asa Breed album is a must for anyone who hasn’t checked it out – and the techno cognoscenti for his work as Audion, False and Jabberjaw. His track ‘Free To Ask’, remixed by D’Julz, functions as something of a techno/acid pop hybrid that could serve as a gateway to lure unsuspecting pop fans into the club realm – or indeed vice versa. Dear’s single ‘Dog Days’ from his debut LP Leave Luck To Heaven was voted one of Pitchfork’s Top 100 Songs of the decade – I personally cannot believe ‘Mouth to Mouth’ didn’t also crack the list – and he has also completed remixes for the xx, Charlotte Gainsbourg and more recently Jagwar Ma. Dear heads a hefty lineup that also features Hot Chip in DJ mode along with Cosmin TRG, Henry Saiz and Guy J who will all throw down at Home Nightclub on Sunday June 8.

“Four-four time is a kind of diametrical baton. It creates structure and acts as a kind of hostel warden to keep the pubescent samples in line. This is important in order to conjure up a fitting little dress for the playful bumblebees and weeds that are the samples.” We’ve come in on a totally off-the-wall conversation between two purveyors of abstract electronic music (and even more abstract conversation): sample and collage artist Dennis Busch, AKA James DIN A4, and German producer Jan Jelinek, who releases under a range of monikers including Farben, which is the banner he’s opted to use in his latest project. Last European summer, Jelinek remixed his way through a range of Busch’s material. He has since selected ten of his favourite reworks to make up the album Farben Presents James DIN A4, which drops this week on Jelinek’s label Faitiche. Jelinek rarely releases as Farben, which is all the more reason to give the new album a listen. I mean, if the pair combine to make music anywhere near as well as they talk smack, the album should be a masterpiece, right?

Magazine label co-founder Barnt will play at Club 77 to kick off the Easter weekend on Thursday April 17. Barnt’s distinct blend of post-minimal and post-‘kosmische’ – eh? – has propelled him to a position of prominence among left-field techno fans. Barnt’s discography includes releases on the seminal Kompakt label and Matias Aguayo’s experimental imprint Cómeme along with remixes of Tale Of Us, Michael Mayer and Daniel Avery. However, as good as those remixes may be, Barnt topped them all with a blissed-out remix of a 2010 track called ‘HyBoLT’ by German band Von Spar, which is apparently going to be released later this year – it would be criminal if it isn’t! “We want to add another little sentence to the book of German electronic music,” Barnt said when discussing the philosophy that drives his acclaimed Magazine label. “We live in 2013 and have grown up with house, techno, trance, etc. We just think that too few people in Germany are aware what paths and traces have never been wandered. We always look for a space in the void instead of trying to ride the latest Anglo-American deep house waves, as some of our German colleagues seem to prefer.” As for his DJ ethos, Barnt revealed that he tries “to imagine what has never happened on a dancefloor and try to start from there”. Support comes from two lads who have done more for the appreciation of German techno Down Under than anyone I can think of, Mike Callander and Matt Aubusson. Just remember boys – save the Anglo-Australian deep house for another night.