Matthew Dear at The Mid
The landscape of electronic music can be a sporadic place, with bleeps and bloops arranged for lush euphoria, tweeker nightmares, and everything in between. The terrain of live electronic music is altogether unpredictable, minus the guarantee of turquoise lights flooding the stage at some point. Thankfully, the early show Friday night at The Mid was a mostly enjoyable—if sometimes confusing—display of what you’d hope to get from modern electro-glitch-funk-pop-what-have-you.
The Mid itself is a sort of half bottle-popping club, half concert venue that may or may not double as a hotspot for fun-loving Russian operatives—the sheer number of fashionista security guards at every turn is off-putting. Possible espionage aside, the place was absolutely packed by the time Matthew Dear and his band started their synth assault. Dear’s explosive energy overflowed from the stage immediately, clearly stretching the venue’s sound system to its limits with “I Can’t Feel” and “Monkey.” Dear showed surprising versatility with a live band, turning much of Black City into a completely new, captivating album. Though at points the space became a fog of noise rather than song, it was hard to tell how much of that was creative choice and how much was the result of an unprepared sound system. Either way, the live drums, trumpet, or Dear himself consistently brought the confusion back into focus just in time, and the show as a whole delightfully blurred the lines between what was live, what was prerecorded (or newly looped), and what was intentionally affected by the plethora of equipment at Dear’s disposal.
Easily comprising the best 15 minutes of the set (which saw Dear at his most David Byrne-iest, both vocally and with regards to staccato head-bopping), “You Put A Smell On Me” and “Little People (Black City)” were also clearly the most seamless conversions from album to stage. In “Smell”—as in much of the set—Dear’s voice became an equal part of the aural whole rather than a guiding force, which suited the live rendition. “Little People” was an epic bit of organized commotion during which Dear switched between synthed-out singing, guitar banging, and disappearing to the pedals and electro gear beneath his keyboard. This stretch of the set exemplified what Dear does when he’s at his best: He pushes you right up to your threshold for creepiness and chaos, then pulls you back with enough chest-thumping bass to make you grateful you went on the ride.
Opener Loyal Divide—out in front of soon-to-be-released debut LP Bodice Ripper—gave an ambitious performance that set a scene of electronic textures and heavy basslines, regularly making unclear which sounds were live and which were pre-recorded or looped, as Dear would do afterward. The four-piece band (plus an occasional, somewhat unnecessary sax that was often inaudible) showed a knack for soundtrack-ready electro-pop, and often found an intriguing dissonance between frenzied, intense vocals and composed, layered synths—which usually flowed into frenzied, intense synths and composed, almost-spoken word vocals. Although the opening set had a tendency to indulge songs for a bit too long after their climaxes, it also left a room full of listeners surely enticed to see what Loyal Divide can do in the studio.
Loyal Divide - Vision Vision (Directed by BBGUN) from bbgun on Vimeo.
