Matthew Dear
Asa Breed
Ghostly International
By Mel Torment
The thing I like about electronic music (or what I consider good electronic music) is a concoction that is either completely human, created out of banks of machines, or something so alien that it expands musical possibilities. Matthew Dear’s Asa Breed is trapped between those two extremes and it is a little unsettling. Matthew Dear’s whole act is that he is the emotive storyteller from a complicated realm of technology (aka Texas). There is a unique element of complication, but I fear it may be derived from an uncertainty that is created from an attempt to tow the line of electro-folk music.
It’s really hard to pinpoint the exact attitude or song that embodies this turmoil. “Fleece on Brain” plucks ominously with deep raspy textures and crawls across the inner ear. Still, that crawling amplifies the search for one’s own niche, which if anything, is exactly what this album embodies. Shuffle to “Neighborhoods” and one experiences a poppier, innocent take on some in descript angst. Move deeper into the album and “Death to Feelers” continues this playful yet lost feeling. It’s toy piano loops underneath Dear’s distinctive and raspy voice which throws the song into a techno limbo that one can neither shake what their genetic make up gave them toward, nor vibe with on an introspective level. Still, this album has some very strong musical aspects that should not go without mention.
Asa Breed pulls from both live and electronic instruments, further isolating Dear in a zone of his own creation. It’s almost as if the theme to The Twilight Zone, as an entity unto itself, has been incubating, and has now been released to unleash quirky and darkly ironic situations. How kitsch. This sound as it develops could prove to be Dear’s most distinct talent, almost a Lou Reed’s Machine Metal Music for the now. Until that time, Asa Breed is left sitting alone as an electro anomaly with one hand reaching for acceptance and the other moving feverishly toward the abstract.
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