Don't Be Leftout: Matthew Dear, Matt Tolfrey, Ryan Crosson, jozif - Tickets available at door
Saturday // Doors at 10:00
$20 - Tickets available at door
Matthew Dear
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Depending on whom you ask, Matthew Dear is a DJ, a dance-music producer, an experimental pop artist, a bandleader. He co-founded both Ghostly International and its dancefloor offshoot, Spectral Sound. He's had remixes commissioned by The XX, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Spoon, Hot Chip, The Postal Service, and Chemical Brothers; he's made mixes for Get Physical's Body Language and the Fabric mix series. He maintains four aliases (Audion, False, Jabberjaw, and Matthew Dear), each with its own style and distinct visual identity. He straddles multiple musical worlds and belongs to none—and he's just hitting his stride.
Matthew Dear's 2003 full-length debut, Leave Luck to Heaven, is a suite of sparse, wickedly funky house laced with Dear's deep, distinctive vocals, and includes the much-loved single "Dog Days" (voted one of Pitchfork's Top 100 Songs of the Decade). The record was met with rapturous acclaim from both the dance-music establishment and the critical press, including a four-star review in Rolling Stone. The 2007 follow-up, Asa Breed, is a considerable departure from Heaven's dancefloor excursions, incorporating the polyrhythms of Afrobeat, the irreverent pop sensibilities of Brian Eno, and the austere beauty of Krautrock. More four-stars reviews followed (Q and Mojo magazines), and Dear subsequently began touring with a live three-piece band, Matthew Dear's Big Hands, in which Dear acted as frontman, commanding the stage with a Bryan Ferry-like swagger and a gentleman's grace.
Today, Matthew Dear finds himself in a unique position. His highly anticipated third album, 2010's Black City, is the culmination of years of hard work and experimentation, a darkly playful sound-world that envelops the listener like the arms of a malevolent lover. After over a decade of exploring pop's outer limits, Matthew Dear now inhabits a rarefied corner of the musical universe: no longer tethered to any one genre, respected by his peers, and blessed with a bottomless well of creative energy. Now is Matthew Dear's moment, and it sounds like nothing else.
Matt Tolfrey
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Matt Tolfrey is heading into the most challenging chapter of his career so far with his head held high and his stock never greater. His debut artist album is in the bag and ready to go, the output from his labels never stronger, with an Ibiza residency safely secured and global recognition for his DJ ability bestowed upon him.
Undoubtedly, one can recognise that Matt's tireless devotion and relentless energy have taken him to a point where he is beginning to shape the musical world around him.
A production career which launched in 2005 on Crosstown Rebels, and bloomed via the creation of his own Leftroom label, has since taken him to Get Physical, Cocoon, Rekids, Saved and Culprit but unsurprisingly his debut album 'Word of Mouth' will bring him back home and arrive on Leftroom in late September.
Matt explains the concept of the album - 'I cannot play the piano and I am not professionally trained in any way musically, but through years of DJing I know exactly what I like, and I have great tracks in my head that need to get out. While searching the Internet for alternate ideas of making music, I came across some amazing software that enables you to simply sing or hum into a mic, which then translates into midi notes, which you then use as the basis of your tracks. In essence, it means that while I am walking the streets, or away travelling, and I come up with an idea for a bassline, or a melody, I can simply record it into my phone, return home, and sing it into the computer. In other words, 'in theory' the album is mainly going to be written with my mouth, not my fingers, and then fully realised with the help of engineers and guest vocalists - hence the name 'Word Of Mouth'.
Teaser tracks from the album are starting to drop as we write (late June) with 'Turn Me Out' receiving Pete Tong radio play on Radio 1. Expect further tasters as summer elapses. With the album completed, Matt is out on the road testing the material. The afore-mentioned residency sees him perform 6 dates at Sankeys Ibiza, inclusive of parties for his Leftroom collective – the likes of Laura Jones, Jay Haze, Gavin Herlihy, Kate Simko, Craig Richards and Simon Baker - who will also join up with Matt at Watergate, Moscow's new Gipsy club, The Rainbow in Birmingham, Chicago's Spybar, The Standard Hotel in LA, Fabric and U Street Music Hall in Washington, D.C, all in the run up to the album's release.
With a placing secured in Resident Advisor's top 100 DJs poll for 2011, demand for Matt as a DJ has never been greater with 2012 containing his busiest touring schedule yet – and festival appearances confirmed at Seattle's Decibel, Piknic Electronik in Montreal and RideFest, Hungary.
Ryan Crosson
Ryan Crosson makes house and techno inspired by the historical precedent set in his native city of Detroit and his adopted hometown of Berlin. His musical output is shaped by pioneering artists like Richie Hawtin, Kevin Saunderson and Moodymann in the US, in addition to European heavyweights like Pantytec, Ricardo Villalobos, and Thomas Brinkmann. Situated loosely between these two defining poles, alongside his partners in Visionquest: Shaun Reeves, Seth Troxler and Lee Curtiss, Ryan delivers a obsessive attention to the constant progression of his sound and embodies a ceaseless energy that carries itself from the studio directly into his live set and DJ performances. Whether it's solo in the studio or as a guiding hand in the Visionquest label and DJ/production partnership, Ryan consistently chooses to steer away from the predictable circuit of so-called "underground" club hits, instead favouring a process of constant renewal, returning both to early influential material and to emerging sounds that depart from well-trodden trends. As a key member of Visionquest, Ryan is responsible for much of the concepting and day to day running of what has rapidly become one of dance music's most cherished new labels. Between them, Ryan and his partners in Visionquest have honed a whole new landscape of lush, organic techno and more esoteric leftfield electronica, gambling against the predicable to introduce emerging talent like Tale Of Us, Maceo Plex, Footprinz, Laura Jones and Mathew Burton to the record buying public. Their efforts were rewarded when their label was voted number seven in Resident Advisor's 2011 label poll, no mean feat given that it's back catalogue has only recently hit double digits.
In the studio, Ryan's production and sampling practices depart from the world of electronic music by accessing histories of sound, referencing musique concrete, 1970's funk, and East African jazz. This is best demonstrated by the evolution of his sound from minimal hits like 'Gotham Road' and 'Hopskotch', through to the organic underground house strains of his 'Visionquest' remixes of Kiki's 'Good Voodoo' and more recently via his Visionquest remixes of David Lynch's 'Pinky's Dream' and Guy Gerber and P Diddy's forthcoming 'Eleven Eleven' project. In addition to dancefloor bombs like 'You've Got Me' EP on Supplement Facts he's also capable of conjuring up the haunting cosmic beauty of his recent 'Birds & Souls' project on Spectral Sound alongside the genre-busting sonic experiments that make up his recent DRM album collaboration with Cesar Merveille released at the start of the year on Visionquest.
In the past Ryan has released tracks on diverse and groundbreaking labels like m-nus, Telegraph, Trapez, and Wagon Repair and more recently Soma, Spectral Sound and Supplemental Facts. From the outset Ryan immediately gave himself over to a life of touring and performance that keeps a steady focus on both the avant-garde aesthetics and deeply emotional bonds of dance music subculture. Ryan's back-to-back live sets with Lee Curtiss, at the sold out Visionquest showcase at fabric last year and at Movement in Detroit, stole both these shows boding well for 2012 which will see him repeat his live show at some of the world's most famous clubs and festivals alongside a packed schedule of DJ gigs, both solo and as part of Visionquest, including his much anticipated new residency at Circo Loco at DC10 this summer.
