The current vogue for minimal club music often seems like a singularly Germanic pursuit, but there are other producers around the world making stripped-down tracks, including Irish producer Donnacha Costello, Canadian maverick Mike Shannon and Persona boss Stewart Walker from the States.

US producer Matthew Dear is another techno producer in this general field. Although he has put out records on some of the most respected underground labels in electronic music – Plus 8, Spectral, Perlon and Ghostly – he admits that he was a relative newcomer to the sound.
“The producers that really tipped me off on the sound that I’m into now were early Kompakt artists, Dan Bell and the first Perlon records,” he explains. “I was producing before I heard all those guys, but it was more club oriented, nonsense techno. I had hit a wall of sorts, and this whole new world of minimal music was opened up to me around 2000.”
When he started making stripped down music, luck was on Dear’s side. Having sent a demo to Richie Hawtin’s Plus 8 label, the producer then bumped into the iconic techno DJ at an airport baggage reclaim.
“I ran into Rich at the Detroit Airport a couple years ago,” he recalls. “A mutual friend had given him a disc of my recent material, and we met by coincidence. He said something like, ‘Oh you’re the guy whose disc I’ve been listening to a lot lately’.”
Releases like his recent single, ‘Dog Days’ and his new album, Leave Luck To Heaven may be steeped in the legacy of Basic Channel, Dan Bell and Rob Hood, but they have a quirky, funky feel and, with Dear’s vocals cut and spliced into nearly every track, are imbued with a curious pop sensibility.
Unsurprisingly, Matthew says his love of pop music goes back a long way.
“I was heavily influenced by acts like Depeche Mode, Yazoo, Front 242 and New Order as a young child because I had an older brother who inadvertently schooled me in this music, and I loved the magic these artists had,” he explains, adding that that’s why …Luck… features his oddball vocals throughout. “I take so much inspiration from the music around me that I couldn’t help but sing.”
Does an adventurous producer like Dear feel that the current dub/click techno sound is more than just a replica of Basic Channel and Dan Bell’s styles?
“I actually just got this compilation of old Dan Bell stuff, and it’s amazing that none of the tracks are outdated,” he observes. “I view electronic music as having a domino effect. Each year, new music is somewhat based upon the impact of the previous year’s releases. This, of course, is not a bad thing. After all, would there be Detroit techno without Kraftwerk?”
The P-Funk bassline and cheeky hooks on ‘Dog Days’ suggest that Dear’s true calling may be in the pop world, or a subversive mutation thereof.
“Great songs are great songs, regardless of their musical make up. I’ve been a fan of Depeche Mode since I was a kid, and that’s some of the best pop music,” he maintains. “I guess I might make real pop music, as long as it stayed edgy. Pop isn’t such an evil thing,” Matthew concludes. “The Beatles were pure pop, but they wrote some of the best music of this century. I’ll continue to experiment with vocals, and we’ll just see what comes out.”

Leave Luck To Heaven is out now on Spectral.