Use Your Words: Matthew Dear

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"ON THE LEFT?" asked Matthew Dear to someone in the SUV.

Seems that the minimalist techno star, who now lives in New York City, was driving the vehicle to Philadelphia on the second night of his U.S. tour behind "Asa Breed" (Ghostly International) — his decidedly un-techno pop album.

Dear's just the sort of hands-on, do-everything guy who would not only play and record pretty much every note on an album such as "Asa Breed" — from drums, bass, guitar and vocals to the electronic production tweaks that give the CD such a distinct personality — but also drive the wheels that would propel him and his Big Hands trio on a month-long rock-club tour.

Matthew Dear had made a name for himself on the international microhouse dance scene using the names Audion, False and Jabberjaw for instrumental head-and-booty trips that never fail to fill the dancefloor — or your subconscious. Call it deep listening music for hyperactive ravers.

But it's under his birth name that Dear's received the most wide-ranging press coverage. That's partially because "Asa Breed" is a song-driven, vocals-heavy, neo-new wave album filled with the sort of forlorn electro-pop that was the emotional soundtrack for so many pasty modern-day music critics during their 1980s teen years. (We plead guilty.)

Dear isn't pushing 40, however; he's a 28-year-old wunderkind who came to electronic music somewhat by chance.

"I moved to Michigan when I was 16," the Texas-reared Dear said from behind the wheel. "My mom got a job up there and so I went. I was looking forward to the move. I wanted a change, and I knew Detroit would offer it. Even at that age, I was looking for a new atmosphere to live in. I didn't leave Texas until I was about 13 years old. It's a very big place; it's very Texas. You can easily get trapped with it. I just wanted something totally different. I had knew Michigan had a good indie-rock scene around Detroit, and I think I was drawn to that Midwest rock buzz that was going on around that time."

Leaving the land of Townes Van Zandt for the birthplace of techno didn't make an immediate impact on Dear. It wasn't until he entered the University of Michigan that his diet of hip-hop and indie rock expanded to include the motorik 4-to-the-floor beats and cold-wave bleeps that define the Detroit techno aesthetic.

While in college, Dear met fellow student Sam Valenti IV at a house party in the late 1990s. Valenti liked what Dear was DJing and the two been chatting. It led to a partnership that exists to this day: Valenti has released the bulk of Dear's music on his Ghostly International and Spectral Sound labels, and Dear has been the company's flagship artist ever since his song "Hands Up for Detroit" kicked off Ghostly's debut release in 1999 — the same year Dear went to his first warehouse party in the Motor City, discovering the techno underground in the process.

Dear has been a fast learner ever since, amassing a large discography that, when using one of his pseudonyms, largely focuses on shakin' asses. But under his own name — growing with the 2003 album "Leave Luck to Heaven," budding with 2004's "Backstroke" and fully blooming on 2007's "Asa Breed" — Dear has been bringing the sad-sack noise to go with the dance-floor funk.

While the rhythms of Detroit techno were allegedly inspired by the hypnotic machine sounds of the autoplants — plus a whole lotta Kraftwerk — it sounds like "Asa Breed" was divined from a wholly different but no less prominent Michigan trademark: bleak gray winters.

It's not the cold that defines the Great Lake State's darkest days; it's the endless rows of leafless trees standing perfectly still, like skeleton soldiers across a Fargo-flat landscape that can cause even the most jovial people to consider driving their cars off the endless highways.

It's downright oppressive.

"It's a pretty unique place," Dear said of Michigan. "We were just talking about that in the van the other day. I don't know if because, geographically, it's isolated on that peninsula type thing, but it always just makes people feel funny inside."

Still, the overall mood of "Asa Breed," which takes its title from a character in Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle," wasn't "really influenced by the landscape," Dear said. "But I'm glad it paints that picture for you. But that just has to do with the way I write my music: I just like to leave it out there and let the listener interpret how he or she wants to. I'm really happy to hear that it can conjure up all sorts of things for various people."

With a voice in the same dour baritone register as Joy Division's Ian Curtis — without the emotion or drama — Dear sings, "You sound deserted / Lost and alone / The world around you has gone perverted," on the first single, "Deserter," which marries early New Order with gothy indie-pop.

On "Death to Feelers," which has a slightly sunnier musical bent, Dear groans, "I was supposed to make grand observations / But I've lost my train of thought."

And Dear digs down to his Texas roots for the lyrics of "Give Me More," which have gunslinger written all over them: "I must shut you down / I will shoot your leg / You will fall to the ground."

Lyrics, however, are something that middle-aged critics focus on. Dear? No so much.

"I definitely think about them, but I try not to overthink them," Dear said of his words. "I think they come from a deep place somewhere in the back of my head, and a lot of times I almost just go into an ad lib state of mind when I'm writing them. I really focus more on the rhythm, and the way the syllables fit together, and the sounds of the words rather than the meaning."

Spoken like a true minimalist instrumental techno god.

» Rock & Roll Hotel, 1353 H St. NE; Thu., 8 p.m., $12; 202-388-7625.

Photos by Will Calcutt and Christopher Porter (bottom)