Audion: Your Place or Mine ?

Adopted Detroit resident Matthew Dear will be visiting Montréal this coming Friday. His 2003 album Leave Luck to Heaven was very well received both by the music press and fans of minimal electronic music alike. The follow-up EP Backstroke did very well also, helping to consolidate Dear's presence on the American and worldwide electronic scene. Being named "Artist of the Year" by XLR8R might've helped a bit.


However you may think you feel about Dear's minimal records you're in for a shock if you've never heard him as Audion: a different beast altogether, one that traded its touchy-feely/low-key rainbow of textures for the unholy hammers of hydraulic-pressed techno and the collapsing grinds of metal-fatigued synth lines. Plus: it's all about fucking, as exemplified by Audion's 2005 full-length debut Suckfish, a brill piece of a techno records if there's one out there.

So, let's have a look back at Suckfish while we wait for Friday's Audion appearance at La SAT.

Audion's Suckfish
Suckfish is something dark, its songs like abandoned snapshots taken during an evening of unrestrained debauchery that hardly make sense the morning after. Taken during an ethylic black-out, these pictures are infused with paranoia and a forgotten sense of purpose that was exclusive to each of these frozen moments.

Did damaged girls move their body lasciviously on the dance floor? Did lust seep in slowly like a disease? Did grins slowly replace empty stares as chemicals started dragging couch-wrecked corpses out of their respective comas? Was that basement badly lit, with sweat on the walls? How long did it take for the coked-up DJ's hand gestures to sync up to the music?

Things were stopped at that point where desires ruled, well after conviction, religion and common sense had been executed on the town square. A blood-shot blur, except for those eleven Polaroid's lining the gritty tiles of the bathroom you woke up in, naked and handcuffed to the sink. The greenish neon light is buzzing, there's a distinct smell of vomit and alcohol - a broken bottle of Moskovskaya – and the smell of sweat not your own, not to mention the headache. You don't remember much except that it was worth it.


Suckfish features some of the best evocative moods since the heydays of experimental industrial music, complimented with solid production that emphasizes its disjointed sonorities. Matthew Dear clearly has a firm grasp of the impact of ever-intensifying sounds and the hypnotic effects the repetition of apparently simple structures can have. And if Suckfish's music isn't evocative enough for you then its song titles should clarify its point: "Your Place or Mine", "Titty Fuck", "Just Fucking", etc.

The mostly instrumental album grinds its factory built synth lines thru a ripe field of techno beats demanding for just such violation. It's an insane ride thru pulsating 4/4 rhythms and screeching noises, with a few distorted vocals thrown in for good measure, that leave little – or rather a lot – to imagination.

The album is not without texture, and perhaps it is even one of its more subtle strengths, enabling it to work as an album and flow through its calmer moments. However, Suckfish really shines when Dear kicks the Audion machine into high gear, delivering his unique brand of hectic, pulsating techno at full steam, the sheer insanity of it all a desperate plea to derail the human machine into an abyss of sinful pleasures.

Perhaps that's what Suckfish is all about: the experience of crashing headfirst into another human being for those few precious moments that you will never get back and never be able to reproduce. Was it worth it? Do you feel satisfied? It doesn't seem to matter at all when you're right there, letting it happen, living it. And Suckfish is like that – a subversive series of instrumentals that'S not pretentious enough to let its purpose be known through lyrics or even clearly defined, but it is a piece that brings you to that place where you'd be likely to let anything happen just for the hell of it. Or at least wonder how things could've gone.


Matthew Dear's next record as Audion will be his entry into the prestigious Fabric series, volume 27 to be exact, scheduled for release in April. I'm not sure exactly how this DJ mix differs from what he would've produced had he chosen to simply use the name "Matthew Dear" since his Fabric mix is quite the minimal affair anyway (More on that subject in an upcoming topic). Also be on the lookout for an Audion/Ellen Allien split 12" due out in May.

Diskho is bringing Audion to Montréal on Friday March 10 at La SAT.