The Juan MacLean

Matthew Dear Twenty-plus years into his career, producer/vocalist/songwriter/DJ Matthew Dear remains artistically unpredictable in pursuit of his prescient strain of electronically-formed, organically-delivered indie pop. His work traverses myriad musical worlds, belonging to none. He releases club driven tracks as Audion, False, and Jabberjaw. In 2003, he debuted with ‘Leave Luck to Heaven’ on Ghostly, a suite of sparse house tracks with deep, distinctive vocals. It includes “Dog Days,” named one of Pitchfork’s Top 100 Songs of the Decade. The album received rapturous acclaim from both the dance-music establishment and the critical press, including a four-star review in Rolling Stone. His 2007 follow-up, ‘Asa Breed,’ marked a departure from Heaven’s dance-floor focus, incorporating Brian Eno’s pop sensibilities, and Krautrock’s austere beauty. The album earned rave reviews from Q and Mojo magazines. Dear then toured with a live band, commanding the stage with Bryan Ferry-like swagger and gentleman’s grace. In 2010, ‘Black City’ emerged as the culmination of years of experimentation, a darkly playful sound-world that envelops the listener like a malevolent lover. ‘Beams’ (2012) continued his evolution, both a departure from and a worthy successor to ‘Black City.’ It featured weird, wild, and queasily optimistic rhythm-driven pop songs. Dear supported Depeche Mode on their European stadium tour. He contributed a ‘DJ Kicks’ on !K7 and released ‘Alpha’ as Audion in 2016. In 2018, he released ‘Bunny’ showcasing his evolving production, songwriting and featuring the acclaimed collaboration “Bad Ones” with Tegan & Sara. In 2021 he released a ‘lost album’ of earlier works on Ghostly. As Audion, he explores the darker, more experimental side of dance music, pushing boundaries and exploring new sonic territories. Dear is the founding artist of Ghostly International and its dancefloor offshoot, Spectral Sound. He has produced and remixed tracks for The xx, Charlotte Gainsbourg, DJ Koze, Spoon, Hot Chip, Dubfire, Joris Voorn, Tegan & Sara, Daniel Avery, The Postal Service, Depeche Mode and Chemical Brothers. He has created mixes for the Fabric mix series, DJ Kicks, and Get Physical’s Body Language. Matthew’s music has been featured in television series and films. He has been commissioned by Microsoft, GE, and Ford to develop unique experiences for the public. In addition to his music career, Matthew Dear is a lecturer at the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre & Dance, sharing his expertise with the next generation of musicians and producers. Juan Maclean Juan MacLean is a Brooklyn based DJ and producer who has been a mainstay of the New York club scene, as well as maintaining a rigorous international touring schedule, since the release of his first records on the DFA record label in 2002. While maintaining residencies in various New York clubs over the years, Juan has graced the decks at legendary venues like Berlin’s Panorama Bar, Tokyo’s Womb, Sao Paulo’s D-Edge, Lisbon’s Luxe, Fabric of London, and countless others in between. He quickly established a reputation as an eclectic and adaptive DJ, utilizing years of music making and performance experience to develop a finely tuned sensitivity to quality selection and reading a room. Never much of a genre purist, Juan’s sets can feature the gamut from Disco to House to some Techno, with detours into Electro or proto-House along the way, often in the same night. He has also produced an extensive catalog of 12″s and LP’s, mostly for the record label established by his old friend James Murphy, DFA Records, including the seminal dance floor hit ‘Happy House,’ first released in 2009. In 2010 Juan was recruited restart the legendary !K7 DJ Kicks series which helped to spread House music to a wider audience on the cusp of the resurgence of House as a world wide phenomenon. It was selected as the #1 Essential mix by DJ Magazine for that year. Juan has also released on Classic Recording Company and New York City’s Let’s Play House. Most recently, in 2017, Juan released the latest EP of his Peach Melba project on the stalwart record label Classic Recording Company, an EP that was featured in the Traxxsource Top 10 techno chart and the Juno top 20 Deep House chart. He also released his latest The Juan MacLean 12″ on DFA, ‘Can You Ever Really Know Somebody,’ the latest in a long line of dance floor hits featuring vocalist Nancy Whang. Additionally, Juan is always on call for remixes having mixed records by Daft Punk, Air, Yoko Ono, Lana Del Rey, Cerrone and Franz Ferdinand. Currently, Juan is finishing production on his 4th LP, slated for release on DFA Records.