TuneLab
Matthew Dear eclectic house and techno set in The Lab NYC
Matthew Dear in The Lab NYC promises ‘eclectic’, and he delivers—a set that feels like rummaging through the record collection of the coolest, slightly unhinged person you know. The vibe is a downtown art space after midnight, where the boundaries between house, techno, and outright weirdness happily blur. This is indeed an eclectic house and techno journey, averaging 126 BPM and dominantly anchored in the versatile key of 12A. The energy is deep and groovy, with a pronounced low-end focus (0.67 avg) that gives even the quirkiest tracks a danceable foundation.
Dear’s mixing is intellectual but funky, often letting tracks play out to showcase their oddball character before seamlessly stitching them together. Harmonic moves to 3B introduce a darker, more driving edge at key moments. The selections are a curator’s dream. LOGGANN’s ‘Polygons’ is a brilliantly skittering, abstract opener.
Dropping Gesaffelstein’s ‘Control Movement’ is a stroke of genius, its industrial stomp cutting through the groove. CamelPhat & Elderbrook’s ‘Cola’ gets a play, its iconic bassline feeling fresh in this context. The inclusion of Danny Tenaglia’s epic ‘Don’t Turn Your Back’ is a deep house history lesson, while Franco BA’s ‘Cemento’ offers a raw, loop-based techno punch. The journey is unpredictable and thrilling: it starts with the glitchy intrigue of ‘Polygons’, builds to a fierce peak with tracks like ‘Control Movement’, and winds down with the atmospheric, driving finish of Wesley Martins & Nørus’s ‘Avoid the Spikes’.