- "Little People (Black City)," the nine-and-a-half minute heart of Matthew Dear's new album, looks back to obvious sources—very late '70s Bowie, languid, chilly, yet serene and sensuously gliding. And even with Dear overdubbing it all, the track has a played-live aura, a groove with as much in common with the kind of pan- and post-disco you'd hear from a Compass Point session from the early '80s as with Dear's more overtly inorganic work.
Mark E's remix could be equally aptly called a re-arrangement; he doesn't reinvent Dear's groove so much as massage it by boosting the low end and highlighting the percussion and the slightly spooked organs. It's part and parcel with Mark E's recent work, which seems to be inching its way toward some kind of absolute Zen state of disco essence. The lyric Mark E highlights, halfway in, is "Talk is complication, you get carried away," and his focus on the track's soothing instrumentation bears him out. And if you really think talk is complication, he throws in a similarly minded (and not too different) dub to make things even easier.
Tracklist A Little People (Black City)
B Little People (Black City) (Mark E Dub Version)
Digital: Little People (Black City) (Mark E Remix)