Matthew Dear kick-started the essential US electronic label Ghostly International in 1999 with "Hands Up For Detroit," recorded when the Michigan-via-Texas native was still a student at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Since then, Dear's evolved into techno's Thin White Duke, alternating between deejaying and recording hardcore techno, pretty famously, actually, as Audion ("Just Fucking," etc.) and Jabberjaw and other noms-de-dancefloor, remixing the likes of Hot Chip and the XX, and recording eponymously what he calls "experimental electronic-based pop music." The latter can be heard most recently on Black City, an album of extended mix songwriting voodoo that stretches naturally into disco, new wave, electro and classic Berlin-era Bowie and Brian Eno without overstaying its welcome paying homage to any one of them.

Now married and living in DUMBO, Dear says Black City represents as much his commitment to songwriting as tinkering with more sounds (especially his own voice) and more gear in his home studio, which he built up substantially in the three years since his last record, Asa Breed. As such, Black City is as much a quantum leap forward as it is a step back, both for Dear and listeners alike, with plenty of "oh-shit-didn't-hear-that-coming" moments, usually at about the four- or five-minute mark, as pop songs get turned inside out and Dear hops back and forth between DJ wondering what's next and songwriter not content to just double the final chorus. More than good, it's interesting. He explained why on a day off in the middle of a European tour.

How do you explain a record like Black City to fans of your work as Audion?

Honestly, I'd like for those to be completely separate. People can like both aliases, but there is no need to compare the two. Audion is obviously my techno bag. It invigorates me on an entirely different level, and I'd hope it would be this way for fans too. There's nothing worse than when I'm doing an Audion show, and someone asks if I'll sing "Dog Days." People can get too lazy with the way things are going these days. They're used to having it all, and at once. I know how I like to ingest my favorite things, and that's in isolated concentrated doses.

What's the difference between, say, making an Audio record and making a Matt Dear record?

Well, I definitely put a lot of work into the studio during the making of Black City. Acquiring more equipment, mics, compressors. I think I used to be more resigned to the process controlling me, rather than me controlling the process. That has changed. Of course the writing process is widely determined by accidental discovery, only now I have better tools at my disposal to allow for those accidents. I never enter the studio with a preconceived notion of a song. I don't believe in creating my art that way. The process for me is always spontaneous and random in the beginning, and I believe it's necessary in order to capture my subconscious accurately. I can't dictate what happens, and I see my self only as the directive channel. I'm one of the instruments.

Even compared to Asa Breed, there are a lot vocal melodies -- I mean points where it's all vocals -- like something ESG would have done. Where's this fascination with the voice coming from?

The melodies only come once the music is laid out. I'll try various approaches, usually my just miming the words, often incoherently. I'll doubt myself during this process, and not believe in absolutes. A song can take many different shapes, and there isn't one way to do it. When I'm happy and confident in a melody that fits into the music, I'll solidify it by recording it into a track. More often than not, I'll start with the humming, or background layering first. This usually guides the rest of what I'll write, or how I'll sing later. For example, on "Monkey," the first vocals I put down were the intro "Run away, runaway." They became a mantra of sorts that guided the rest of the song's meaning. As I go on to sing about my metaphorical life as a monkey, I'm reminded over and over that I should just run away from it all. I guess it's all about inner dialog and capturing the conversations with myself onto my songs. I imagine most people to have the same conversations, so in the end I want my songs to carry over into everyone's life experience.

Yet, I don't know if it's just that come from the same Midwestern roots, but this record -- and your career, for that matter -- seems to run parallel to, say, indie dance or the whole DJs-forming-their-own-band things. I mean, I can hear where you get lumped in with a lot of what's going on, but it's sort of its own thing. I mean, on your last record, "Deserter" sounded more like Love & Rockets than, say, Hot Chip.

Yes, it's a shame that that kind of pigeonholing exists. However, there is a lot of terrible music out there when it comes to the bridging of dance and vocals, so I understand the concern. I've resigned to not worrying about it too much. People can get to know me through interviews, my live band performances, and most importantly through my music, and see for themselves. In the end, if they still don't get it because of some preconceived notion that I'm a "DJ" then so be it. I'm a 21st Century man.

What is it about this record that isn't just you doing DJ tracks and why is that important, both to you as an artist and to Mathew Dear fans?

I hope the music captures and moves people. If it does, then that is the achievement. I make it primarily for myself and my home. I enjoy filling the place with sound and work. I guess it's like a continuously painting at home. The process is just as important as the end result. The act of making my music is inherently mine, and determines how I behave and think. Luckily there is a record button that can capture it all and save it for others to hear.

Black City has a very Berlin Trilogy feel to it, but where does this record fit in with your career in terms of where you want to be and where you hear it in the grander scheme of music right now?

I've gotten the Berlin Trilogy reference from a few people. It wasn't an intentionally direct affair by any means, but I was definitely listening to a lot of surrounding material from that time. I think those albums represent a time and place in musical history, ingested and recreated throughout Bowie, Visconti and Eno. There's a lot of Krautrock, some Kraftwerk. In a sense, those albums signaled a shift towards darker, synth-laden atmospheres. I'm definitely a byproduct of that.

Who are your kindred spirits, who do you look up to?

I look up to peers, legends, and unknown talents. People who have twisted through this odd world of music and carved their own niche: Holger Czukay, Brian Eno, Gary Numan, Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush and Arthur Russell. It's difficult to say who I want my career path to follow, or imitate. You can't necessarily wish for those kind of things. You must simply 'do' them.

What would your ideal gig be like with this music?

I'd love to play with some noise acts. Abandoned warehouses in the fallout of middle America. Would love to do a tour through the Rust Belt, and down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico. I'm sure only a few people would actually know of my music there. Might end up being better that way, playing alongside Health in a derelict steel mill.

Matthew Dear's Black City is out now via Ghostly International.