James Johnston

After Everything EP James Johnston

Following a pair of fine releases on Fine Art and Under The Shade, James Johnston delivers another superb EP for No Matter What. "After Everything" is a masterfully created slice of rolling deep house flirting with disco styles, punctuated with snippets of disco guitar licks and dubbed out vocal samples, all held together with a sumptuous chord sequence. The comparatively upbeat tempo rhythm and deep subs of "Lost The House Keys" which follows comes as something of a surprise, and the chopped up piano which causes the track to erupt into a flurry of jacking rhythms only add to the proto-Chi house mood. The rest of the tracks continue with the same kind of upbeat pace, with "Get Back To The Feeling" interlacing a variety of female vocal samples within its 909 rhythms, and "XTC" injecting some serotonin into the EP with its razor sharp synth stabs and snares, whose rhythms recall the deadly precision of Marc Kinchen's early productions.