- James Johnson, AKA Plural, is a producer from Louisville, Kentucky whose involvement with electronic music stretches back two decades. But given his largely lowkey output, this release on Juan Atkins's Metroplex feels like it's come out of nowhere. Within the Metroplex canon, Shifting Forward owes something to Robert Hood's The Vision alias: "Stop Motion" rolls with the same minimalist, chord-anchored style of The Spectral Nomad.
The same applies to "Shifting Forward." Its kicks have a reassuring hardness about them—they sound as if they were made to smash through walls—and the impact is made stronger by the neat rhythms that play out between each strike. These rhythmic devices are brought to the front by Aubrey, whose remix, augmented by pale synths, blunts the impact of Plural's thudding original, and relies instead on a rumbling bassline to carry things forward. "Blood Ties," too, is a fine track, but in the context of an otherwise excellent EP, it's a slightly inferior inclusion.
TracklistA1 Shifting Forward
A2 Shifting Forward (Aubrey Remix)
B1 Stop Motion
B2 Blood Ties