- Jenifa Mayanja makes great house music, but she's not as well known as fellow East Coast producers like Fred P, DJ Qu and Joey Anderson. Though she doesn't release as many records as she did before 2013, her tracks, at their best slightly psychedelic, remain impressive. Mayanja's first release of 2017, the second instalment in Bass Cadet Records' Orbit series, is as charming as ever. "Rift" is all about a guitar sample that twirls slightly off time, like it's caught in the track's heaving undertow. The effect jars at first, but then becomes oddly captivating, offset by the smoothness elsewhere on the track.
"The Journey To Nowhere" layers organs and synth strings, which sound like they were taken from an SNES game, to establish its nervous mood. Meanwhile, the Casio keyboard shuffle of the drowsy "Excessive Matters" recalls Heatsick, and is decorated with vocal gasps and sighing pads. Jus-Ed's remix of "The Journey To Nowhere" turns the track's frown upside down, pushing the organ back into the mix and laying down a pleasing hi-hat pattern that would fit snuggly into his DJ sets. But in stripping down Mayanja's track and making it more functional, Jus-Ed removes some of its personality and the melodic richness that makes her tunes so good.
TracklistA1 Rift
A2 The Journey To Nowhere
B1 Excessive Matters
B2 The Journey To Nowhere (DJ Jus-Ed Remix)