- Shuffling deep house for happy hours and early mornings.
- There's an almost regal quality to Jenifa Mayanja's house music. It's elegant, unhurried and totally unbothered, moving at its own pace with sensual keyboard licks and just the right amount of reverb to get you in the mood. She calls herself the first lady of deep house, but I'd argue that something a bit more royal might fit. At any rate, her latest EP, which lands on London soulful house outpost Hardmatter, finds her at the top of the game, looking down lovingly at her subjects from her lofty East Coast perch.
"A Feeling" is prime Mayanja, with excellent cool-blue keyboards and layers of organ that form a sturdy backbone. There are sprinklings of piano and barely-there vocals to add a hint of sensuality—like the tickle of breath on your neck—but things get typically weird in the middle when she floats in some eerie strings. (An underrated quality of Mayanja's is her ability to give you goosebumps when you least expect it.) "Leaning Into It" solidifies the transatlantic collection, a take on West London broken beat with some gorgeous jazzy keyboard playing, while "Second Time's A Charm" has a Latin vibe, hand percussion treading water and keeping the groove afloat. Throughout the EP Mayanja sounds relaxed and confident, working up beats to gently start the party and keep it classy. She once called an EP Music 4 Adults, and there's something wonderfully mature about records like Chances that sound comfortable in their skin.
Tracklist01. A Feeling
02. Second Time's The Charm
03. Leaning Into It