steve summers: counter-factuals

It’s been a while since we last heard from Steve Summers one of the many musical aliases of former Brooklyn and Berlin resident turned Chicago-based producer Jason Letkiewicz. Letkiewicz has prioritized projects that indulge different sides of his complex musical persona. There was the critically acclaimed all-action Mutant Beat Dance “record album booklet” on Rush Hour – a collaboration with Melvin Oliphant III and Beau Wanzer – and then the EBM electro and industrial-influenced grooves of Opposing Currents on Artificial Dance. 2018 also saw him release the sophomore set from his 1980s horror soundtrack-infused Death Commando project while in 2019 Letkiewicz finally put out his first album under his given name – the picturesque new age and ambient movements of “The Reflecting Pool” on Into The Light. But that was then. Now Letkiewicz has finally donned the Steve Summers pseudonym again for a return to CLEAR that’s defiantly intense and otherworldly in tone “Counter-Factuals” is powered primarily by the kind of psychedelic acid lines and thrusting machine drums that have long been a hallmark of Chicago house. This is no nostalgia-fest though with Letkiewicz’s take on “acid” being more abstract and unorthodox than the music of his predecessors. Proof of this analysis arrives straight away with EP opener “Counter- Factuals” ratcheting up the intensity through waves of hallucinatory acid lines blunted electronics druggy male vocal samples and clanking machine beats. Letkiewicz takes similar sonic approach on “People Watching” whose full-throttle approach cuts a path through jacking acid house surging EBM and the more dystopian aspects of 1980s industrial music. Over on side B Letkiewicz combines all of these sounds and inspirations on a cut that pivots around the twin attractions of trance-inducing acid lines and hypnotic analogue beats. Clocking in at a fraction less than nine minutes the track surges forward relentlessly on a tornado of off-key electronics fizzing TB-303 acid lines and barely audible speech snippets. It seems a fitting conclusion to one of Letkiewicz’s most impactful releases to date.