Jana Rush - Painful Enlightenment (Planet Mu, 2021)
One of the biggest names in footwork drops a follow-up to 2017’s ‘Pariah’. Despite their huge influence on the genre, Rush’s ‘Painful Enlightment’ is an unexpectedly emotional and darker follow-up to that debut. The basics remain: pulsating slow-motion rhythms, vocal samples and crackling percussion. Rush’s exploration of the history of black music in Chicago not only parrots the horns on “Moanin’”, but also reevaluates the genre. The result is a cross-pollination with (free)jazz, most clearly heard on the title track and ‘G-Spot’. While the rhythms keep bumping into each other, as on the nine-minute-long ‘Suicidal Ideation’, embellished with an ecstatic sample, ‘Disturbed’ chugs along with its vocals close to the glory days of Chicago house. Using the same footwork elements, Rush shifts up a few gears: the way old and new are combined to create a more diverse palette, in which footwork remains the glue and Rush also immediately shapes the malleability of the genre into an unpredictable form. The roughness is gone, the clashing bass lines crackle as ever. This sonic diversity is at its greatest on ‘Mynd Fuc’, where sub-basses are pitted against a free jazz piano melody. The song gets lost in two opposing tempos that the listener zigzags between. It is a rhythmic contradiction that Rush use a bit more often, but not always as pronouncedly. At the end of the record, DJ Paypal and Nancy Fortune come in to cause some chaos, with ‘Drivin’ Me Insane’ and ‘Just A Taste’ in particular getting the low bass frequencies rolling. On ‘Painful Enlightenment’ Jana Rush demonstrates the power of footwork and pushes it straight into the future. A bold record.
Released on Planet Mu,