Brett Johnson's "Jack" Is a House-Inflected Nursery Rhyme

Dance music has always had the meta-referential tendency to look inward as much as it looks out. In house music, that has resulted in scores of songs that talk about jacking as a way to encourage you to jack. Combine those solipsistic provocations with predilections with psychedelic drugs and playfully childlike motifs and you've got all the makings of a classic house jam that DJs of all stripes will be compelled to play. Brett Johnson checks all those boxes, and more, on "Jack," his first release for Eats Everything's Edible imprint.

As a veteran producer with hits for Derrick Carter's Classic, DJ Sneak's Magnetic, Freerange and Visionquest under his belt, Johnson can't help himself when it comes to creating energizing "boompitey" beats and catchy walking bass lines, even when such funky flair has fallen out of style, in favor of flatter deep house fare. "Jack" tells a simple tale of a guy and his girl (wanna guess her name?) who climb up a hill, decline to take a pill, and dance the night away. It's like a reverse telling of Green Velvet's seminal raver anthem "Flash" or Marshall Jefferson's trippy house classic "Mushroom." It's wink and a nudge in the direction of sobriety, which makes it something of an oddity when compared to most songs in this addled style. Listen here.