“Calling Painful Enlightenment a footwork album is like calling Derek Bailey a jazz guitarist. All the consummate pieces of Chicago musician Jana Rush’s production are present and correct – slow-mo swordplay percussion, pulsating bass, back-slipping samples – but only as raw materials for a much darker, more abstract re-think of what the genre could be. Naturally, with that comes a certain amount o”
“Few music genres have generated as much invention and perspiration in recent years as footwork, the Chicago-born dance style where pumping tempos of house are ratcheted up as if by a sadistic personal trainer to the point where they seem to stutter and gasp for air. The chopped samples and snapping percussion of rap add structure back into the mix, though the cornea-detaching bass threatens to und”
“The veteran Chicago footwork producer tests the genre’s stylistic limits on a bracing, sometimes harrowing album that documents her struggles with depression.”
