I'm not sure who John Hardin is, I've never met him and more sensitive readers will want to google "Chicago Cruising" with some discretion (hey, I warned you). Whoever he is, he's put together a lovely two track EP under the A&R direction of Mr. Gene Farris and it's worthy of your support.
I've been trying to figure out what binds most Farris Wheel tracks together. They have a big room sound without pushing over the line into commercial dreck - even the most underground producers with established sounds seem to turn the volume on the amp to the right for Farris Wheel tracks. This isn't a recent development: even "Visions of the Future" - one of the ten tracks on my celestial playlist that I will never get sick of - sounds a bit contained when heard in a box with less than 300 capacity. They just sound best on a big system, with the combined heartbeats of several dozen strangers nearby.
"Elijah's Groove" fits that definition quite aptly: the drums here are a rush, the beat a little too fast for a sleepy night in the lotus den, sprinkled with big mouth diva vocal samples and a spoken word track that's nearly unintelligible except for phrases here and there. "Lakeshore Drive" is slower (ironically, with a bored-sounding sample repeating "energy" over and over) but with jazzy keys and a break at 4:50 that I could even see electro DJs getting into. Does that sound confusing? It sounds, essentially, like a collaboration between someone like Larry Heard and someone like, well, Gene Farris.
Review by: Terry Matthew / July 2011
Available: Released July 19 2011; available from Juno Download and iTunes.
Terry Matthew is the managing editor of 5 Magazine. You can contact him at 
