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.