It’s been a while since we last heard from Steve Summers, one of the many musical aliases of producer Jason Letkiewicz. When he last landed on proudly Chicagoan imprint CLEAR with the robust and unearthly “Artificial Light” EP, it was on the back of nine years spent building up Steve Summers as a purveyor of forthright club cuts that pushed at the limits of acceptability. Now Letkiewicz’s return with his Steve Summers pseudonym on CLEAR is 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.
