LeRon Carson - Under The Conditions

30 years+ in the making, LeRon Carson's debut album finally emerges courtesy of Theo Parrish's Sound Signature. Carson's story is a little cloudy, operating out of Chicago in the late 80s but only really coming to wider attention in the early 2000s via a split 12 with Parrish and, a little later, a slightly beefier collection engineered by Omar S. Those connections speak very loudly of what makes Under the Conditions so arresting. This is superior Chicago house that rotates between classic sounding breaks and a proto-techno crunch, mostly minimal and often primitive, but overflowing with the kind of soulful pull that better known luminaries like Moodymann and Andres have built dynasties on. So far so classic, though there's something prescient about these eight tracks, the limited nature of the technology available to Carson at the time something artists in the L.I.E.S. orbit (and beyond) have retooled more recently into a lo-fi, nostalgic rendering of the only reality Carson knew. Carson passed away in 2016, making the release of Under the Conditions a bittersweet endeavour, that beautiful beaming cover a snapshot heartbreaking as it is inspiring. Still, what a final imprint to leave.