James Pennington is among the unequivocal geniuses of Detroit’s underground electronic music scene (and that means the world, too).
He didn’t release a ton of records back in the day but a huge number of them were what we in the press would call “groundbreaking.” Without exaggeration, The Art of Stalking, The Groove, Nocturbulous Behavior and Inner City’s “Big Fun” (which Pennington co-authored) are among the best and most influential tracks to emerge from Detroit. By any serious reckoning, the discography of James Pennington (aka Suburban Knight) deserves a shelf in a techno hall of fame all to himself.
As Suburban Knight, though, Pennington has never chucked his music out there to see if it stuck. A year ago, when he released his first new music on vinyl in more than a decade (Listening Systems and the Suburban Knight EP on Detroit Techno Records), we wrote that you could probably hold all of Pennington’s vinyl releases by the spine one one hand — he belongs “to an era — no, an ethic — when quantity and quality were harder to reconcile.” We’ve been lead to believe that Pennington says something when he has something to say. And apparently, now, he does.
The first Suburban Knight album in more than a decade — appropriately titled Hi8tus — is being prepared for release in October. Deeptrax records has posted up a pre-order link and some snippets on SoundCloud, which you can listen to here:
The clips from Hi8tus sound similar to what we heard on Listening Systems — broken beats vibrant with electro grooves – and some of these tracks like “French Sisaque” are next level shit.
A new Suburban Knight record is already an event release, like an event movie; Hi8tus, given what we hear, seems like it was worth the wait.
Hi8tus is out October 10, 2022 on 12″ vinyl. Pre-order on Bandcamp.
⚪️ Disclosure Statement: This record was submitted as a promo.
