AILSA CHANG, HOST:
In less than five years, John Summit went from making beats in his parents' basement to being one of the most famous DJs in dance music today.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHERE YOU ARE")
HAYLA: (Singing) I get this feelin' I wanna be where you are.
CHANG: But before his meteoric rise, he was an accountant in Chicago.
JOHN SUMMIT: Oh, no, I kind of saw my flash - life flash before my eyes when I was doing accounting after the partner I was working with told me - he's like, yeah, I remember when I was you just yesterday. Then I blinked, and here I am now, and I'm like, you're in your 60s, man. Like, you don't even remember the last 40 years of your life?
CHANG: John Summit's latest album, "CTRL ESCAPE," tells the story of his journey. NPR's Kai McNamee reports.
SUMMIT: I'm always on the road. I mean, it's nonstop, but that's how I like it.
KAI MCNAMEE, BYLINE: Legal name John Schuster, his whirlwind ascent was the inspiration for his first album, "Comfort In Chaos." His new album goes beyond the sound he's become best known for - a subgenre of dance music called tech house.
SUMMIT: This recent album is called "CTRL ESCAPE," and, you know, its kind of overall theme is, like, when I broke out of the 9-to-5 world. It's multi-genre. I'm not, you know, pigeonholed into a specific sound.
MCNAMEE: The album features elements of house, trap, rock, drum and bass - tracks, he says, that push his creative boundaries.
SUMMIT: I mean, a good example is "WITH ME" with Julia Wolf.
(SOUNDBITE OF JOHN SUMMIT AND JULIA WOLF SONG, "WITH ME")
SUMMIT: You can't really say what genre it is. Like, I have no idea what to call it. It's like 144 BPM, house track. It's - like, has trance elements. And then you have her vocal coming from this, like, indie rock kind of emo world, where her - she's never been on a dance record before, too. So it's like, all these different elements that shouldn't be together, but then it somehow works.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WITH ME")
JULIA WOLF: (Singing) You stay up all night.
And it was just super collaborative and, I don't know, kind of came together pretty easily.
MCNAMEE: Singer and songwriter Julia Wolf.
WOLF: John was, like, really adamant about bringing both of our worlds together. Like, he very much wanted our input on it and, like, our, you know, direction, I guess.
MCNAMEE: To understand Summit's world, you have to go back to his hometown. Summit grew up in Naperville, a suburb west of Chicago, and Chicago is the birthplace of house music. His sound owes a lot to the city's legends. Syncopated piano chords drive the track "DON'T BELIEVE IT," featuring Abby Keen.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DON'T BELIEVE IT")
ABBY KEEN: (Singing) Don't believe it. Don't believe it. Day and night, don't believe it (ph).
MCNAMEE: And those chords evoke records produced by pioneers of the genre, like Marshall Jefferson and Paul Johnson.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DON'T BELIEVE IT")
KEEN: (Vocalizing).
MCNAMEE: Summit first started making music in college. And when he graduated and got that job as an accountant, he spent his nights DJing.
JOHN CURLEY: What I love about him is he came from the same place a lot of us did. He was just a kid who really, really wanted to be a part of it.
MCNAMEE: John Curley has been a DJ in Chicago since the late '80s. He runs several venues there and booked Summit early in his career.
CURLEY: You know, he would come up to the DJ booth and share his tracks and say, hey, listen to this.
MCNAMEE: Curley hears the city's influences throughout Summit's music. He points to the 2022 song called "In Chicago."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "IN CHICAGO")
SUMMIT: And I'm in Chicago. Concentrate.
MCNAMEE: Marguerite Harrold chronicled the history of the genre in her book "Chicago House Music: Culture And Community."
MARGUERITE HARROLD: When I hear this song, I hear old-school house influences. I hear Jesse Saunders and Vince Lawrence. I hear Marshall Jefferson. I hear J.M. Silk. I hear...
MCNAMEE: Harrold grew up going to the city's clubs and underground parties in the '80s and '90s.
HARROLD: Most of the places were bare-bones, right? So you'll be in a room that's kind of like a black box, and there's a strobe light, and it's just bass. Like, you know where the place is because you hear the bass two blocks away, and you just feel that (imitating bass thumping) - you know, that thump.
(SOUNDBITE OF JESSE SAUNDERS SONG, "ON AND ON")
HARROLD: It started with Black gay people finding and making spaces of their own so that they could gather and not be harassed or discriminated against. So you walk in the door, no matter who you are, people accept you.
MCNAMEE: That generosity is something Summit is grateful for. And even as his sound evolves, he still thinks about where it all started.
SUMMIT: You guys always respect your origins, and I would not be here without that. I think, like anything, you know, it's like when you graduate high school, then you go off to college and you go off this, you always know where your roots are, and you always got to stay true to it in a sense.
MCNAMEE: With "CTRL ESCAPE," Summit nods to the past while making his own mark in dance music history. Kai McNamee, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SHADES OF BLUE")
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Singing) Hear my voice torn in two.
JULIA CHURCH: (Singing) Torn in two.
UNIDENTIFIED MUSICAL ARTIST: (Singing) Feels like forever. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.