For You
India Jordan’s first EP feels like someone turning the valve on a cylinder of pent-up euphoria. The Doncaster-born producer and DJ has forged a reputation over the past 10 years as a resident DJ and club promoter across the northeast of England. But after starting to make music two years ago—and following 2019’s series of excellent and well-received singles—they’ve quickly singled themselves out as one of electronic music’s most enticing new prospects. “I called the EP *For You* because it’s been a bit of a dream of mine to have a record out,” they explain. “So I wanted to dedicate it to myself and be like, ‘This is what you’ve wanted forever, to have that physical piece of vinyl in your hand, and you’ve got it now, so well done.’” Everything from hardcore to liquid drum ’n’ bass is put through Jordan’s blender, and there’s an overwhelming sense of someone coming to terms with and celebrating themselves. With cover art shot in the toilets of legendary queer London venue Dalston Superstore and a track dedicated to the main character in Sarah Waters’ 1998 novel *Tipping the Velvet*, a celebration of India’s identity runs clear. But beyond that, the EP feels like an exuberant celebration of life itself. Here’s Jordan’s track-by-track guide. **I’m Waiting (Just 4 U)** “This track came from an experiment I did on my \[2019\] track ‘WARPER.’ Originally I was trying to put a vocal on ‘WARPER’ but I ditched it because it didn’t really work, but I decided the vocal was good enough on its own as this fun disco edit. It feels like a follow-up to my track ‘DNT STP MY LV’ from \[2019\] as it’s in the same disco style.” **For You** “This is the main single from the EP, and I made it on a train from London to Middlesbrough, where I was going to watch England’s women play Brazil in the football. I hadn’t seen my partner for a while as we’re long-distance, so all the energy in the track captures the excitement of that. I always try to make tracks on trains. It’s a really effective time and space where you just have nothing else to do. A lot of people think there’s an Orbital sample on the track, but it’s not. It’s from a sample pack that I then pitched up and down, and it sounds a bit like \[1989 Orbital track\] ‘Chime’ but it’s not intentional.” **Emotional Melodical** “I made this track when I was really sad. My partner had just moved up north while I was still in London and we were going through a bit of a difficult patch. I was in a bit of a pit of depression about it. I wanted to make a really cathartic emotional tune to help me process it all. It was super cathartic, and it’s me just outpouring all these feelings. It’s 140 BPM, so it’s a bit dubsteppy, I guess, but not dubstep. It’s the first time I’d tried to make something with a half-time break in it.” **Rave City** “I made this around the same time I made ‘I’m Waiting (Just 4 U),’ and I wanted to make a hardcore track with really euphoric piano in it. One thing I’ve realized since I started to make music two years ago is I’m really into big waves of synths which are filtered. It was called ‘Untitled Rave Track’ for ages.” **Westbourne Ave** “This is an ode to my early days DJing and being into drum ’n’ bass back in 2009. I was obsessed with Hospital Records, and it’s named ‘Westbourne Ave’ because that was the street in Hull I lived on when I learnt to DJ. It’s an ode to the gatekeeper d’n’b heads who made out that production was super hard and I wouldn’t be able to do it! I wanted to make a liquid d’n’b tune to prove them wrong.” **Dear Nan King** “Nan King is a character from Sarah Waters’ novel *Tipping the Velvet, which is about queer characters in London in the 1890s. I saw the TV adaptation when I was 12 when I was just starting to figure out who I am, and it felt pretty revolutionary to me to see this representation on TV. I finally read the book and I just completely fell in love with it. It was the same time I was writing this tune, and the joy and excitement of reading that book really fed into the song, so I sampled a line from the show on it. There’s a line from the BBC adaptation at the end of the track that says, ‘There’s nothing wrong with me at all,’ and I thought it was a great way to end the EP.”*
The UK producer arranges classic dance tropes into a roadmap of euphoric self-actualization, creating some of the year’s giddiest, most assured electronic music.
Inspired by formatives years in the North East, the London-based DJ and producer strikes the perfect balance between joyous euphoria and vulnerable emotion.
If clubs truly are areas of personal transcendence, then toilets are portals, wormholes from one psychological vantage point to another. The cover