We catch up with Chicago’s John Summit, whose latest single on Repopulate Mars, “Beauty Sleep,” just reached Beatport’s overall top spot.
Congratulations on your new Beatport number one! This one just comes six months after having your first ever number one with “Deep End.” How are you?
Thank you! I’m doing great, staying busy with making music, livestreams, and the few gigs that I can do here in the states.
“Deep End” took off after it got played in a number of DJ livestreams. Did the same happen with “Beauty Sleep”?
So this one was actually like the opposite of “Deep End,” where that track went viral as soon as possible, but with “Beauty Sleep,” I’ve been playing it out for several months and slowly building the hype over time. Once I played it during my Insomniac Day Trip stream, the hype grew even crazier, and now it’s been receiving massive support from DJs across the board.
Half a year ago, you said you’ve been trying to focus on your songwriting rather than just producing tracks for the dance floor. Can “Beauty Sleep” be seen as a direct result of this?
Funny enough, I actually made this one about ten months ago, and the goal here was to create a complete track with as few elements as possible. Typically my productions are full of FX, synths, percussion, etc., but I think I only had about 15 tracks on this tune as a challenge to myself. The songwriting piece was making the vocal and synth arp play off each other before the final drop to create a dreamlike “beauty sleep” effect, which I believe turned out great.
What’s the story behind “Beauty Sleep,” and at what stage of production did you incorporate the vocals?
I did the stripped-back beat first and was looking for melodic vocals that I could make a complete song off of. I found these vocals in a royalty-free jazz pack at a much lower pitch and around 70 bpm (whereas my track is at 128). When you speed it up, it makes the vocal higher-pitched, and once I tuned the vocals to the key of the track, they turned out amazing. I was also able to find those adlibs that played off the main vocal perfectly too. My advice for finding strong vocals is not being scared to search in places that aren’t within your genre, as that’s where you can typically find some gold.
You’ve been doing several livestreams from your home in Chicago. As a young DJ, does it almost feel normal to you now to DJ remotely instead of in clubs?
I’m not going to lie that it’s not normal because I live off crowd energy, which is the real reason I DJ. I don’t get that huge adrenaline spike like I do when I play live, but it’s still fun to chug a few drinks on a stream with people, and I’m happy to give people something fun to watch while at home. But for now, I’m definitely still daydreaming about when I can play these tracks out live every weekend.
What are you working on at the moment?
I am currently working on a few collabs, remixes, and another couple of singles. It never stops for me. I love having new music to play all the time, and I’m a workaholic, so I end up feeling unaccomplished if I don’t finish at least one track per week. Lots more coming this year though, I can’t wait!
