I'll Keep On Loving You

Walter Jones is a bit of a dance music enigma, but not by design. Over the course of almost ten years, he has released so few singles, one can count them on one hand (if one's hand has five fingers). He has no full-length albums, and his singles typically feature remixes instead of the originals (from other dance music leaders like Maurice Fulton, i-F, and Henrik Schwarz).

Jones was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, to a very musical family. During the 1980s, he visited New York with his parents and was exposed to the city's culture and fashions of the era. Downtown NYC's cultural blender of hip-hop, new wave and no wave, and the late era of disco and synth funk had a long-lasting influence on him. As early as high school, Jones began making edits on a Sears cassette recorder to turn kids on to his wildly eclectic tastes mashed together onto one medium. By 1987 he had been turned onto the sound of Chicago House and Detroit Techno, by 1992 he was DJing, and by 1995 he was making his own music.

This new single is two tracks (no remixes) so staggeringly unique, haunting, and beautiful, DFA was ready to beg and plead Jones to release it. These heart-wrenching electronic pop songs are far more reminiscent of New Order and Depeche Mode than the deep house scene with which has been associated in the past.

'I'll Keep On Loving You,' is a modern hybrid of everything from new wave to new romantic to Boogie-Down-Bronx-style hip hop mixed with early-'80s soulful synth funk. What sets this release apart from the aforementioned is that this is all original Walter Jones. 'Living Without Your Love,' shows continuity in both sound and subject matter, summoning the kind of love, loss, longing, and redemption found only in the most cathartic rhythm tracks.