Can't Wait 12' - Format: 12; Vinyl

Release Date: June 2006

track listing

- Can't Wait
- Never Happened
- It's Too Close
- HCD2



Like all the best 2-step, the beat in(ter)ventions of “Can’t Wait” are like a summer’s day, but this is one where even at it’s hottest you can feel the tingle of electricity on your bare forearms, the warning of the sudden darkness of a coming lightning storm. “Never Happened” and “It’s Too Close” pitch up exultant female voices ‘til they’re plastic smooth—grainless—then balances them unsteadily on waves of bass; like the whole EP it’s vertiginous and exhilarating.
Stylus Magazine.


Can't Wait' is an utterly compulsive collection of boiled beats and sparse vocals; opening in some style through the splintered rhythms and rubbery low-end of 'Can't Wait'. Johnny Dark never comes across like a tourist - battering the ears with a hail-storm of ribald beats and liquid bass that compliment the barrage of diced vocals to perfection. From here we're straight into the path of 'Never Happened' and its rumbling bass hook that doggedly holds the attention, before 'It's Too Close' smacks you round the chops with a royal riff and 'HCD2' sticks a dub enema right up the the exhaust pipe of Junior Boys' classic 'High Come Down' to predictably fierce effect.
Boomkat.


Johnny Dark was responsible for many of the UK Garage elements on the Junior Boys' first EP, and "Can't Wait" and "Too Close," in particular, show Dark continuing his investigation of Todd Edwards-style edits and the swing of producers like Steve Gurley or El-B‹while Chipmunking his vocal samples to the point of making Kanye's sped-up treatments sound straight. But Dark's rhythm programming is curiously clunky, forgoing the smoothness of UKG's last-gasp productions in favor of gangly, awkward cadences; he fits all the bits together like puzzle pieces that have been torn, folded, and left soaking in soda for weeks on end.
The Wire


I suppose the comparison is begging to be made with this quite excellent EP and Sound Murderer's Bad-bwoy Jungle revisionism. There's the unexpected gesture of Americans choosing to telescope in on obscure, neglected strands of UK Dance music. The key difference between the two is that the Dark is stunningly-good.
Woebot

Tracks of the year Mary Anne Hobbs (Radio 1) 2006
Radio 1