Ivan Smagghe is a musical sponge. Always hungry for new sounds – this is reflected in his varied productions. He’s at his most successful (in my opinion) when he veers into the weird and wonderful recesses of his record collection, best seen in the ‘Smagghe and Cross’ and ‘It’s A Fine Line’ collaborations. Somewhat under the radar for many people but worth revisiting, perhaps it left the techno bores who associated him with a more dance floor friendly sound scratching their heads.

Some lesser known gems from the untouchable Eurythmics. Pure odd ball pop sleaze perfection.

Untouchable!

Jamie Paton is completely nailing the subby dubby aquatic electronics. We need more club music like this as an antidote to all the beige stuff.

Five to swoon over below…

Erol hardly puts a foot wrong, whether it’s psych edits or banging techno, he can turn his hand to most things and make it work. He must eat, sleep and breathe music. His label continues to put out quality releases, 5 from Phantasy below.

Quinn Whalley is a bad mofo, I’ve loved his music for decades now. No matter what project he has a hand in, one thing is always guaranteed and that’s raw electronic music with bags of personality and a very sexually charged energy. He makes it look effortless as he flicks between house, acid, disco and the electro tinged and in a world of looped dance grooves gets the importance of a stand out vocal.

Five here that have that sleazed out QW funk!

Never thought I would see the day I would be playing pumpers to a room full of dancers in East Belfast. Big thanks to Ballyhackamore Working Men’s Club and to those that came down. Don’t think the £3 pints helped my mixing abilities though…

Sometimes a nice slice of well placed familiarity in a set can cause commotion. It’s that sense of I know this but I don’t know this version and can sit perfectly among the more obscure and brand new. Here are five covers that do justice or bring something new to the table!

Subway Records was a Belgian New Beat label. Like a lot of this stuff it was well patchy, but amongst the back catalogue are some amazing, weird, hypnotic one hit wonders. A lot of it is kind of balearic-ish or wouldn’t sound out of place in a Baldelli set, and some of it’s output are outright pumpers.

Weird label and definitely an influence for me at least on the new ‘originals’ me and Mr Bones are concocting.

If you do go down the discogs rabit hole, check the labels font. Nice!

Anyone else getting a big ESG meets MU vibe off that recent Chemical Bros Eve Of Destruction number?

If so check this little dubbed version we made to play in our club sets.

E.O.D (Black Bones DUB)

Also stay away from the obvious hits, below are five we dig from the CB/TDB vaults…

Jamal Moss, man of many aliases and purveyor of bad ass music. Through his sprawling archive there are many moments of genius. Screw all this polite, safe, paint by numbers dance music, Jamal is definitely not playing the game.

Like Ron Hardy if he had been kipping in a squat for a few weeks and had been given access to a load of old hardware and not much sleep.