1 Plus 1, Barbie & The Kens, Beachfront, Bobby “O” & His Banana Republic, Bubba & The Jack Attack, Charlene Davis, Claus V., Condo, Darlene Down, Dressed To Kill, Fascination (3), Focus 1, Free Enterprise, Gangsters Of House (2), Gina Desire, Girls Have Fun, Girly, Gomez Presley, Gringo Lopez, Hippies With Haircuts, Hotline (2), House Of ‘O’, Ian Darby, Johnny Bankcheck, Joy Toy, Lifestyle, Lilly & the Pink, Lola (31), M.C. Fritz & The P-Rockers, Malibu (2), Mandarine, Miss Tammi Dee, Nancy Dean, New Breed, Oh Romeo, One & Two Teenies, One-Two-Three, Patty Phillipe, Sandra Ford, Something Anything, Spooge Boy, Teen-Rock, The Beat Box Boys, The Boyd Brothers, The College Boys, The Fem-Spies, The Flirts, The I-Spies, The New York Models, Vision 1, Waterfront Home, Wow, Zwei Maenner

HiNRG doesn’t get the love or recognition that disco or italo does, but for me it should. At the heart of it was Bobby ‘O’ – an incredibly strange man — a complete contradiction on a lot of levels. He’s a hyper-macho homophobic ex-boxer who made gay disco. He once backed out of a lease because he found out the previous tenant was gay, yet he produced legendary drag queen Divine, and worked with the Pet Shop Boys. Most of his songs are brazen odes to sex and partying, and yet he’s a fundamentalist Christian who penned a (still unpublished) book on creationism. Make of that what you will.

There is a definite art to using the correct amount of ingredients and not spoiling the dish by adding a touch too much. Mathew Jonson has this approach down to a fine art on his musical compositions and various side projects. In DJ sets Dump Truck by Cobblestone Jazz in particular is a track that I always seem to return to, every time sounding fresher than the last outing with a hypnotic build that connects with the dancefloor every single time!

Here are five MJ essentials…

Dark Entries is a label that is hard to keep track of. They have released and re-issued over two hundred records in a relatively short period of time. Their sounds range from primitive house to post punk and all that lies in between the darker recesses of the dance floor. Basically all the good stuff.

Below are five must have classics picked from their extensive re-issue back cat.

I love these guys a lot, in a time of precise, polite, over produced club music, Factory Floor stand out as a beautiful raw force to be reckoned with. Mr Black and I always love bands who nail club music for DJs to play and put simply, they make records we love to play in dark rooms with good sound systems. Also, found out recently that they had remixed one of our favourite local bands, therefore adding the FF stamp to the local music history timeline.

If you didn’t already know, clock on with the five below…

Trevor Jackson is going through a bit of a revival of late. Not that he ever went away in my head. He strikes me as a guy who is always making something – even if it isn’t music. Restless. His brain always whirring – in need of a creative release. Relishing the opportunity to play his finds on NTS. Forever a fanboy.

I for one was delighted to listen to his cathartic clear out of old tracks sitting in the vaults and can’t wait to hear what he has up his sleeve in the future. As a dj and compiler, he is equally at home championing a definition of pop from his extensive record collection or hiding in a dark basement playing speaker shredding obscure wavs from the outer reaches of the internet. Always searching, always interested.

There are very few labels that boast a back catalogue quite like the one that belongs to UK institution Warp Records (now also films). I love their diversity and so much of their output, especially the earlier releases that have remained perfectly frozen in warehouse abusing time.

Outside of well known perenials such as LFO & Windowlicker, here are another ten I always return to.

I think Mr Bones and I both agree on the talent of this artist. Manfredas is one of those producers whose music makes us smile. When I first heard him he reminded me of Zongamin, with his use of percussion mixed with queasy bass/base. (More music please Mr Zongamin!)

Always done with a psychedelic sense of fun and adventure that really works for the dance floor, dig in…

One of my favourite artists from the Motor City is Kenny Larkin, although he seems to basque in the shadows of his peers at times. Kenny like Carl Craig comes from the second wave of Detroit artists and DJs that arrived after the Belleville innovators had paved the way. His connection with synths and hardware is absolute genius and he has a very distinctive sound. Here are five KL jams both old and more recent that all sound like they were beamed in from another galaxy.

I had previously done a post ‘bass and drums’ touching upon this type of music. Stripped back, raw, dubby, often mixing the ‘dark’ with the ‘disconotdisco’. Hard to do right, many have tried and failed. We at BB HQ decided to do a dub of a dub of a post punk classic as part of our free ‘dubs’. That’s a lot of dubs in one sentence! The original Maximum Joy track (feat. below) is genius and good to go, we just took it down a slightly more stripped back darker territory for our recent mix with a quick scalpel – for those that like that type of thing. GRIP IT HERE and listen to some other classics in that style.

Mike Simonetti is a bit of a punk. Turning his hand to a broad spectrum of amazing music since way back, but always doing things his way. Whether as a label owner, dj, digger, producer or expert editor it’s always worth checking.

Five below that merely touch on what he can do.