Blog

Nicky Siano is one of those people who you could sit and talk to for hours at a time and it would never be enough. The New York native has enough stories to fill 10 books about the history of dance music in this fair city and could name names for days.

Nicky started The Gallery in 1971 which was one of NYC’s first underground nightspots. It’s where Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles got their first gigs, Grace Jones would come to dance all night and people could be whoever they wanted to be. Nicky is also credited as being the first DJ to mix and broke thousands of disco hits on The Gallery dancefloor. Continue reading →

Sean B. has worked tirelessly to revitalize our fair city’s underground gay night life scene. Since 1996 he’s thrown down at some of the NYC finest establishments including Cielo, Santo’s Party House, The Limelight, Element, Bar 169, Mr. Black, 205 Club, Webster Hall and Output. He’s also the resident DJ at Powerhouse and Xanadude and half the influential DJ duo, SPANK, who has been taking his sounds around the world.

He’s playing with friends The Carry Nation this Saturday night at Good Room (tickets available here) so we asked Sean to share five of his favorite tracks to get down to ahead of the party. Continue reading →

Palms Trax is a fairly new DJ to the scene but every release has left its mark. The British-born, Berlin based producer started experimenting in pad-driven Detroit workouts which has turned into his own house style, referencing old school Chicago nostalgia whilst coming laden with analogue textures and jacked up beats.

With releases on Dekmantel and Lobster Theremin, he has been using his home studio to create melodic synth lines and smooth, undulating drum patterns that recalls the likes of Legowelt, John Heckle, Tevo Howard, and Nu-Groove era Burrell Brothers. Continue reading →

Juju & Jordash were the first artist to put out a record on Dekmantel. Their record was the start of long relationship with the Amsterdam-based label, having released three albums with them and played at their festival and parties across the world.

Gal Aner and Jordan Czamanski, known professionally as Juju & Jordash, have known each other since the mid-90s through a shared love of jazz. They have been making music together since 2004 when they both moved to Amsterdam. Their jazz-influenced style of house music set the tone for all of Dekmantel’s releases, something a little off centre, something a little different, something no one else is doing in underground dance music. It was a bold choice for the first Dekmantel release but it worked. “We just couldn’t imagine that no one else wanted to release this. So we thought, ‘maybe we should release it.’ That’s actually when we first thought of doing a label,” label owners Thomas Martojo and Casper Tielrooij told Resident Advisor. Continue reading →