Jam City’s debut album Classical Curves is a landmark in the history of UK-club music. Released in the summer of 2012, it blazed a trail through the tangled aftermath of the late 2000s DJ-renaissance. Not purely a dance album nor overly cerebral, it offered something fresh. Menacing and playful, sensual and razor-sharp, the 10 tracks moved listeners in a bodily way that defied words. It soon became clear that Jam City had done something spectacular; the artist invented a genre.

“Deconstructed Club”—the term eventually used to describe the sonic aesthetic of Classical Curves—doesn’t quite capture the record’s impact. Jam City’s synthesis of honeyed melodies and angular drums set the tone for what would blossom into Hyperpop. The record also inspired a generation of aspiring producers to experiment with unconventional sound-design, providing them with an imaginative template to adapt and make their own.

10 years on, the significance of Classical Curves is clearer than ever before. Featuring an additional 10-tracks of rarities and unreleased material created around the time of its initial release, this deluxe 2 x LP reissue invites fans to delve deeper into the record’s multi-sensory world. In addition to an exclusive 7-inch vinyl, listeners also have access to unseen photographs taken by the artist as research for the record’s infamous cover art.

Beloved tracks “HER” and “How we relate to the body” are pre-primed for the club, appearing as extended versions. Glassy fragments of 80s art-pop coalesce in suspended silence on the previously unreleased “He Watches Over Us All’. For respite, listeners can bathe in the 26-minute “Goodbye Hyatt Park”, a reverie that harnesses the record’s more soothing qualities.

As influential as Classical Curves was upon its release, it was also ahead of its time. Nostalgic as this reissue may be for some, it also brings into view aspects of the record that have yet to be appreciated in full. Meanwhile, Jam City has gradually been coming full circle. Listen closely, and you may hear traces of the 2012 debut on his future solo material. More

It's Jam City's turn to deliver a batch of sweaty, streamlined dancefloor weapons on the 6th installment of the Club Constructions series. The minimalism and intensity of Jersey Club music remains a huge influence on the whole Night Slugs camp, and while Jersey's impact can be felt across the CC series, Jam City channels those devastating ghostly kick drums like none other. Continuing on from where he left off with club favourites "The Courts" the "How We Relate To The Body", Jam drops 5 lean and intense drum workouts build from scrap metal and primed for warehouse use. They move between thudding midrange persistence and just-sub-and-air minimalism, framed by jammed drum machine rhythms and splashes of re-sampled colour. Jam decorates these sturdy and well-deployed undercarriages with silvery detail, percussion fragments, broken talkboxes, whispered vox and simple, beautiful chords.

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Following the release of his exceptional debut LP "Classical Curves" earlier this year, Night Slugs present Jam City’s second single from the project, and arguably his boldest statement yet. “How We Relate to the Body” marries Jersey Club’s gravity-defying kicks with jubilant, funk-inflected, dance hall-reverbed stabs that are both euphoric and giddying, narrowing the divide between the anthemic and the intimate. It’s both a mission statement and a demonstration that on Earth, this is how we relate to the body. A timely reminder of the visceral thrills of humans dancing next to humans, and a dancefloor anthem in the making. Chasing the tail of side A, side B turns said floor upside-down. A snapshot of club ecstacy slowly turns into a meditation, a mantra, a prayer, suspended in infinity until the grooves run out. It’s Chez N Trent on infinite loop, Daft Punk with the pause button, a hymn to The Loop. It’s also a goodbye to the world of Classical Curves, but, in classic Jam City-style it leaving more questions than answers. Support from Ben UFO, Oneman, Kode9, Martyn.

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“Two places up from Park West, the dusk reflecting off the steel as steam hisses thru the rain, open zones to glide thru in the orange light. Something metal claws at your leg as the sky continues to burn pink” This is a record about elegance, violence, electricity, water, marble, plants, trenchcoats, oily black jeep windows, crashed motorbikes, parks at twilight, clubs in the dark, broken DX7s and missed phone calls, written and recorded over a hot summer in a cramped flat with neighbours having sex through the walls. “Classical Curves” comes from a teenhood spent obsessively listening to both Prince and Youngstar, a tumultuous period as a performance artist-cum-designer marketing ‘chrome body extensions’ to the fashion world, and a brief and bizarre spell as a corporate spy for a well known athletics brand. This is a record unique in its scope and vision, from a life that could only paint a world of romance and danger as vividly as this. It’s a record that owes equal parts to Philly Club as it does to Laurie Anderson, The Neptunes as it does to Einsturzende Neubauten, Steve Poindexter as it does to the soft jazz leads of Pat Metheny. A record conceived out of (but not confined to) the legacy of the great rhythm trak muziks: Chicago House, Detroit Techno, Grime and Club. Classical Curves deconstructs, then reconfigures these blueprints as skeletal, emotionally charged pop songs. Or perhaps it’s the other way around: We are engulfed in booming, monolithic kick drums/We are floating on a pink cloud. We are thrashed and contorted by sheets of metal/We are suspended in breathy quiet of sighing voices and raindrops kissing the windowpane - and then it erupts again. Classical Curves debuts its creators voice for the first time on record, taking on the roles of brazen alien catwalk commentator, crooning synth-pop pinup and whispering informant. And all the while the drums continue to snap, crunch, jerk and bump. There are also guitar synths, tape hiss, clouds of static, saxophones, lamenting fairlight choirs and slap bass. Listen carefully and you will hear a phone ringing (pick it up).

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Night Slugs present the "Waterworx" 12" from Jam City. Following on from last year's "Magic Drops", this is the South London producer's second full salvo for the label. Where Magic Drops was on a grime/crunk tip, Waterworx is a portal into JC's unique universe via stripped down, tracky House. On this 12" he clears his substantial cache of club material before focussing on his debut album, to follow later this year.

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Kaka’’s flip of a modern pop classic will have your brain erase the original and permanently overwrite it with this deep, powerful version More

A selection of the coldest and most DJ-friendly cuts taken from the first of the 3-volume LP "Greatest Hits" by the Ron Hardy of Night Slugs, DJ Helix.
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Four trax taken from Helix's Greatest Hits Vol 2 LP. Classic house, disco and ATL rap motifs reimagined as rough-and-ready nu skool Club trax. More

3 hard, loopy. rolling techno-ish club movers taken from Helix's Greatest Hits Vol 3. A-side "The Lyot Remix" comes with a show-stopping triplets rhythm and guitar riff over 7+ minutes of jack track. B-sides go grime-tech and funky Club respectively, all unmistakably Helix.



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Following on from last year’s “Your Charizmatic Self” EP, Night Slugs executive producer Bok Bok teams up with composer and keyboardist Sweyn Jupiter on a romantic new double A-side single. “Papaya Lipgloss” is a song about young love, presented in two distinct but equally weighty versions. Both mixes share a common melodic motif, skeletal yet sincere. The “Club Mix” draws on tribal House energy: a sweltering rhythm built of Latin percussion, Linndrum funk and pumping subs, over which melody gradually unravels in bursts of stark, juicy colour. Synths form a sensual narrative, remaining ever poised even as their pulpy goo engulfs all surfaces. This is intimate club music that brings a new kind of intensity to dance floors. Meanwhile, the “Sour Mix” is saturated and dripping with bitter-sweet nectar. This version sees “Papaya” transformed into an opulent bedroom jam, complete with quaking kickdrums and purring Moog bassline. A halftime drum kit of dumpster-drive 808s keeps things gritty while melodic goo leaks from between all the cracks. More

Girl Unit's club-dwelling Hysterics alias makes his first appearance on the Night Slugs main series. His opening statement via Club Constructions Vol 5 introduced a dungeon world of hydraulic rhythm tracks driven by primal exertion. Hysterics EP offers a first glimpse of colour from the artist (mainly oxidised bronze!). "Club Life" is built of gated amp feedback and a pummelling beat like a hardcore re-edit that rewinds on itself every 8 bars. It approximates the effect of rave, 90s tribal bangers and MAW rhythm traxks, with an added 2015 aggression inspired by the Vogue scene (apparently reciprocated, with"Club Life" receiving regular plays from MikeQ). "HTRX9" is a stuttered bass rhythm that opens up into a delirious bright pads & noise. A filter house sports theme that submerges into deep tribal house before re-emerging for an elevated final round. "Eye Mask" is heroic 8-bar filter house, the constant organic movement of the filter over the resampled chords, like slow breathing, inducing a strange and disorientating euphoria. "Empty" - the comedown from "Club Life" -closes the EP on a moment of rare afterhours poise, beautiful pianos submerged and frozen in time, steam jets filling the air and Club kicks bumping.
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NEANA makes his Night Slugs debut with two huge bootlegs. Both sides showcase the young producer's unique style, melding Grime, Ballroom beats and the NS Club Constructions manifesto into a new club sound of all his own.
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An artefact from a perfect studio long abandoned, Bok Bok drops this alternative "Deleted" mix of his new single "Melba's Call". This version will be available on limited 10" vinyl only, as part of the Night Slugs White Label series. Both the original mix (released digitally March 31st) and this version feature Kelela, the powerful vocalist behind the smash Cut 4 Me mixtape, released last year on Fade To Mind. Bok's instrumental melted in the trash, mangled tape dragging his cyborg funk to an excruciating, ruined Memphis-like quarter-time. Meanwhile Kelela remains as immediate as ever, evoking R&B greats from a cannon she is clearly set to join. To be played loud and preferably in the dark.
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Night Slugs' Whitelabel series continues with two new re-takes on tracks from L-Vis 1990's Ballads EP. Pairing a VIP mix from L-Vis 1990's personal crates and yet another vicious bootleg from Helix, these stark dystopian remixes allow both producers to follow their impulses towards the dark side. L-Vis 1990 applies the ‘Varied In Production’ treatment to his brutalist club jam “Ballad 4D”, restructuring and stripping away many of the original track’s layers to make room for chopped, shuffling jungle percussion and a startling stop-start motion. The result is a broken riddim designed for an entirely different dimension.? Helix reconstructs “Not Mad” into a skeletal, grimey predator, adding stealthy subdued moments that give way to a full on percussive assault. Helix has made a habit of re-forming his labelmate's tracks, working only with the original masters in his ongoing quest to bootleg club music into his own reality
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Egyptrixx gives a glimpse into his forthcoming second album on Night Slugs with the vinyl-only cut "Water (Reduced)". The hi-definition crystalline world of his previous album "Bible Eyes" has sunken, submerged. "Water" takes place in some vast molten expanse, a subterranean electrical storm expressed as acid-tech. This 12" features the reduced dub, stripped of melody to for full hypnotic effect. The full version can be heard on the forthcoming album, titled "A/B til Infinity". On the flip: Helix keeps bootlegging our records. He cuts up the masters and edits them up like Fruity Loops lego, applying the same post-Timbaland stutter-logic that was amplified so dramatically in 03-06 grime. Here he puts his hand to Egyptrixx' blastbeats-heavy "Adult", also taken from the forthcoming "A/B til Infinity" LP. The results are extremely punishing but compelling listening.

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Toronto's Egyptrixx (real name David Psutka) returns to Night Slugs with his immersive second album "A/B til Infinity". Since his 2011 debut LP "Bible Eyes", Psutka has been busy with various studio production projects as well as recording and touring with his side-project Hiawatha. His return as Egyptrixx takes the form of a multi-media collaboration with Berlin-based visual artist A.N.F. (Andreas Fischer). Together the pair focused on a process - a set of 'meaning-through-reduction' principles applied to both sound and video - with atmosphere, repetition and texture given priority over traditional ideas of narrative and song structure. Fisher's visuals began to take shape, depicting molten off-planet environments, strange underground realms and volcanic caves lined with arrays of fluorescent light tubes, and Psutka responded by soundtracking these new digital environments. The resulting nine tracks and their accompanying series of videos and images became "A/B til Infinity", a mesmeric environment rendered in the crystalline HD that has marked out Egyptrixx' work since his earliest productions. The music is by turns meditative, violent and evocative; glassy and earth-shattering. Here sound-design and song-writing are one and the same - Psutka stretches a DX7 to its limits, its shuddering hits deployed throughout. 808 and Simmons drum machines pound extreme-metal blastbeats, then disappear into gaseous SFX, a rockpool in a virtual cavern. Digital choirs intone and beautiful synths envelop everything. Necessary forays into club territory on lead 12" cut "Water" and the tribal locomotive "Alta Civilization" are seamless, their akinness to Techno or EBM feels incidental to this record's greater experience, though DJs may definitely disagree. Looking back, "Bible Eyes" now seems like a wide open expanse, while "A/B till Infinity" lets its listener hover with it in the eerie synthesised twilight depicted on its cover.
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It's Jam City's turn to deliver a batch of sweaty, streamlined dancefloor weapons on the 6th installment of the Club Constructions series. The minimalism and intensity of Jersey Club music remains a huge influence on the whole Night Slugs camp, and while Jersey's impact can be felt across the CC series, Jam City channels those devastating ghostly kick drums like none other. Continuing on from where he left off with club favourites "The Courts" the "How We Relate To The Body", Jam drops 5 lean and intense drum workouts build from scrap metal and primed for warehouse use. They move between thudding midrange persistence and just-sub-and-air minimalism, framed by jammed drum machine rhythms and splashes of re-sampled colour. Jam decorates these sturdy and well-deployed undercarriages with silvery detail, percussion fragments, broken talkboxes, whispered vox and simple, beautiful chords.

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With Volume 5 of the Club Constructions series we introduce Hysterics, a new project from Philip Gamble, better known as the breakout Night Slugs producer Girl Unit.
While G.U. continues to exist in a bright digital universe that stretches beyond the dancefloor, Hysterics lives in the club. Hysterics tracks are reductions of visceral percussion and bass that connect with our basic instincts. The three cuts on this volume are the result of an experimental production processes, incorporating tape feedback, raw drums punched in manually and percussive parts that are allowed to take unusual lead roles. The resulting recordings are intricate but highly robust rhythm trax - the oppressive EBM-tech of "Pleasuredrome" juxtaposed with a show-stopping DJ tool in "Code Switch". The tracks sound like heavy industry: pistons, valves and and exhausts pumping and hissing, hammers pounding. But as machines they are not self-powered - the sound of human exertion is ever present: heavy breathing and gasps as each track is operated manually, man intersecting with machine in a collision of steam and sweat. Club Constructions is a series focusing on rhythm tracks, wild DJ tools and stripped down music made directly for the dance floor.

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Atlanta-based Helix expands on the techno/grime hybridity hinted at on his hit "Drum Track" 12" with the newest installment of Night Slugs' Club Constructions series. It's apt that some of the original material shortlisted for this release was lost to the digital tides, subsequently having to be restored or rebuilt in Night Slugs' London studio during a visit by Helix in late 2012. The chaotic nature of his movements is mirrored in Helix' productions. Taking a strong influence from the into-infinity a/b switch of 8 bar grime, "Whoosh Ice Dispenser" is a dense and turbulent drum workout, riding out on top of massive pitched 808 subs. Unexpected respite comes half way through in the way of a single but wholly transformative chord, a rare moment of human emotion for Club Constructions, but certainly restrained enough to fit the bill. "Track Titled 1" is a club tool of epic proportions - Jersey kicks patterns paired with one single chord stab are pretty much the only ingredients here, but Helix' flanger does all the work, driving ever upwards with G6 intensity. "Linn Jam" is the ultimate Club Construction, as pure as L-Vis' first installment, comprised entirely of pulverising Linndrum blastbeats (think metal drumming). In typically irreverent fashion Helix uses this as a skeleton for a trancey, submerged arpeggiator workout on "Linn Jam w/ Synth". First premiered in Bok Bok's NSMIX, "Damnson" closes the EP on a note of cavernous, hard, club-banging techno.
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3 brand new vital club tracks from L-Vis 1990! In the 18 months after releasing his debut album "Neon Dreams" the NS label co-curator, DJ and maverick producer L-Vis 1990 has been firmly refocussed on club music. 2011's "Club Constructions Volume 1" on NS, and more recently his contribution to Clone's Jack For Daze series saw him explore sweat-drenched, jackin analog techno and classic hard-house flipped with a uniquely UK perspective. While the aim of these releases was explicitly to create functional club 'trax' that felt sweltering in the dance, in contrast "Ballads" is L-Vis' first true artist statement since "Neon Dreams" - a set of bizarre, show-stopping pieces designed to spiritually open up the club. With every release the Night Slugs landscape becomes more vivid, rezzing further into existence with each track. 2011 saw "Classical Curves" and "Club Rez EP" inject a previously wireframe environment with dense new texture. The "Ballads" EP continued that process, transposing the listener to the flooded underwater realm of its title track "Ballad 4d". Fans of the track's YouTube rip have dubbed it the 'submarine tune' for its obscene, living bass, like some mechanical whale cry. It's the sound of a '00's Sublow bass tone emerging from warm '80s analog oscillators, letting you up for air before sucking you down once again as drum fragments and debris float by through the murk. The track moves with a vast, sighing implication of a groove until suddenly propelling into decisive 4x4 as L-Vis lets the the drums take control again. "Not Mad" is demented, a guitar-pedal troika powered by an overdriven electric bass and Jersey kicks. It features a clapper with the giggles, a talking flanger and sawtooth stabs that beam across the track like strobes, all combining into another startling, endothermic groove. Like some of the best grime productions it echoes, "Signal" is an exercise in dancefloor shock and awe through reductionism, and is the surprise club bomb of the EP. Out of nothing but droning chords comes a massive arpeggio of Juno bass pulses framed only in silhouette by sonar bleeps, finger snaps and self-recycling industrial machinery. A loose ghostly beat start-stops to create vast chasms on the dancefloor until reinforcement from a stiff EBM snare flips the track into rigid functionality - like exploring a flooded world that is suddenly, briefly reanimated. More

Amens on Night Slugs? OG Grime producer P Jam serves up a curveball on the latest instalment of the White Label series. Known for seminal beats such as "Anger Management" and "Real", P Jam's old skool productions were right among the canon that influenced Night Slugs so much in the days before we were Night Slugs. Recently P Jam has been developing a unique production style that incorporates intricately edited hardcore breaks into an updated grime sensibility. A style that is ingeniously deployed on the A side of this 12" - a sub-heavy 2013 jungle 'cover' of a certain very famous Frankie Knuckles production - which is a concept that's just too perfect for the NSWL series. And it's built solid and razor sharp. Ecstasy guaranteed on this one! On the flip is a bonus cut, another 'cover' of the same track, but this time the breaks, rolling sub and conceptual rave domination are stripped away, creating a skeletal dub version. The icy 808 drums lets the Frankie's sweet melody breathe until a nasty squarewave bass cuts the track in half.

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The newest installment in our NSWL series sees us borrow two brand new tracks from the forthcoming Night Slugs Allstars Volume 2 compilation, cut to glorious 12" vinyl (with love and care as always by Precise Mastering). Two highly melodic, colourful R&B/Hip Hop instrumentals dripping with Slugs flavour. On side A, the unstoppable GIRL UNIT expands on his gloopy, warehouse-sized rap beat "Double Take". Teasingly previewed in the outro of "Double Take Part 1" from his "Club Rez" EP earlier this year, now Girl Unit finally lets us have "Part 2" in all its bittersweet glory. The drums and FX of the original are deployed this time over deep analog bass, gorgeous layers of synth melody, DX7 bells and flanged toms borrowed straight from Prince. Few others could pull it off with such charisma. On the flip, new NS signing, Kansas-based MORRI$ gives us "White Hood". Already sounding super confident, the young producer has cultivated a style that mixes subtle but powerful influences from Southern rap with highly melodic layered instrumentation and organic percussion. "White Hood" is driven by an irresistible accordion hook, framed by skittering hi hats, snare rolls and a massive 808 undercarriage. Having mixed both sides of this release, NS executive producer BOK BOK takes the opportunity to strip down "White Hood" and pass its bare essentials through some lovely analog gear on the bonus cut, his "Accordian Dub". Listen to that chorus sing! More

Following the release of his exceptional debut LP "Classical Curves" earlier this year, Night Slugs present Jam City’s second single from the project, and arguably his boldest statement yet. “How We Relate to the Body” marries Jersey Club’s gravity-defying kicks with jubilant, funk-inflected, dance hall-reverbed stabs that are both euphoric and giddying, narrowing the divide between the anthemic and the intimate. It’s both a mission statement and a demonstration that on Earth, this is how we relate to the body. A timely reminder of the visceral thrills of humans dancing next to humans, and a dancefloor anthem in the making. Chasing the tail of side A, side B turns said floor upside-down. A snapshot of club ecstacy slowly turns into a meditation, a mantra, a prayer, suspended in infinity until the grooves run out. It’s Chez N Trent on infinite loop, Daft Punk with the pause button, a hymn to The Loop. It’s also a goodbye to the world of Classical Curves, but, in classic Jam City-style it leaving more questions than answers. Support from Ben UFO, Oneman, Kode9, Martyn.

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