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Dilly - Belfast Underground, Belfast (2026)

31/08/2026

What an incredible night that was at History Of House, Belfast.

David Holmes, Eamon Beagon, Marty McAllister and myself took to the stage last night for 6 hours of the finest music in our collections.

Nights like this are so important for our music scene.

Thank you so much to everyone that came down to another sold out event ❤️🙏

07/08/2026

I was genuinely gutted to hear of William Orbit’s passing.

To me, he wasn’t just one of the greatest music producers of his generation. He was a true visionary whose work changed the sound of modern music.

The list of artists he worked with reads like a who’s who of music royalty, but what always stood out to me was his ability to bring emotion, atmosphere and beauty into everything he touched.

There are so many incredible moments throughout his career that deserve to be celebrated, and his influence will continue to be heard for generations to come.

Thank you for the music.

RIP ❤️

01/08/2026

So here we go. No. 1 in my personal classic moments in rave history, and what a ride it has been.

A big thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read these posts over the past 10 days. I really appreciate it. I’m just someone who loves music and enjoys sharing thoughts and memories from a lifetime in and around it. Not everyone will agree with my choices, and that’s absolutely fine.

The record I’ve chosen for the top spot has spread through the world of electronic music like wildfire ever since this particular mix was released in 1992. 34 years later, that fire still hasn’t gone out.

People who have spent a lifetime immersed in rock, classical, folk and band music have often poured scorn on electronic music producers. I’ve heard every line over the years.

“That’s just repetitive sh*te.” “Sure it doesn’t do anything.” “It’s not real music if you’re not playing an instrument.”

I’ve heard every criticism imaginable aimed at a style of music that I believe is incredibly difficult to create, especially if you want people to still be buying and playing it decades later. Those who knock it simply don’t get it, and that’s ok.

My answer has always been that electronic music is one of the great modern art forms. I’ve often compared the very best dance records to classical music. When it’s done properly, it can have a lifelong impact in exactly the same way. The structure of many great dance tracks isn’t all that different from a classical composition. The choice of sounds, samples, chord progressions, vocals and layers all have to come together perfectly. When they do, the result can be breathtaking.

This is one of those records.

Bruno Sanchioni and Giuseppe Chierchia, under the alias Age Of Love, released The Age Of Love on the Belgian label Diki Records in 1990. It was cutting edge for its time and one of the earliest glimpses of what trance music would become. It made a real impact across Europe’s clubs, but it wasn’t until 1992, when Frankfurt duo Jam & Spoon remixed it for React Records, that it exploded into something much bigger.

Like I mentioned above, certain dance music reminds me of classical music. This track begins with nothing more than a lone kick drum and crisp hi hats, a dream for any DJ to mix. Gradually the atmosphere builds before those huge background stabs introduce the unforgettable melody. On paper it’s actually quite simple, but every element serves a purpose.

The way the track builds, releases, then builds again is simply masterful. The layers of soaring synths create an incredible sense of anticipation, and when the choir vocal finally arrives it lifts the whole thing into another dimension. For me it’s one of the finest examples of euphoria ever committed to vinyl, without ever tipping into cheese.

Even after all these years, it still gives me goosebumps.

Most people reading this will have heard it countless times, so it probably won’t come as much of a surprise to see it sitting at No. 1. I believe it stands as one of the defining moments in rave history and electronic dance music as a whole.

I’ve been incredibly fortunate to spend almost 35 years in this industry and, apart from the Covid years, I don’t think there’s been a single year when I haven’t played this record to a crowd somewhere, whether that’s in a club, at a party, on a livestream or behind the decks at an event.

Every genre has its defining moments, and for dance music, this is one of the greatest.

Finally, thank you to everyone who has taken the time to read these posts, leave comments and share your own memories along the way. Many of you have become genuine friends over the years, and seeing your thoughts appear under each review has genuinely kept me motivated to keep writing.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read them.

❤️

31/07/2026

No 2 in my top 10 rave moments, and for me this is one of the finest examples of perfection in dance music.

“Acid”, in the context I’m about to speak about, is not the mind bending hallucinogenic drug L*D, which is also commonly known as acid.

Although both became closely associated with 90s rave culture, the acid I’m talking about has been finding its way into recording studios and home setups around the world for over 40 years.

I’m not going to bore 95% of you with a technical breakdown of a little silver box, but in a nutshell, the Roland TB-303 is a bass synthesiser with a built in sequencer that creates bass patterns which can be twisted, distorted and manipulated into those unmistakable squelching sounds we know as acid.

For many producers it’s used as a little flourish within a track. For the two guys I’m about to mention, it became the backbone of their music.

Without the TB-303, and without these two pioneers, electronic music would sound very different today.

A good few years ago, myself and my friend Shane ran a two day Halloween Asylum event in Dublin with a huge line-up of Irish, UK and international artists. One of our headline acts was a duo from Germany, Ramon Zenker and Oliver Bondzio, better known as Hardfloor.

I remember standing in Dublin Airport waiting for the Düsseldorf flight to arrive, genuinely excited at the thought of meeting two of my musical heroes.

The arrivals doors opened, families reunited, business travellers rushed through, and then I spotted this towering figure pushing a trolley stacked high with aluminium flight cases, with his bandmate following behind. For a few brief moments I was probably the most important person in Hardfloor’s lives.

The drive to the hotel wasn’t quite the animated conversation I’d imagined. There was a bit of chat about the venue and the setup, but for the most part they chatted away to each other in German while I sat wishing I understood every word. I never got the chance to tell them just how much their music, and especially their use of the 303, had influenced me over the years.

As luck would have it, the event had several rooms and some of the local DJs were absolutely tearing the place apart elsewhere, so the Hardfloor room was a little quieter than expected.

For me, that was perfect.

It meant I could stand right beside them and watch two absolute masters build a live set from the ground up. They started with deep ambient textures before gradually introducing wave after wave of hypnotic acid until the room was completely locked in.

Watching them perform from only a few feet away completely changed how I viewed live electronic music. Every tweak, every pattern and every transition was created in the moment. I genuinely believe no two Hardfloor live sets are ever exactly the same.

They absolutely blew my mind.

Their best known track is Acperience.

Over the past 30 years of DJing, very few records have created the reaction this one does. The soaring string line alone is enough to lift a dancefloor, and underneath it sits one of the greatest slowly evolving acid lines ever recorded. Add the moody, almost Pink Floyd style keyboard textures and it becomes something really special.

I’ve always loved a great breakdown, that moment when everything falls away before slowly rebuilding with more and more tension. It’s an art form in itself, and one that often doesn’t get the credit it deserves.

Combine that with one of the richest 303 hooks ever committed to vinyl and you have, for me, one of the greatest moments in dance music history.

This track is now 33 years old and it’s still one of the records I point young producers towards when they ask how to make music that stands the test of time.

They really don’t come much bigger than this.

A spine tingling, goosebump inducing, tear jerking classic of the very highest order.

As always, thank you for taking the time to read these posts. It genuinely means the world to me.

Until tomorrow folks.

❤️

30/07/2026

No 3 in my 10 big rave tracks is just one of those stunning moments in music for me.

If i said the names Brian Dougans and Garry Cobain to most people they would look at me with a blank stare (music nerd friends excluded) BUT if i also said The Future Sound Of London, to most people who appreciate electronic music, i have a feeling that i may receive a slightly different reaction.

These two British chaps between them have amassed hundreds of releases across all the realms of electronica spanning the past 30 years. From the darkest hardcore techno to the most beautiful ambient soundscapes through to some of the most obscure psychedelica.

It’s only when you delve properly deep into their history that you get a feel of the varied careers that these two have carved themselves out over the years.

For this particular release, under the alias Mental Cube, these two prolific producers, with Dougan being the more hands on studio wise, created such an emotionally uplifting piece of bleep based, dancefloor techno, a track simply named “Q”

I first heard this track on the dance floor at one of our country’s first weekly all night raves, a club called Circus Circus in Banbridge, i can’t recall who exactly played it first, i have a feeling it may have been Glen Molloy or Gleave (i’m sure some of my well seasoned friends, who still have their memories in check may be able to answer this one correctly)

Anyway, if you can imagine a venue with upwards of 1,000 people at 6am with sweat dripping off every surface and the atmosphere so electrically charged you could get shocks it you touched the ravers, this is how it felt to me. When tunes like this dropped, it was akin to a whole room of people just being told that they had won the lottery, hundreds of people hugging one and other and a total sense of togetherness. Like i mentioned in a previous review, i have struggled to ever experience such unreserved euphoria in a venue since then.

The strings in this track are so harmonic and to me are like the ending of something special, or the peaktime moment of some brilliant life experience. The percussion and alternative groove created with the beautiful hi-hats, keep it well on line as being in my eyes, a musical techno track through and through.

This to me is up there as the dance music royalty of tunes.

These two guys in my book are mini geniuses and deserve so much respect for their work over the years. No-one can argue that The Future Sound Of London’s 1991 ambient breakbeat classic “Papua New Guinea” is up there as one of the most highly regarded and beautiful tracks in electronic music history and that "Stakker Humanoid" which they also produced (and was very close to being in my top 10) is a also a work of twisty acid splendour.

So there we have another day and another one of my fave tracks from the early creation of the rave scene, a scene that has morphed into hundreds of sub genres, but has stood the test of time now for 30 years.

❤️

29/07/2026

No. 4 in my rundown of classics is one of those defining moments in modern music that means so much to so many people.

Detroit’s Derrick May is rightly considered one of the most important figures in the history of techno. Alongside Juan Atkins and Kevin Saunderson, those three pioneers carved out their own corner of electronic music in the late 80s and changed dance music forever.

To the average person, or even many lifelong music fans, this record might not sound like anything particularly special the first time they hear it. Maybe not even after a week of listening. The magic of this track is all about when it arrived. It landed just as acid house was exploding and became the soundtrack to a generation discovering an entirely new way of life.

Records like this, released at exactly the right moment, stand the test of time. People like myself and so many of my DJ friends still champion it to younger generations because it deserves to be heard in the right context.

Musically, this 39 year old record has always sounded beautifully flawed to me. It’s slightly out of key in places, a bit messy, almost like it’s holding itself together by sheer energy. Yet those simple piano chords and piercing orchestral stabs still have the power to completely turn a dance floor upside down if they’re dropped at the right moment. Just preferably not at the start of the night.

May released two versions of Strings of Life on the A side, with other tracks on the flip. The A2 Piano Mix is the version that became legendary. It opens with those unforgettable stabs, played by Michael James, a friend of May’s. They were apparently recorded around a year earlier on May’s equipment, left sitting unused in the sequencer’s memory until he stumbled across them again and started building the track around them. Those stabs are a huge part of what makes this record so special.

There are so many subtle dips, peaks and little changes in level throughout the track that it almost feels like it was captured live in a single take. Whether it was or not, that raw, imperfect feel is a massive part of its charm. It absolutely roars with confidence and energy.

One of the most remarkable things about Strings of Life is that it doesn’t really have a traditional bassline. Then again, why would it need one when everything else is doing so much heavy lifting? The constantly shifting arrangement, the orchestral hits, the piano and those huge snare rolls keep your ears engaged from start to finish and keep dance floors moving.

Strings of Life has been played to death by DJs across every corner of dance music. It’s been officially sampled more than 30 times, unofficially borrowed countless more, reworked, replayed and even found its way into the mainstream charts thanks to some questionable vocal versions. Yet despite all of that, it remains one of the defining records of both Detroit techno and the UK acid house movement.

To me, that’s exactly what a rave anthem is.

As always, I’m genuinely grateful if even one person has taken the time to read these posts. I read every single comment and really do appreciate them all.

❤️

28/07/2026

No 5 in my rundown of 10 of the finest moments in rave history and this is a certified beast of epic proportions.

There are just some things in life that go together, bread AND butter, stawberries AND cream, Homer AND Marge, The Moon AND the stars - Joey Beltram’s monsterous acid techno classic record on killer Belgian record label R&S Records AND smokey, raved up dance floors.

Me dropping this record into the top 10 classic rave slammers could possibly be one of the most obvious, predictable things you’ve read this year, but that actually doesn’t bother me in the slightest as this one pi**es over (most) other 1990 sub heavy bangers from a great height.

I actually can’t remember 100% where i first heard this record being played, i believe that my first exposure to the rumble of Beltram’s gut punching sub bass was at a certain Monday night rave in Northern Ireland.

The notorious, cutting edge for its time, Bangor venue The Helmsman was for me anyway where things properly started to make sense and i began to forge some very meaningful new lifelong party friendships.

What i can remember is walking into this seriously hot club for the first time, feeling the condensation dripping off the ceiling onto my head and being surrounded by loads of guys with their tops off, chewing like crazy and going completely bananas to this music.

There must have been a high spread of the common cold that season as i recall a heavy smell of Vapour Rub in the place.

I still look back on walking into that club for the first time, as a young innocent country boy as being one of the most surreal experiences of my life.

Driving home every Monday night, with t-shirts hanging out the window to dry, the ritual to keep the vibe going was to stop at the 24 hour petrol station on the way back, where a congregation of clubbers would gather, filling the forecourt with bodies and blasting music from the sound systems in our cars. We would keep on dancing until the police were called to move the gathering along or someone found another house party to relocate to.

New York’s Joey Beltram, who like myself also turns 50 this year, is one of the undisputed heavyweight heroes of the techno world and widely respected as a leader of the pack in the development of our underground dance music scene.

“Energy Flash” that Beltram signed when just 19, was first heard on the brilliant 4 track EP, Joey Beltram’s ‎– Beltram Vol. 1 on the mighty R&S Records and was quickly licensed to Detroit legend Derrick May’s Transmat label for US distribution.

The track features a slowed down vocal sample repeating over and over “Ecstacy” from 101's newbeat classic “Rock To The Beat” which seemed to appeal to the current breed of clubbing quite well, and another sinister, horror moviesque synth sample which also appears on Orbital’s “Chime”.
Everything combines on this record beautifully and just comes together to create one of the most intense moments in dance music culture.

Like i mentioned yesterday with Leftfield, this was also a track that crossed so many styles of club and DJ, from the underground house & Balearic student venues, right through to the “whistle posse make some noise” full on raves.

Still to this day a steady flow of re-issues are still flying off record shop shelves weekly at a colossal pace, which for an underground techno record from 30 years ago is an outstanding feat and testament to the power of this period in music history.

100% killer record on every possible level.

27/07/2026

No 6 in the rundown of my 10 classic rave records is one that i'm very fond of.

This was a track that crossed all the social spectrums when it landed in 1990.

Both the original mix and the Hard Hands remix gained heavy floor momentum over the 18 months that would follow its release, and then for years to come.

Back in 1990, everyone from the white glove wearing, Fila boot stomping, whistle blowing ravers, to the slick denim, motorcycle boot, leather jacket clubbers through to the free party, dreadlock brigade all appreciated this track for different, but at the same time unifying reasons.

Leftfield as an entity and with their music brought together every race, religion and class during the 90’s.

To the un-raved among my readers, this may be quite possibly one of the most underwhelming tracks you’ll hear me post about. To me however, the stabs from this early slice of tribal rave / house music transport me back to quite literally hundreds of venues that i had the good fortune to attend and also DJ at over the years and every listen to this day rekindles a fondness for some of my very good DJ friends who i look up to immensely.

Certain simplistic records in historic dance culture broke down boundaries and appealed to lots of different clubbers from varying walks of life, this was such a record. The memorable big stabs on “Not Forgotten” have created a timestamp on the brains of thousands of music lovers like myself for 30 years.

As i spoke about in a recent review of this act in my top 50 albums, Leftfield made an immense contribution to the soundtrack of my early 90s. I still class the period of 1990 to 1995 as the best half decade of my life, for so many reasons. Many of the friends i made during that stage of my life are still very close. We share a common ground that has been very rarely matched since.

The repetitive vocal sample throughout this track is taken from the film "Mississippi Burning" (“What's wrong with these people") One theory that has been bandied around was that, at the final scene of the film a vandalised headstone is shown with the words “1964 Not Forgotten” And this is how Leftfield came up with the track title. I’ve never had this 100% confirmed as yeah or neah, so for now i'm happy for it to remain in music folklore.

Are there better Leftfield tracks, hell yes, there are far more complex musical compositions that these guys went on to produce, as is proven in their albums “Leftism” and the incredible “Rhythm And Stealth”, no-one could dispute that fact. Do they mean as much sentimentally in the grand rave hall of fame, hell no.

I have referred to this track many times in the contradictory sense of being a perfectly average masterpiece, hopefully that will make some sense.

This is beautifully produced, well thought out, house music, with the biggest of hooks that have firmly etched themselves onto the unformatted (but almost full) floppy disk in my mind.

Thank you for taking the time to read this as always.

❤️

26/07/2026

Today we reach No 7 in my 10 classic rave tracks and it’s actually not an easy task as I’ve had to leave out so many total killers.
It’s only when you delve deep into your archives that you realise just how many pure classics there are.

For now though i’m keeping it big and straight to the point.

If you could sum up the term “Rave” in the form of a body of recorded music, or indeed look up the word in a dictionary i’m pretty sure “The Hypnotist” would pop up somewhere in there.

Caspar Pound who sadly passed away in 2004, aged only 33, was one of the true early geniuses of electronic music, in production, vision and artist management.

He first hit stardom under the alias A Homeboy, A Hippie & A Funki Dredd in 1990, then went on to form the incredible record label Rising High Records, a label that to this day is held in the highest of regard by anyone who follows dance culture. Their release schedule throughout the 90's was like a who's who of coolest producers in the world of electronica.

"Rainbows In The Sky" was one of the very first releases for Caspar’s fledgling Rising High label, alongside a European release by Cyclotron Records in Germany. It just landed at the peak-time of 1991’s take off. Britain, Ireland and Europe were beginning to explode with the intense new sound of bleeps and beats and the smell of Vicks was beginning to waft over dance-floors nationwide.

You can not escape what this record means, on any level! It isn’t trying to be a beautifully airy, musical masterpiece - this record was aimed straight for the dance-floors and podiums of the rave world and every last second of its many twists, turns, samples and general existence was crafted to heighten the euphoric club experience. This is pure heads down, air punching, laser surfing, hardcore techno.

The relentless way in which this tune drops, has never grown old to me and i genuinely can not wait to have the chance in my future to play this once more to a dance floor.

There’s something so raw, simplistic but incredibly intense about the bassline and pounding kick drum in this track, and the harrowing, space age chords (that i believe were borrowed from a Fade II Black record) create such a surreal, sci fi feel in the drops.

This is proper full on, unashamed rave music in its purist form. A simple masterpiece of its time.

As always i thank you for taking the time to read this.

❤️

Dilly - Belfast Underground

31/08/2026

07/08/2026

01/08/2026

31/07/2026

30/07/2026

29/07/2026

28/07/2026

27/07/2026

26/07/2026

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