House music truly moves people: crowds dance – or jack – all night long. People travel from far and wide to experience the unrivalled pleasure of a house night or rave, and it can move people emotionally too. Just A Little’s upcoming night at Canal Mills on 13th February promises to move you in all of these ways – while a move towards psychedelics is at the users discretion.

This ‘Acid Trip’, which begins at the so-called “meeting place” of Brandon Street, outside Canal Mills, is sure to be a magical mystery tour of classic house. I don’t use that term lightly. This is a bill filled with the Platos and Aristotles of the house world. DJ Pierre, Marshall Jefferson and A Guy Called Gerald are the pioneers, if not deities, of house music:

With his 1986 song Move Your Body – The House Music Anthem – Marshall Jefferson, his tongue firmly in his cheek, forged the Chicago house movement in a blaze of thundering piano and thumping 303 bass.

Alonside this ‘father of house music’ is the similarly Illinois-born DJ Pierre, senior purveyor of that unmistakably twisted synth sound that has come to characterise acid house.

On our side of the pond, Manchester’s A Guy Called Gerald dragged down the pH levels of Hacienda club nights in the late 80’s with acid anthems including Voodoo Ray – songs that became the soundtrack to one of British history’s most iconic youth movements.

Dance music has come a long way since then, but nearly 30 years on, the trip continues. All of the DJs you’ve previously seen at Canal Mills have been influenced by these elders of the scene. You owe it to yourself to be part of that original movement and, effectively, live history.

More acts TBA

[Oliver Walkden]