Piers Harrison shares five heady cuts in anticipation of his set at this Friday’s DISCOSXXX warehouse function.

A lifelong music obsessive, London based DJ-writer-artist Piers Harrison has dedicated the past three-plus-decades to uncovering and sharing worlds of sound through his far-reaching DJ sets, online mixes, edits, and various record imprints. 1/4 of the post-disco band Soft Rocks, Piers & crew first made waves in the ’00s with their uniquely quirky and psychedelic productions rooted in obscure samples and trance-inducing dancefloor moments, before launching their own label Kinfolk. Followers of this site might also recognize Piers from his work as a staff writer for the excellent Test Pressing online music magazine along with his always insightful liner notes on some of our favorite releases over the years including Music from Memory’s Virtual Dreams compilation and a.s.o.’s 2023 album of the year contender. More recently, Piers co-founded the occult dance label Mysticisms alongside Chuggy, the man behind Emotional Rescue / Response.

Piers: “Initially, Mysticisms was just a house label but a really broad one. If it makes sense to us, we’ll put it out. So we’ve done quite deep, weird leftfield house and then straight US house to filter disco. It’s a broad church. y’know. More recently, we’ve expanded with the Dubplate series that takes in more dub-infused, downtempo sounds. Reggae is one of our greatest loves, so exploring that world is brilliant.”

We’ve been listening to Piers’ mixes for years now and recommend you do the same…

This Friday, September 13th Piers will be making his way back to Los Angeles for the first time in 13 years to play a DISCOSXXX warehouse night alongside In Sheep’s Clothing’s Jonny & Pheels. Expect a night filled with eclectic selections ranging from house to dub to chug and beyond.

Tickets are available now via Resident Advisor: https://ra.co/events/1991995

In anticipation of the warehouse night, Piers shared five heady cuts with us along with some words about each selection.

Glenmore Brown – No Crack No Jumbo (Pantomine)

I like records where you feel like the creator’s intention differs somewhat from the end result. I could imagine Glenmore Brown hoping for a kind of Congos done with a drum machine vibe, but he ended up with this lopsided request to stay away from crack. It’s accidentally very narcotic and psychedelic, at times sounding like the whole thing is going to collapse in on itself.

Franco Delfino – Astrattismo (Bang!! Bang!!)

This is a pretty weird Italian album and, for the most part, not great. However, ‘Gommea’ is an extremely deep, trippy slice of electronic-infused library jazz. Very moody, very good.

Percussion Orgy – Orgy 1 (White Label)

Consider this a reminder that I am actually a dance music DJ. This gets filed under progressive house, but having lived through that genre once already, it feels a lot warmer and funkier than much of it. You get the self-explanatory ‘Mellow mix’, an ideal scene-setting warm-up track, and the faster, wilder ‘Drum mix’ for later proceedings. It’s also precisely the kind of thing we reissue on Mysticisms.

Vieux Cours – Untitled 2 (Distance)

Nineties, broken-beat-type house on the seminal French label Distance. Bordering even on “nu-jazz”… wait! Come back! This one is more balearic than noodle. I can imagine Jose Padilla playing this one, and it sounded glorious at the Test Pressing morning sessions at Love International this year.

Ghost Assembly – I Miss Your Love (Brian Not Brian and Piers Harrison live disco dub) (Ruf Kutz)

Am I allowed to do this? The original was a bona fide big tune from last year and is now well on the way to becoming a modern classic. Brian and I were honoured to get a chance to remix it. We took inspiration from those early U-Star records, Idjut Boys, Ray Mang, and Faze Action and did a live desk dub. It was a fun, creative process and has done very nicely with all kinds of DJs. Watch this space for more from Brian and me.