"The mark of a great DJ is one who knows that hip-hop came from disco. That is the truth of the matter..."

Johnny 'D' DeMairo has always been about disco. It was something that underpinned his seminal house label Henry Street Music, the imprint he set up with Tommy Musto in 1993. It was a place where the particles of classic disco and the four-to-the-floor throb of house music were smashed together to create something new, something that would extend the life of these underground anthems and introduce them to a new audience. Armand Van Helden, Kenny Dope, Lil' Louie Vega, Terry Hunter, DJ Sneak, Todd Terry, DJ Duke; they all turned it out for Henry Street, and tracks like Dope's 'The Bomb! (These Sounds Fall Into My Mind)' and Van Helden's 'The Funk Phenomena' made it a pivotal part of house music history.

This selection is about the tracks that would inform Henry Street, the tracks found deep within the complex strings of its DNA, the tracks championed by Pettibone on Kiss or by Washington at the Studio, or those dredged from crates across the city. Half-heard anthems from Italy tracked down through forensic research in the record shops of the five boroughs, rare dub versions of classics that you won't be finding on eBay anytime soon. This is real disco.