Cutting up the dancefloor: the glorious, dubious history of the disco edit

Triumphantly countering the racist, homophobic chumps who burned records during the Disco Sucks movement in the US in the late-70s, disco has continued to thrive in the past four decades. The frequently bombastic, sometimes camp and always danceable art form has gone through cultural peaks and valleys since emerging from a primordial soup of nightlife cultures during the 60s and 70s, and now it’s back on top of the mountain.

Look across festival line-ups this year and you’re likely to see in-demand DJs such as Jayda G, Dan Shake, Colleen “Cosmo” Murphy, Folamour, Horse Meat Disco and Hunee playing obscure disco treasures, and this year’s charts, airwaves and streaming playlists have been awash with big, brash bangers made out of disco classics, including Oliver Heldens’ I Was Made for Lovin’ You, Majestic’s Rasputin and Belters Only’s I Will Survive.

But there’s another side to the genre’s longevity that is rarely appreciated. Quietly keeping disco ringing out in clubs since the 90s has been the growth of a culture around disco edits: tracks that subtly chop up and give oomph to old disco songs – and the current UK No 1 single is arguably the first modern disco edit to top the charts. LF System comprise two young Scottish producers, Conor Larkman and Sean Finnigan, and their