Genre distinctions in DJ culture can be oppressively rigid. House nights can become strictly house nights and hover in the same BPM for hours. Rave flyers often feel the need to clarify if a DJ is going to play jungle and drum & bass. Rap and R&B—let alone grime—are too often left out of techno or disco sets.

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But Night Slugs are masters of the kind of globe-trotting playlists that push traditional pop and club structures into unexpected, thrilling contortions. A few years ago, when the London label and party collective was still a baby, co-proprietor Bok Bok articulated his ethos in one compact Gchat message to me: “There’s no such thing as ‘retro’ music or ‘future’ music—it’s one and the same,” he wrote. “It’s those wormhole connections between different places, scenes, styles that interest us most.” Night Slugs’ selections have always been driven solely by their instinct for unlikely bangers, never hewing to de rigueur hits, predictable staples, or modern, pale imitations of whatever style some A&R happens to think is cool at the moment. Their productions swirl house, grime, hip-hop, acid, bass, electro, R&B, and whatever else into a boxfresh mix. They revel in the power of the internet to amplify these disparate, sometimes underappreciated sound worlds, and are always reverent of the diverse peoples and cultures who created them.