As part of our celebration of 21 years of club culture, we're featuring some of our favourite DJs from around the world, highlighting the parties and clubs most important to their lives in dance music.
The Loft is one of the most storied and sacred spaces in dance music history. Founded in Manhattan in 1970 by the late David Mancuso, The Loft was a party unlike any other: relaxed and gently psychedelic, with pristine audiophile sound played at a medium volume level kinder to the ears. You didn't need to blast the music to appreciate the sonic perfection of the music and the system it was played on. Over the decades, Mancuso invented his own influential style of DJing, letting the records breathe rather than mashing them together. Mancuso, who died in 2016, had many acolytes over the years, perhaps none more prominent than Colleen 'Cosmo' Murphy, who provides our final 2122 birthday RA Podcast: a tribute to The Loft.
Murphy has an impressive resume without The Loft: she's a long-time radio DJ, founded the Classic Album Sundays series and started her own Lucky Cloud Loft Party in London, in collaboration with Mancuso. Her DJing style, slow, steady and respectful of the music, channels those years spent at The Loft, and her RA Podcast embodies the disco-influenced sounds that define the party, played with care, love and reverence.