Dam Swindle: Joshua Brooks, Manchester

Dam Swindle head to Manchester on Saturday 13th June for a six-hour session in the basement at Joshua Brooks. The Amsterdam duo — Lars Dales and Maarten Smeets — have spent over a decade building one of European house music's most respected reputations, and they arrive off the back of their third album Open and a run of prestige bookings including fabric London and the Montreux Jazz Festival.

Formed in 2011 after a chance meeting in Amsterdam's club scene, Dam Swindle quickly established themselves as one of the most versatile acts in underground dance music. Four EPs in their first year across Freerange, Dirt Crew, and Tsuba set the pace. Their 2018 album High Life — featuring collaborations with Tom Misch, Seven Davis Jr., and Jungle by Night — became one of that year's most acclaimed house music LPs. Their Tom Misch collaboration alone has clocked over 15 million Spotify streams.

The duo's third album Open, released in May 2025, marked a seven-year gap and their most personal work to date.Fourteen tracks spanning synthwave, hip-house, ambient, and deep grooves featured contributions from classical pianist Joep Beving, Chicago's Ric Wilson, and NYC vocalist Haile Supreme. They followed it with the Backyard Galaxy EP — a deliberate return to high-energy, four-to-the-floor house that reminded everyone what they do best on a dancefloor.

Alongside their productions, Dam Swindle run Heist Recordings — one of the underground's most dependable imprints, approaching 100 releases with a roster that reads like a quality house music directory: Fouk, Crackazat, Nachtbraker, Byron the Aquarius, Cinthie, and DJ Sneak among them. Beatportal named it Label of the Month, and it receives regular BBC Radio 1 support from Pete Tong.

Their DJ sets are where it all connects. From deep house warmth through disco, broken beat, acid, and soulful techno, Dam Swindle join the dots with a record collector's instinct. Their Boiler Room sessions are the stuff of legend — not least the Madrid set where they replaced a broken turntable mid-mix without dropping a beat. Six hours in the intimate surroundings of Joshua Brooks' basement, with its bricked arches and Void Acoustics system pushing every low-end detail, is exactly the kind of setting where a Dam Swindle set unfolds properly.

No shortcuts, no filler — just two selectors with impeccable taste and the space to use it.

See you at the front.