Horse Meat Disco (UK)

Horse Meat Disco (UK) is a byword for Sunday night London bacchanalia which accidentally resuscitated the original dance music genre onto the world stage. The four-strong DJ collective of Luke Howard, Severino Panzetta, James Hillard and Jim Stanton began their disco shenanigans on New Year’s Day, 2004 at The Eagle, Vauxhall. Beside their famous well-hung equine neon logo (“Our Eiffel Tower”), their brand of reverential, revisionist bonhomie turned out to be its own form of futurism, restructuring the London nightclub pyramid. “You put music at the top and getting high or jiggy follows,” they say, “not the other way round.”

In the 20 years of their nightclub tenure, HMD have become a global brand. They have added monthly residencies in Berlin and New York to their London bedrock as well as touring week in week out around the globe. They are a rock solid festival attraction, persistent bookings which fanned from the initial impetus they lent the NYC Downlow, Glastonbury’s first LGBTQ+ space back in 2009. Each year they return to site for what has commonly been dubbed “gay disco Christmas”.

The accidental phenomenon of Horse Meat is built on the shared good vibrations and aesthetics of their genre. As testament to the public love for their makeshift, DIY brand, no other disco collective has arrived in their lifespan to attempt to knock them from their beloved perch.