The Shapeshifters are a Day Time Disco favourite, and he is back where he belongs. Simon Marlin returns to the Joshua Brooks basement with Pleased As Punch, the label and party he runs with Saison, and this time Day Time Disco gives him the afternoon and evening for a run of disco, soulful house and feel-good grooves. If you have caught him in this room before, you already know he brings the party every single time.

Behind The Shapeshifters is one of British house music's most durable names. The Shapeshifters took 'Lola's Theme' to number one on the UK Singles Chart in 2004, when the project was Simon Marlin and Max Reich, and Marlin has stayed at the centre of the scene ever since. Signed to Defected for well over a decade, he has spent recent years as a driving force behind Glitterbox and its disco revival, releasing the album 'Let Loose' through the label and working with the likes of Billy Porter and Joss Stone.

In 2024 a younger crowd found him all over again when ArrDee sampled 'Lola's Theme' for the single 'Different'.

Pleased As Punch is the label and party he runs with Saison, built around the brassy, vocal-led, dancefloor-first sound that made his name. Factor in an Ibiza residency history that runs through Pacha and Glitterbox, plus a Nocturnal Groove back catalogue stretching back twenty years, and you have a DJ who knows how to read a room from the first record to the last.

Joining him is Jade Edwards, a Liverpool selector who has become a real presence across the North West with a sound rooted in soul, disco and groovy, feel-good house. She has already shared Pleased As Punch lineups with The Shapeshifters, and her own dates take in Creamfields, Parklife and Moxy Muzik, so she lands here as a natural fit. Expect a warm, well-judged set to open the afternoon.

Joshua Brooks suits this kind of booking. The basement on Princess Street in Manchester is all low ceilings and bare brick, wired to a Void Acoustics system that gives disco and soulful house real weight. This is the room where The Chemical Brothers cut their teeth on their first residency back in the nineties, and three decades on, it still does what a proper basement should, which is to put the crowd and the music in the same small space with nothing in the way.

It runs through the afternoon and into the evening, so you get the full party and still make it home before midnight.

See you at the front.

Description supplied by the event organiser.