The Unexpected Return of L-Vis 1990
a.k.a. An interview with Night Slugs co-founder James Connolly about his decision to set aside the Dance System project and return to his original alias.
Back in 2019, James Connolly made a dramatic change. For more than a decade, the UK artist had been known to the world as L-Vis 1990, and as the co-founder of the iconic Night Slugs label, he’d played a key role in the reshaping of electronic music (and club music in particular) during the early 2010s. As that decade wore on, he’d broadened his creative palette, moving to New York for a spell and working on his own projects both inside and outside the Night Slugs universe, but even as he continued to grow and evolve, he’d stuck with the name L-Vis 1990, always maintaining that connection to his past.
Until 2019, that is. It was at that point that Connolly set aside the moniker and rebranded himself as Dance System, a house-oriented alias he’d briefly used in the mid-2010s for a DiS Magazine mix and a pair of EPs. Though the project had initially seemed like little more than a lark, the kind of thing producers do when they have a (temporary) creative itch to scratch, Connolly unexpectedly chose to resurrect the name and make Dance System his primary outlet. In interviews, he spoke about his desire to bring some fun back into a dance music scene that he thought was growing stale, and cited a desire to revisit the boisterous house sounds of his youth, naming the ’90s output of artists like Daft Punk, Armand Van Helden and Cassius as inspiration.
Even in the alias-happy world of electronic music, this sort of artistic transformation can be difficult to pull off, but Connolly fully leaned into his new identity, releasing a flurry of new Dance System music and picking up a bunch of accolades in the process—including a radio shoutout from pop / EDM phenomenon Calvin Harris. The pandemic threatened to stall the project’s early momentum, but despite the clubs being closed, Connolly’s collaboration-heavy 2020 mixtape, Where’s the Party At?, was widely praised in both “underground” and more commercial circles. (The release also coincided with the introduction of Poochi, a rave-addled cartoon dog that became Dance System’s official logo / mascot.) And as lockdown gradually lifted, the music kept coming, reaching a fever pitch with 2022’s “Work It,” which dropped via commercial behemoth Ministry of Sound. From the outside, it certainly appeared that Connolly had successfully penetrated a different sphere of dance music, and although some fans of Night Slugs and his L-Vis 1990 material likely hadn’t come along for the ride, he was gigging constantly—often in massive places where he wouldn’t necessarily been invited to play previously—and garnering attention from many of the industry’s biggest platforms.
Given that, it was something of a surprise when Connolly cleared out his Instagram and started anew last month, posting a note he’d written to himself in July 2023. Unsparing in its critique, it laid out his disappointment and frustration with contemporary dance music culture, the industry that fuels it and, most importantly, where he’d found himself within that apparatus. Yearning for something deeper and more meaningful than an endless parade of bangers, the note hinted at another creative reset, and a few days later, Connolly made it official: L-Vis 1990 was coming back.
Since then, he’s been on something of a promotional tear, beginning with a guest DJ set at NYC’s The Lot Radio in which he played nothing but his own unreleased music. Connolly has created 16 new L-Vis 1990 tracks in total, which he’s calling the Resurrection Dubs, and he’s begun releasing one each week via the project’s newly revamped Bandcamp page. A few more details about what Connolly is up to were revealed during his recent appearance on Scratcha DVA’s Soup to Nuts radio show on NTS, and he’s planning to publicly reintroduce himself at a special L-Vis 1990 & Friends event in London next month, but overall, he’s been relatively tight-lipped about what inspired this latest transformation.
That, of course, is exactly why I wanted to speak to him.
Connolly and I have actually known each other since 2009, when I booked him and Bok Bok to play at a party I was throwing in San Francisco. The two of them literally slept on my couch and floor for the better part of a week, and while our lives have gone in many different directions since then, Connolly and I have continued to touch base every now and again. And as someone who’s very familiar with the various twists and turns of his career, I figured that he might be willing to talk to me about not just the return of L-Vis 1990, but what exactly went awry during the years he was going full steam ahead with Dance System.
My instincts were correct, and Connolly called me up last week from his London studio, and our chat was his first on-the-record interview with a music journalist since he posted that note on Instagram less than a month ago. The note is where our conversation began, but from there, we unpacked his years as Dance System (and why they proved so unsatisfying) and also touched on Night Slugs, discussing how the label’s outsized influence has affected him historically, and what role (if any) it plays in this new incarnation of L-Vis 1990. And yes, we definitely talked about what that new incarnation is going to entail. Connolly isn’t someone who approaches any project haphazardly, and as he explained, we’ll be hearing a lot more from him—musically and otherwise—in the months ahead.