In celebration of their Won’t Get Lost tour, we’ve brought local heavyweights The Aston Shuffle on board for a stint as guest editors. Every day this week we’ll be serving up a new contribution from the now well-established dance duo – so it’s probably fitting that to kick off proceedings, the boys are filling us in on what influenced them as artists early on.

Mikah and Vance have compiled a list of their ten classic records, honing in on the music that they love and consider essential. It’s an interesting assortment of the house, techno and trance tunes from their formative years – many of them pretty obscure, and all of them very important to the sound The Aston Shuffle creates today. Intrigued? Dig in.

Keiichi Suzuki – Satellite Serenade (Transasianexpress Mix)

Mikah: “This is one of the very first records I ever bought. It cost me $150 but it was worth every cent and to this day I still hold it dear to my heart! I discovered it on the Sasha & Digweed Northern Exposure compilation – from the first listen I was obsessed.

The song’s intro is full of luscious sound-scapes, has a David Attenborough sample in it (which funnily enough suits the vibe perfectly) and when the drop of the drums and baseline comes in, it’s just too good! For both of us, this CD was one the first introductions we got to dance music. The Northern Exposure mix series and a lot of the other mix compilations that followed soon after really fuelled our curiosity and made us want to explore that whole sound.”

Itch-E & Scratch-E – Sweetness & Light

Mikah: “At the time when this record dropped, Australian dance culture was still very young and very much in love. Sweetness & The Light pretty much made everyone want to go to a rave and dance till the sun came up – I know we sure as hell did!

A lot of the ideas, like the baseline and the piano hook that made this track so special, have actually come back full-circle and are being utilised in a lot of the popular club records today – which goes to show how on-point this track is. Paul Mac (one half of Itch-E & Scratch-E) has been responsible for some of the biggest records in Australia over the last 20 years. Whether it was a pop or techno record, if it was getting smashed on radio or hammered in the clubs, chances are Paul Mac had something to do with it.”