Z-Factor Featuring Jesse Saunders - Dance Party Album (2026)

Expanded session of historic 1984 party-stokers by Chicago house originators Jesse Saunders and Vince Lawrence, brewing a blend of Italo disco and Midwest funk at the square root of House, proper.

‘Dance Party Album’ is the sole duo LP by key progenitors of Chicago’s greatest export; House music. Originally issued on the Mitchbal label run by Z-Factor aka Vince Lawrence’s dad, Nemiah Mitchell, Jr., and freshly repackaged by Numero with edits of the porto-hip house/freestyle-esque bomb ‘I Am The DJ’, it remains a real landmark in the transition period from disco, boogie, and electro to the earliest house music - which is often credited to Jesse Saunders’ ‘On and On’, issued the same year on his own label, Jes Say Records (precursor to his founding of Dance Mania). Basically it’s a Midwest party in a bag, and responsible for spurring so, so much dance music we all hold dearly.

Childhood pals Saunders & Lawrence work to aspects of Italo disco, West Coast electro-funk and Floridian freestyle, and the sort of futurist electro emerging from Detroit. They cold kill on the girly groover ‘I Am The DJ’, and do aerodynamic Italo with inventive lo-fi finesse on ‘Fantasy’, along with a nod toward moody UK synth-pop in ‘Thorns’, along with punk-funk disco zingers ‘Fast Cars’ and ‘My Ride’, plus a sort of outsider soul suss in ‘Her Way’. This new edition now packs two bonus mixes of ‘I Am The DJ’, in a squelchier edit and Jazzy mixx sure to tickle your funky bone.