2023 saw the surprise return of L-Vis 1990 after a six-year creative hiatus. 

Co-founder of Night Slugs – one of the UK’s defining dance labels of the last 15 years – alongside Bok Bok, James Connolly’s L-Vis 1990 moniker played an integral role in introducing audiences to a melting pot of hyper-specific global club sounds. Through the label’s Club Constructions series and a run of blistering club 12”s in the early 2010s – Lil Silva’s ‘Night Skanker’, Girl Unit’s ‘Wut’, Bok Bok’s ‘Southside’ EP, L-Vis 1990’s ‘Ballads’ and Jam City’s ‘Classical Curves’ LP to name a few – Night Slugs’ alchemistic blueprint helped redefine the possibilities of UK club music.

“I stopped doing L-Vis back then because I was so sick of cyclical trends at the time”, said Connolly back in 2023. “But I never overlooked the cultural significance of what we were doing, and how that impacts dance music in the UK even now. We set the blueprint.”

It all began for Connolly in Brighton, where he started DJing as a 14 year-old. Initially hooked on records by Daft Punk and Masters At Work, he discovered garage and jungle after meeting fellow DJ/producers Mumdance and High Rankin; together, they’d throw parties all over the city. 

Connolly would go on to study fine art at university, where he developed a love for audio-visual practices. So much so in fact, that he was commissioned to make animated videos for both Erol Alkan and Boys Noize while still studying — a move that would see him perfectly positioned to launch his own artist career.

Backed by major label friends who’d listened to some of his early productions, Connolly released his debut self-titled ‘L-Vis 1990’ EP in 2008. It was a raw, heady mix of bassline, Baltimore club and ghetto house that piqued the interest of tastemaker DJs like Rob Da Bank and Ed Banger’s Busy P. 

Still throwing parties in Brighton and now London, Connolly was also enarmoured by late 00’s music forum culture. A regular on Diplo and DJ Lowbudget’s ‘The Hollerboard’, he first came to the attention of Diplo after posting a series of bonkers club edits in 2009, which would lead Diplo to signing AA side, ‘United Groove’ / ‘Come Together’ to Mad Decent later that year.

As part of Mad Decent, Connolly’s artist career blossomed. He played at SXSW for the first time, debuted at fabric and toured relentlessly. Armed with an intimate understanding of faraway dancefloors and a soundbank of crucial US club sounds — from Jersey to Baltimore club to Chicago ghetto house — Connolly returned to the UK with a vision. And Night Slugs was born.

Alongside fellow co-founder Bok Bok, the pair helped build a bridge across the Atlantic, meshing distinctly UK flavours (grime, UKG, bassline) with counterpart sounds in the US, laying fertile ground for a whole new generation of producers to grow from. From Egyptrixx to Jam City, Julio Bashmore and Lil Silva, Night Slugs signposted the way for many.

As L-Vis 1990, Connolly released his first music on Night Slugs in 2010. A two-track 12” called ‘Forever You’, the title-track — his first ever vocal collaboration — featured Javeon (fka Shadz) and immediately caught the attention of PMR Records, who he’d go on to release his debut album with the following year. ‘Neon Dreams’, a 15-track salvo inspired by his love of French touch and Chicago house, was also accompanied by a global headline tour and freshly-tweaked live show.

With Night Slugs continuing to flourish under his stewardship, Connolly relocated to New York in 2013. Keen to hit the ground running, he began throwing warehouse parties within a few days of stepping off the plane, quickly becoming a staple of the city’s underground landscape. He also seized the opportunity to further his own dancefloor education, researching and shooting ‘Icy Lake’ for VICE — an acclaimed short documentary exploring Ballroom culture and New York’s ‘90s club scene. Firmly embedded within the cultural fabric of his adopted city, his crowning moment was playing b2b alongside Ballroom pioneer, MikeQ, at Boiler Room’s 5th birthday celebrations. 

Outside of New York’s clubs, Connolly had also reignited his passion for working with vocalists, spending time producing for Kelela and later co-producing Lafawndah’s debut album alongside Nick Weiss & Aaron David Ross. 

Inspired by his time stateside, he returned to London in 2016 and began seeking out fresh talent to collaborate with, and compliment the artists he’d unearthed during his time in New York. The result was 2017’s ‘Twelve Thousand Nights’ — an extensive production mixtape awash with ahead-of-the-curve feature artists like Flohio, Mista Silva, Gaika & Tali Whoah. 

Underlining Connolly’s refusal to stand still and push both his sound and musicianship to new heights, its release would also prove the straw that broke the camel’s back. Although regularly tapped by major label A&Rs for production work, he felt boxed in by their demands and the one dimensional beats that had become a crossover soundtrack to the early UK drill explosion. As a result, L-Vis 1990 was put on the back burner — and a return to the club beckoned.

Dusting off breakaway house moniker, Dance System, Connolly arched back to try and recapture the thrill of his early rave days, releasing a series of powerhouse dance records on Modeselektor’s Monkey Town label, Mella Dee’s Warehouse Music, Eats Everything’s Edible and Chiwax across 2019 & 2020.

As lockdown struck early in 2020, Dance System’s momentum was quickly curtailed — but not for long. System Records was established to house his forthcoming material and from his base in Rome, where he’d moved in anticipation of a busy year of European touring, he put together ‘Where’s The Party?’ — an enthralling 20-track mixtape of raw, jacking house and rowdy fast cuts featuring a slew of collaborations including the likes of Hudson Mohawke, UNIQU3, I. JORDAN, A-Trak, Big Miz, Mike James and DJ Deeon. 

It would form the blueprint for a breathless two-year period that saw Connolly tour the world as Dance System, release BBC R1 Hottest Record In The World, ‘Work It’ ft. DJ Deeon on Ministry Of Sound, make festival debuts at Glastonbury and Lost Village, play a blockbuster ibiza schedule and remix industry legends like Groove Armada and Fatboy Slim — the latter of whom Connolly supported on the 20th anniversary of Big Beach Boutique II; the iconic Brighton Beach takeover that saw Fatboy Slim play to over 250,000 people in 2002, including a young Connolly himself, who’d attended as a teenager. 

This upscale had its inevitable downsides. Exhausted and experiencing burnout, Connolly had become disillusioned by the post-lockdown pace of consumption and a perceived lack of originality at the business end of the industry. It was a feeling that compelled him to return to making the type of music that had defined the early days of Night Slugs; sounds dictated by legacy rather than algorithm. And with that, L-Vis 1990 was back. Further boosted by a visit to Notting Hill Carnival last summer — the sounds, the history, the from-a-place stories, the carnival spirit — Connolly knew what he had to do.

“Hearing ‘Seasons’ by Lil Silva and a few other Night Slugs-y classics and just being caught up in that carnival spirit … something just sparked in my mind”, he recalls. “I ended up going home with a few friends that night and had a mix as L-Vis. It felt really good.”

A few days later, he headed to his studio as L-Vis 1990 for the first time in six years. And within a few hours, he’d written an entire project’s worth of tracks. That project, ‘RESURRECTION DUBS VOL.1’ — a moody, eyes-down, eight-track beat-tape — was released as a series of 8x singles over 8x weeks earlier this year, with a launch party at London’s Venue MOT, which also featured surprise appearances from Skrillex & Flowdan, bookmarking a hugely successful rebirth.

Now quietly back in demand as a producer, L-Vis 1990 has spent much of the summer working with everyone from Jyoty to Katy B, Skrillex, Flowdan, BXKS and the House Gospel Choir. There’s also a new mixtape in the works, which’ll feature some of the freshest voices in the UK right now including Jayhadadream, Jianbo, Tia Talks, Baklava and Paul Stephan, and a new EP made in collaboration with breakout Newham MC, Eklipse, on the way in October. 

Wherever Connolly chooses to take L-Vis 1990 from here, one thing is for certain — he’ll never stand still.