HANDSOME

STRAIGHT UP HOUSE 4 QUEERS

4 PEOPLE WHO LUV DANCIN'

SECOND SATURDAY OF THE MONTH

EVERYONE IS HANDSOME

If house is a feeling, then for us that is connection. We've been a dance floor community for fourteen years. We're mostly queers, but anyone is welcome who loves the music and isn't a dick.

The sounds are an homage to golden era NYC house: grooves with a soul, heavy on the vocal, dopamine diggin' dope trax. DJs are a small band of regulars but we've had many wonderful guests over the years. This November we celebrate 14 years with Handsome regular Terry Farley and London house head Stuart Patterson.

MARSHALL JEFFERSON ROBERT OWENS TERRY FARLEY SMOKIN JO LEM (MOOD II SWING) TRISTAN DA

We're a small party, happier with one strobe and the lights out than LED eyestrain. And we hope you're looking and loving each other on the dance floor and not filming the DJ, 'cos that's not where the party is.

The world is crazier than ever right now. It can be overwhelming, disorienting, downright dystopic, but as Celeda said:

Music is the answer, to your problems.

Keep on moving, you can solve them.

DJ INTERVIEWS

The Handsome Giles Smith.

Early years Giles Smith’s love of music, and more specifically vinyl, developed long before he thought about standing behind the decks. Growing up in a still analogue world at a time when the underground was winding its way into his world through Top of the Pops and Woolworths: 7 inch singles carefully collected of Beatmasters’ Rok da House, Krush’s House Arrest, M|A|R|R|S’ Pump Up The Volume and Eric B and Rakim’s epic Paid In Full - his schoolboy ear was already attuned to

Rumi de Baires: the thinking person's house head.

Ahead of his first gig in London at Handsome on August 8th, Vienna based DJ and promoter Rumi de Baires took some time to talk about music, his home country of Argentina, and his journey from psychology academic to dance floor doyen. Rumi de Baires grew up in Buenos Aires, the country’s colossal capital that sits on the estuary of the Rio de la Plata, so called for the supposed rich deposits of silver surrounding it (as was Argentina itself, which translates as something clo

London House Head Paul Heron Spills the Tea.

Paul, tell us a bit about early life and growing up? So my early childhood was in a sleepy little fishing village in South West Scotland on the Logan Estate on the Mull of Galloway, it's super remote but a really stunning part of the world - not exactly the ideal place for a baby gay who was designing dresses aged eight and who desperately wanted to be a fashion designer. My folks later relocated to Twickenham for work and I grew up with my sister in London. I love my homela

Hercules and Love Affair's Andy Butler on Music as Redemption.

I'm republishing here a series of articles and interviews originally written for Faith zine. This is an interview I did with Hercules and Love Affair's Andy Butler for his album In Amber. There is a disarming ingenuousness to Andy Butler that sits incongruently with the queer underground he both grew out of and came to be recognised by. Having put out consistently well-received records steeped in the history and culture of house and disco for nearly a decade and a half, his e

NYC Legend Lem from Mood II Swing talks House Music.

Ahead of his set at Handsome this Saturday, I had the pleasure of speaking with the NYC house legend and songwriter producer. For old househeads like me, Lem Springsteen and John Ciafione are up there with Kenny Gonzalez and Louie Vega and Farley and Heller when it comes to production duos. As Mood II Swing, they put out some of the slickest New York sounds for the dance floor as well as being behind era-defining tracks such as Barbara Tucker’s ‘Beautiful People’ and Ultra Na

The Police Christened him Queer

Why is the story of Rev. Robert Spike's life and death important today? Why do I - his son - want to bring it to the screen now, sixty years after his murder? That crime has never been solved. And his life story has never been told to the millions of people around the world who might take some hope from it at a time when the lessons of history - vital lessons of freedom, justice, equality - too often seem to be lost causes. Robert Spike was a Baptist farmboy from upstate New

Alinka & Shaun J. Wright: Chicago housekeeping.

Shaun J. Wright and Alinka are the DJs, producers, and promoters behind the respected house label Twirl Recordings and the hugely successful Chicago parties of the same name. Here they speak to Martyn Fitzgerald about life growing up house in the Windy City. Shaun J Wright and Alinka, start and finish each other’s sentences, testament to a deep friendship and years of late-night talks. As well as being label owners and promoters, they are sought-after DJs and producers and,

Queer Nation: US House Music for a Discerning London Crowd.

Queer Nation. A one-two punch that set out its stall with no apology. Started in December of 1990 by Patrick Lilley, its offering on a Sunday night of soulful black US house in Covent Garden’s Gardening Club quickly established itself as the place to end the weekend for discerning devotees. Early 90s London offered an increasingly wide range of LGBTQ nights, many of whom like Trade took more of the limelight, but it was this small basement club that bridged the gap between wh

House Music All Life Long: Smokin Jo.

In 1992 Smokin Jo was the first woman to win DJ Magazine’s DJ of the Year Award. Shockingly, she remains the sole female recipient in 2026. I’m not one for awards and the top down competitive environment it fosters, not to mention the cultivation for external validation that it would be beneficial for us to counter in ourselves and others, but if we are going to have awards let’s try and say something important with them. In a sense Jo’s autobiography, You Don’t Need A Dick

It's a Spiritual Thing, A Body Thing, A Soul Thing...

Sometimes I get asked to interview wonderful people for Faith, the London zine that has chronicled house culture since 1999. I'm reposting some of those pieces here and as Robert Owens is performing at Handsome this week here's the first focused on peak Chicago. For this one I spoke with Terry Martin, to talk about the seminal zine Thing and the subsequent House magazine he edited Crossfade. Honey Dijon, a reader of Thing, kindly added an introduction: "Zines are a form of c