Disco house is having another loud year. Lists of essential disco house tracks keep filling up with warm basslines, piano stabs and vocals that feel like they were cut for a sunrise rather than a drop. Deep Fried Soul have walked straight into that lane with Shine the Light of Love, a house record that treats the early Manchester club floor as a starting point rather than a museum piece.
The duo formed in Manchester in the summer of 2024. Andy Tracey and Jasper Wilkinson wanted their own flavour of sweet sonic soul mixed with funky disco grooves. Between them they already had writing, remix and production credits running from EMI to Positiva, and from Soulfuric to Grand Central. Tracey has worked as Rubberman, Headfunk, 11AM, Grooveman, Monosphere and The Joy. Wilkinson is tied to Jersey St All Stars and I am your autopilot. Releases under those names have landed on Subversive, Soulfuric, Defected, Ministry of Sound, Device, Jersey Street, Sunsoaked, Litmus, Flawless and more. Rubberman’s You Got Me Burning Up 2009 reworked a Cevin Fisher classic. 11AM’s Give It Up turned up on Soulfuric in the House via Defected and on a Hed Kandi Stereo Sushi compilation. This is not a first dance for either of them. Shine the Light of Love follows their debut, Back Together Again, and pairs them with Mancunian vocalist Yvonne Shelton, plus Elva Parinaud.
The track was recorded in their Manchester studio and written with the early house that came out of the Hacienda in the early ’90s in mind. It sits in old-school house, disco house and EDM, with disco, funk and gospel colours running through it. The original master is at 44.1 kHz, and the release sits on The Discography Lessons, a label built around a Music vs Mental Health ethos. Club remixes from Boogietraxx and Cas are planned after the original, with a promo push across SubmitHub, Instagram and HypeEdit Ads.
The lyric is simple on purpose. “Someday, we might find a way / It doesn’t matter what people say.” Later it turns the corner: “whenever you go with what you feel / release yourself, this love is real.” The hook keeps returning to the same line, “I’m shining the light of love, on you,” with “Shine a light” used like a chant. That call-and-response shape is pure gospel house. It does not need a complicated story. It needs a room that can answer back.
Musically, the brief is dancefloor first. Infectiously funky old-school disco grooves, eclectic guitar riffs, hard funk bass and soul-inspired vocals. The duo describe it as a feel-good, soulful house record for DJs and anyone looking to be lifted. They also point it at hazy Ibiza summer sunsets and the small moments when a floor actually connects. That mix of Manchester club history and holiday warmth is a useful one right now. Soulful house charts are still packing vocal cuts about love, shelter and staying on the floor, while disco house roundups keep proving that piano, bass and a human voice still move people. Manchester’s own rooms, from big seasonal nights to smaller house-first clubs, have not stopped feeding that circuit either.
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What do you think of this kind of gospel-tinted disco house? Drop a comment and say whether Shine the Light of Love belongs on a sunset set or a late Manchester floor.
