There is a particular kind of house record that does not need a fireworks drop to take a room. It just needs a kick that sits in the right place, a bassline that refuses to sit still, and a title that already tells you where the head is at. Jeremy Grieve’s Back Then (edit) is filed under Tech House, Jackin House, and House (Old-school), and that combination is doing a lot of the talking before the first bar even lands.
Jackin house has been one of the quieter success stories of the last few years. While big-room tech house chased brighter hooks and tighter radio edits, a whole lane of DJs went back to swung hats, filtered stabs, and basslines that feel like they were written for a dim room rather than a festival screen. Old-school house never really left that conversation. It just waited for the edits to catch up. Back Then sits right in that pocket: a tech house frame, a jackin bounce, and a nod to the records that taught a generation how a floor should move.
Grieve is a Sydney DJ and producer with 15 years behind the decks. On his own pages he describes dubtech-infused tech house built around innovation, eclecticism, and a desire to bring the traditional essence of house music into a modern context. As a DJ, that shows up in sets that move through minimal deep tech, French house, UK Garage, Afrotech, tech house, funk, progressive, and techno. The stated aim is simple and hard to fake: always create a journey for the dancefloor.
That philosophy is easy to spot in the catalog. Searching For What arrived as an album in 2022. 2025 brought Inappropriate Robot, including a radio edit, plus Cousin Sven and the longer Keep Moving. 2026 has already stacked up Midnight Fiesta, the Shadow on Fire EP, Boom in both edit and extended form, and Plastic Jazz, which he has pinned as an artist pick, again with an edit and an extended mix. The edit is not a side note for him. It is part of how the music travels, short enough for a warm-up slot, long enough in the extended versions to let a DJ work.
Back Then (edit) fits that habit. The title does the historical work. The genre tags do the rest. Tech house gives the track its grid and its club utility. Jackin house supplies the swing, the kind of push-and-pull that makes people shift weight instead of just nodding. Old-school house is the reference point: organ stabs, dusty chord shapes, and grooves that feel borrowed from a crate rather than a preset pack. Grieve even keeps a public playlist built around the Korg M1 house organ, the workstation sound that defined so much 90s house. You do not build a playlist like that unless the past is part of the brief.
That matters in 2026, when edit culture is basically a second release schedule. DJs want tools. A tight edit of a jackin, old-school-leaning tech house cut can open a set, bridge two bigger records, or hold a room that is not ready for peak time yet. Plastic Jazz (Edit) and Boom Edit already show he understands that job. Back Then reads like another one built for the bag, not just the feed.
None of this requires a huge monthly-listener number to work. Spotify has him around the 800 mark, which is the normal size of a working underground catalog rather than a viral spike. The interesting part is the through-line: history, dancefloor mechanics, and a habit of cutting records into versions DJs can actually play.
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What do you think of this kind of old-school jackin tech house? Drop a comment and say whether Back Then belongs in the warm-up or later in the night.
