Rainy City Music were the connoisseurs’ choice of Manchester house music in the 90s; the kind of act passed on in reverent whispers by those in the know. The label’s best-known songs were anthems for the Mancunian deep house scene but they were arguably better known outside their home town, their soulful live productions resonating from New York City to Detroit. 

“If you were around many of Manchester's record stores (mine came from Piccadilly records) you would have likely seen in the know folk nudging the staff with a wink (muffled whisper) ‘Rainy City?’... Thats how I copped mine, pure ear-wigging,” says dylaf on Discogs, a story that resonated with my own experience.

Manchester can stake a good claim to be the first place in Britain to have played the emerging house sound back in the 80s. (See also: Nottingham, Sheffield, London etc.) By the 1990s, when I lived there, the city’s house scene was led by Paper Records, which released records by the likes of Salt City Orchestra, Dirty Jesus and Crazy Penis, while label founders Miles Holloway and Elliot Eastwick DJed all over the city.

But if the Paper Records duo were Manchester’s Deep Dish - that’s to say, smooth, deep and successful - then Rainy City Music was its KDJ, bringing a rougher, live edge to underground house, which looked to the US, Brazil and Africa for inspiration and proved very different to other electronic music being made in Manchester at the time.

The label was started during the summer of 1996 by brothers Irfan and Iftikhar Hussain and Cyril Lyons. Brazilian guitarist Franco Ze completed the label’s core set up, while Naveed Akhtar (aka Sasso / Freak Seven) “would get involved on the odd track”.

Popular as they were, Rainy City always felt like outsiders in their home town. Irfan Rainy said that among the label’s influences were “Mantronix, Juan Atkins and Derrick May”: “serious artistic drum machine programming musicians who knew who how to make the sophisticated / conceptual / abstract art of dance music”.

“We were all real inner-city Mancunians born and bred not the stereotypical Oasis / Happy Mondays-type muppets,” he added. “Me and Ifty are English born of Pakistani parentage and Cyril is English born of Trinidadian and French parentage.

“Our upbringing meant it was near impossible to find many with our combination of backgrounds / cultural influences, who were into creating Black electronic dance music during the late 80s. Especially Detroit techno or house music from Chicago / New York. We were never part of the ‘boys club’ that existed in house / techno music in Manchester.”

I spoke to Irfan Rainy about his label back in 2014. At the time, prices of Rainy City vinyl were rocketing, after Jeremy Underground and Jay Daniel had played City People’s timeless It’s All In The Groove during their Boiler Room set; but he didn’t sound particularly fussed by the attention. Nor, to be honest, did it sound like he really wanted to do an interview, which he claimed would be his first.

But after a brisk back and forth, Irfan and I spoke by email and he opened up  a little up on the influences behind Rainy City and why they alienated some house fans. I’ve come back to the interview today, buffing it up for 2026, after a gorgeously chilly January sent me running back to the Rainy City catalogue. If you’ve never heard them, I really recommend you check them out.

Back in 2014, Irfan told me that Rainy City felt “very individual and ‘alone’ in our music”. “Nobody came from the same base / approach to making dance music the way we wanted to, with an 808 / 909 and MPC 60,” he explained. “And it was our friend A Guy Called Gerald who told us get the MPC 60, as Chicago’s Joe Smooth had told Gerald about it, when he was in New York.”

The label’s first release (RCM001) in summer 1996 was Wants & Needs / Times Square from “the disco loving” Blast From The Past (aka Irfan and Cyril, with Ifti adding occasional production). 

Over the years there followed a semi regular string of brilliant 12 inches from names such as City People, 20 Below and The Elastic Band, largely comprised of the core Rainy City Team. “My job as the DJ of the label was to create / develop the styles and monikers, being a die-hard music collector,” Irfan explained.

The labels is still active (ish) today, with the most recent release being Irfan Rainy, Mutabaruka & Simbad’s excellent Catch, Loot, Steal, which came out in 2021, after a slightly torturous licensing process that apparently took nine years, from recording to release. Irfan Rain and Rex Leon’s Cross Step Drag EP from 2021 is brilliant, while the Rainy City remix of Dele Sosimi Orchestra’s Too Much Information is sublime.

Despite the various revivals, the Rainy City back catalogue can still be difficult to track down in 2026 and, possibly as a result, Rainy City has never really got the respect it deserves as one of Britain’s best, most original house music labels.

Here we present our guide to five essential Rainy City tracks with commentary from Irfan.

Blast From The Past - Times Square

The Rainy City producers had been making music since 1991 exuding, in their own words “the classic US House flavour from NYC, New Jersey, Chicago & Detroit”. But they really nailed it with the tough disco of Times Square, which appeared on their debut 12 inch, alongside two mixes of Wants & Needs.

Times Square was both typical of the Rainy City sound, in that it featured live (or live sounding) instrumentation, jazzy keyboards, elastic bass, horns, xylophones and short vocal clips. But it was one of their more upbeat, direct tracks, featuring urgent stabs and abrupt chord changes that shifted things up a notch. (See also Blast From The Past’s When It Rains It Pours for another example of their more upbeat work.)

“Times Square was a Joe Bataan disco sampling house track that was influenced by London’s Paul Trouble Anderson and his Saturday night Kiss FM show,” said Irfan. “We made a track that he would play.”

City People – It’s All In The Groove

It’s All In The Groove, Rainy City’s second release, is probably their best known. Bugged Out resident DJ James Holroyd used to play it all the time and it became something of an early evening anthem at the club.

As a record, it reeks of sheer, hypnotic simplicity, consisting of little more than a bass line, percussion and echo-y stabs, which come and go, ebbing and flowing as they please, over the track’s 10 minutes 40 seconds. 

The result sounds – in the best possible way – like a house jam, with a well-acquainted group locking into a tight groove. It sounds effortless, although you suspect it really wasn’t.

Whatever the case, It’s All In The Groove is a brilliant track and a very well named one, which elicits expensive re-sale prices and over-excited commentary on YouTube to this day. There’s a remix on the 2001 compilation When It Rains It Pours, which essentially adds a few effects to the original without spoiling the track’s compelling simplicity.

“It’s All In The Groove was a long dub version we wrote after remixing a Mad Mike production by fellow Detroit artist Kimmie Horns for Slip N Slide. We sampled Mantronix in this track too,” said Irfan.

“There’s so many different DJs who have played it and still play it. For example I was at The Hacienda just before it closed down in the mid-90s and I’d hear Studio 54 DJ Kenni Carpenter play it! I’d say Mike Huckaby from Detroit was the biggest fan. He used to call us from Record Time and share his love of the record. I even saw on it for sale recently for £200 on Discogs!”

Blast From The Past – Change, Things Have To (original mix)

“We had quite a time coming up with a record that would be suitable and live up to the standards and still be different… Things have to change.” So goes the vocal sample that runs through Change, found on the label’s fifth release, a double 12 inch featuring three versions of the title track (the others come from Afrodizzyact and The Elastic Band) as well as Afrodizzyact’s Use Those Beats.

While The Elastic Band’s broken beat-esque Blue mix of Change does switch things up, Blast From The Past’s take  - which is my favourite - essentially adheres to the classic early Rainy City format of live-sounding instrumentation, swinging drums and nagging vocal samples. Once more, the track’s simplicity is its trump card, with an unassuming five-note bass line nailing the funk feel and the subtle use of effects and pauses feeding dance floor momentum, like a Mancunian Masters at Work. Change lasts seven minutes 40 seconds but could quite happily double that.

“Change (Things Have To) was another slightly leftfield disco / funk track sampling Tata Vega’s Get It Up For Love. I liked the fact it had a breakbeat disco feel and we loved Kenny Dope,” said Irfan. “The sample? I’m pretty sure it’s from a Diana Ross And The Supremes LP. It was a cheeky sample but with a mixed music message also asking for things to change. It summed up our growth, happiness and anger / melancholy with the world.”

Blaze – My Beat (City People edit)

Rainy City didn’t do that many remixes. But Blaze - with their classic US house sound and Afrocentric influences - were a natural fit for the Manchester crew and City People’s take on My Beat for the When It Rains compilation is brilliant.

They don’t retain all that much of the classic original - just the all-important vocal sample and some piano chords - but the results are very much in keeping with the track’s propulsive funk feel, as City People add a supple bass line, Latin-esque percussion and a lithe electronic hook.

Rainy City actually remixed My Beat twice - a City People Love Afrocentric Truth Mix appeared on Slip N Slide - as Irfan explained. “It was an honour to officially remix this classic,” he said. “The first version we did for Slip N Slide was quite raw and starts with the ‘My beat began in Africa’ sample pasted into it. The agreement with the label was that we could do a version for our own compilation and that’s what we did. The second version has a lot more live music overdubs and is a lot more polished. Although nothing touches Blaze’s original version, in my opinion.”

Galera – Jinga Jangada (AfroBahia Instrumental)

African and especially Brazilian music were a key influence on Rainy City and nowhere was this more evident than in the work of Galera, who released the label’s only artist album (2003’s Four Seasons).

“Galera was me, Cyril, Ifti and Brazilian musician Franco Ze and the session musicians in Manchester that became our friends whilst working on the LP that got signed in Japan,” Irfan explained. (The same musicians also played on the City People Blaze remix).

Jinga Jangada appears on Four Seasons, but it is the AfroBahia instrumental, a riotous eight-and-a-half minute Brazilian crossover which appears on When It Rains It Pours, which takes the plaudits, for sheer loose-limbed sunshine appeal.

“A mix of Samba and Afrobeat,” said Irfan of the track. “We were listening to a lot of Afro-Brazilian music, like Afoxê music and also Fela Kuti. I’m very proud of this one. It’s funny cause most house kids must have thought we had lost it when we did this track. I know we would have been far more successful today making only house tracks but as artists we had to explore other genres and this was the product. A very creative time in our lives when we also recording on analogue tape too.”

Some watching

Dept Q (Netflix)

The tortured, brilliant detective who follows his own rules; the unlikely assistant with a sparkling brain; the incompetent (and potentially corrupt) police force; the hair-raising race against time - yes, Netflix crime thriller Dept Q has all the clichés and more to make you want to immediately power down your laptop and give up on life.

And yet the fact that you don’t give up on the series, the fact that, instead, you end up gobbling down nine gritty episodes in four days, is down to a host of dazzling performances; clever direction from Scott Frank, best known for The Queen’s Gambit; and a plot that introduces just enough novelty to the crime thriller clichés while keeping true to the grim twists and turns of the best of the genre. 

The series, based on the Danish Department Q nordic crime novels by Jussi Adler-Olsen and first released on Netflix in May 2025, follows Edinburgh detective Carl Morck as he returns to work after a shooting in which he was severely injured. His boss, Moira Jacobson (a deliciously cold turn from Kate Dickie), sets him to work on cold cases, as both a sop to the Scottish government and to keep Morck out of her way. If you’re getting strong Rebus vibes, I doubt that’s a coincidence.

Morck is joined in his new Dept Q by Akram Salim, a former police officer in Syria, and Rose Dickson, a young police officer who has suffered with her own mental health. They decide to investigate the disappearance of Prosecutor Merritt Lingard - her identity revealed in a brilliantly sharp twist of direction that made my jaw drop - who has been missing, presumed dead, for four years.

So far, so standard. But the writing is admirably lean, the series is beautifully shot - Frank has transposed the action from Copenhagen to Edinburgh, with the Scottish capital glorious in its imposing, gothic splendour - and the cast is one of the best I have seen in years. 

Matthew Goode leads the honours as the troubled and troubling Morck, while Chloe Pirrie is brilliantly unreadable as Prosecutor Merritt Lingard, both characters permanently on the verge of being thoroughly unlikeable in a way that seems bold. 

Alexej Manvelov is perfectly hangdog as Salim and Leah Byrne brings acres of melancholy charm to the character of Dickson, while Steven Miller and Alison Peebles are chilling as a twisted mother and son team. And that’s before we get to the Trainspotting duo of Kelly Macdonald (a slightly underwritten Dr Rachel Irving) and Shirley Henderson (Claire Marsh), who bring a welcome dose of Scottish continuum to proceedings. They’re surrounded by an excellent supporting cast - I could honestly pick out about 10 different performances - who bring a complex, multi-layered story to life, picking their way gently around the demands of the genre. 

The result is a series of admirable subtlety and shade that delivers the page-turning, new-episode clicking returns of the best crime thrillers without resorting to overt blood and guts until the queasy final episode. You could, perhaps, argue that the series’ final 10 minutes, a slightly rushed catch up of what the character do next set to some truly terrible music, lets the show down a bit; but by that point Dept Q has woven its dark Caledonian magic and I could forgive its mawkishness, while very much looking forward to season 2.