Lots of house and techno suited to driving, lost-in-the-moment dancefloors. Brisbane’s X Club, the up-and-coming duo of DJ/producers Ben Clarke and Jesse Morath, offers more immediate excitement.

X Club hit their stride at the start of the pandemic with a series of raw and driving releases, including on London-based Australian expat Mall Grab’s Steel City Dance Discs, and found a ready audience in both Australia and the Northern Hemisphere. In 2022, as borders reopened, the duo’s fast-paced, wild DJ sets instantly resonated with dancers craving fast tempos and hard kicks.

Throughout their rise and post-lockdown move from Brisbane to London, Clarke and Morath have embodied a great exuberance; their Instagram feed is a collection of behind-the-DJ videos of the pair bouncing and fist-pumping in front of equally enthusiastic crowds. While the X-Club sound feels right at home in Europe, the duo’s success underlines the outsized strength of Brisbane’s dance music scene, which has also produced up-and-coming artists such as Claire Morgan, Sampology, Hannah D and Dameeeela.

X Club’s appeal comes from their prolific output, which began with their grimy, camp-ready debut EP Scum in 2019. On 2022’s Public Disturbance, Clarke and Morath deftly moved from the stroboscopic techno of These Streets Look Dangerous to the bouncier breakbeats of Only If U, featuring Melbourne producer and singer Pretty Girl. After launching their label Hide The Junk, the duo ended 2023 with cheeky edits of dance relics Deee-Lite and Lock ‘n’ Load – catnip for peak time at the rave. X Club’s latest EP, New World Expression, tunnels into more homegrown territory that still has their trademark punch and speed. As Morath put it in an interview, “Our music is more of a feeling and an energy than a genre.”

A few months ago, X Club’s main stage set from Victoria’s ill-fated 2024 Pitch Festival hit YouTube. Spanning two breathless hours of lasers gliding over a sea of ​​bobbing doof sticks, the set showcases the full range of their output, including tracks for New World Expression, which they recently completed in the Joshua Tree desert. As a crowning moment, it’s the stuff dance music dreams are made of – with an energy that is pure X Club.

More information: X Club will tour North America and Europe for the rest of the year before returning to Australia for a Gold Coast appearance in December.

This month, Guardian Australia also heard…

Allday – The Necklace (now available)

Adelaide-born rapper and singer Allday deepens the role of the lovelorn, disheveled individual he’s built up over his last three records – some of Australia’s best indie pop albums – highlighted by early single “Miss You Still,” which also features guests from Cub Sport and Ben Lee.

Fanning Dempsey National Park – The Flood (now available)

Bernard Fanning and Paul Dempsey! Lots of suits and synthesizers! “The party hasn’t really started until the saxophone solo starts,” they told us in a recent interview.

3% – Kill the dead (now available)

3%, a supergroup consisting of First Nations hip-hop artists Nooky, Dallas Woods and Angus Fields, is equal parts party and polemic on their first record as a trio – this is especially evident in the latest album, “Our People”, which turns the Presets classic into a battle cry against the incarceration of Indigenous people.

Sycco – Zorb (23.August)

After a string of crystal-clear pop singles, Sycco is here with her debut album: a little bit more snappy, a little more uptempo than her earlier work suggested. Breakbeats and cheeky vocal modulations are omnipresent.

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Wild God (30 August)

Suffice it to say that a new Nick Cave album is always an event.