DJ Q

Paul Flynn, working under the name DJ Q, incorporates stray hints of Detroit techno into sets built chiefly around crisp, energetic jazzy house. A Glasgow native who helped shape the city’s mid-’90s musical resurgence—an effort led by Slam through their joint club-and-label venture Soma—he took up DJing in the early 1990s to supplement his daytime work installing suspended ceilings. By 1994 he had begun producing as well, issuing tracks on Dance Mania, Glasgow Underground, and Filter that fused the emotional pull of Chicago house with the tighter, more polished sensibility he absorbed from Detroit artists such as Carl Craig. His 1996 single “We Are One” placed Glaswegian poet William Hall reciting over a sturdy groove-house foundation and found an audience on the country’s more adventurous dancefloors. Face the Music, Flynn’s first album as DJ Q, arrived in late 1997; Twenty Four7even followed in early 2000.