I'm not wanting to stoke fires again but after Greg Wilson's piece on his blog the other week the thought of how House proliferated through the UK has been in the back of my mind. I ran into Mark Moore at something a week or so ago and he had a good take on it so I'll speak to him at some stage and then today I found this article in an i-D magazine from 1987 with MP2 a.k.a Mike Pickering and Martin Prendergast of The Hacienda.

As you can read Pickering says, "This 'Rare Groove' thing is mainly confined to the South, while in the North people much prefer the faster, leaner rhythms of House. It reminds me of the mid-70s, when Northern Soul was hip, but in the South it was all 'Deep Soul' like Kool & The Gang of P-Funk. Another point is that in the North I can play more dub B-sides than I can anywhere else. Northeners don't seem to like vocals too much, they just want a good bassline."