The biggest compliment a DJ can be given is making people dance to music they don’t know.” — Darryn Jones  This Friday, Errancy welcomes Darryn Jones and Material to the floor. The following are quotes and summaries from Errancys interview with Durty Truth. Darryn is the kind of DJ other DJs quietly study. A Chicago original, responsible for bootlegs and reissues he’ll never be credited for. He describes his style like this: “I would describe my style almost like a gumbo. Anything I think is interesting, I’m willing to try it.” Disco, Jazz fusion, House, Drum tracks, Electro. Darryn’s bag is dictated by his ear - he follows the music, not the crowd. When Darryn talks about the music, he talks about everyone who built it. “There’s a lot of dope DJs who set the bar,” he says, “that the system is kind of shortchanging. There’s a lot of unknown DJs around. But from the commercial scene, you won’t never hear them.” Darryn named too many DJs to list, but the thread runs back to Ron Hardy - to every house or warehouse where a record played three times until the room finally understood it. “By the third time,” Darryn says, “everybody is going crazy. Sometimes records have to grow.” His partner, Material, puts it as: “The sound we play is created in community. People feeding off each other, responding to each other, continuing the sound.”  Material heard Darryn play for the first time at Danny’s eight years ago. Growing up playing classical music, ripping CDs at the library, material has been obsessed with music their whole life. “Darryn is definitely my highest influence so far as sound goes,” they say. Material said that Darryn has taught them how to trust their own ear and take risks. “The tracks I found with my own ear are the ones I’m most proud of.” Together they are Durty Truth, with an uncompromising sound. Material describes mixing disco by quoting Sadar: “Sometimes its trying to make two bands play together at the same time” when asked how they pack a bag, Material responded – “If the music is working together, people won’t be thinking about what they want to hear. They’ll just be dancing.”  This Friday, Durty Truth takes over Errancy. 📸: Zachary Huff

CTRLZORA taught themselves to DJ at the start of their freshman year of college after a friend roped them into playing a Black Student Union assembly with no idea how. Music was the only thing that felt right, so they kept going. But the relationship started long before the decks. They grew up singing in the church then transitioned to singing and playing piano secularly, years of music curation and music blogs. Production followed naturally, then DJing. Each one another way of working with the same source material. Their father came up in Chicago as House was being built, ran with a dance crew, and raised them on Jazz, Blues, Funk, Soul, and the records Chicago and Detroit were trading back and forth. They came up the South Side way: the Post (RIP), basement functions, late-night mentorship from OGs like Ron Trent, learning vinyl by hand and by ear. They’ve worked with the city to help preserve sites like the Warehouse and guest-taught classes on Black social and cultural dance. They carry the legacy with the seriousness that only comes from knowing the people who built it. With a reoccurring Chicago based party, archival mix series, and radio show highlighting some of the best dance music DJs and producers throughout the midwest with a strong connection to the diaspora, The Cowrie Chi (@thecowriechi ), and a limited edition vinyl release on Kai Alce's NDATL label, Zora frequently tours across the country presenting their sonic loveletters to every crowd. Their philosophy: the DJ is a conduit, never the idol. A good party is everyone — DJ, dancers, the room — consensually relinquishing control to whatever source is dictating the music in the first place. What they’re bringing to the party: reverence for the past, eyes on a new Renaissance, and no interest in compromising the music to make it palatable. CTRLZORA is on the decks next Friday at @_errancy_ & @durtytruthsoundsystem . 📸 @zacharyrhuff

On May 8th, Errancy is honoured to host @dj.darryn__disco_or_die for a vinyl night, joined by his Durty Truth co-founder @material_________ and Chicago’s rising @ctrlzora . Doors at 8. Darryn Jones, revered among the ears-to-the-ground crowd worldwide, headlines with 2 hours of TUNEZ pulled from a crate he’s been building since 1983. Durty Truth has been a true inspiration for Errancy. Having interned with them before starting Errancy, we’re thrilled to bring their sound (including their Martin Audio system!) to our home. Material opens the night with a 3-hour set from their deep, wide-ranging crate, and CTRLZORA — curator of The Cowrie and student of the genre’s founders — rooted in the midwest's black dance music's lineage with a forward facing sound.” Our usual staff will be running the party: @carriedst & @ritmolechon (hosts), @ellifiona (food), @tokage__kaeru & @grinchcard (bar), @911_emergency_hotel (installations), @jontypaul (lights) and @yannaalynette (door). Not one to be missed, DM @_errancy_ or @durtytruthsoundsystem for more info! Flyer by @chonleriano & @eleace.ilustracion

Born and raised in Chicago’s western suburb of Maywood, Shaun J. Wright carries a lifetime of music, movement, and cultural memory into every set they play. A singer, DJ, producer, dancer, and storyteller, their path has spanned studying and professionally performing West African dance, footwork battles as a teenager, voguing femme in ballroom, fashion-curation studies in London, and an unexpected leap onto global stages as a vocalist with Hercules & Love Affair. Their artistic life moves fluidly across forms—house, disco, techno, R&B, hip-hop, ballroom, varied queer club histories, performance studies, visual culture—and is guided by what they call “lusciousness in juxtaposition to brutalism,” the beauty that emerges when softness meets the rough edges of the city. They cite Prince, Grace Jones, Danny Tenaglia, Masters at Work, Alice Walker, bell hooks, Gaultier, Westwood, and countless Chicago legends as part of a constellation rather than a lineage—figures whose energy, defiance, and world-building shaped their sense of what expression can be. For Wright, DJing is spiritual work: a state of flow, a moment of ancestral presence, a conduit for light and love. They approach the booth not as an entertainer but as a vessel—someone who hopes to positively shift a room’s emotional gravity, or give dancers permission to feel something they didn’t know they were carrying. As co-founder of the Twirl party and record label, alongside Berlin-based & Chicago-raised powerhouse Alinka (@alinkatwirl ), Wright continues to help shape underground culture while honoring those who shaped them. Their work is expansive, diasporic and deeply Chicago. We are honoured to welcome Shaun J. Wright to our space in less than a week. 📸 @zacharyrhuff

For Truly Unhinged, music has been a force of nature since before memory. Her mother, a singer, likes to recall how she’d kick wildly in the womb whenever she’d belt high notes in the church choir. As a toddler, one song in particular, Firestarter, would send her spinning into pure entropy: a “thousand suns” burning through a tiny body. Music wasn’t background, it was ignition. Growing up, she entered music through structure: violin lessons, orchestra, musical theater. She loved the moments when performance dissolved into flow, but the rigid drilling, the perfectionism, the “do it exactly this way or it’s wrong” culture left little room for freedom. A cappella, and later jazz, cracked that world open; an invitation to deconstruct, recombine, and explore, leading her to the path of DJing. Behind the decks, she found the expansiveness she’d been seeking since childhood: unstructured experimentation, intuitive expression, a way of making sound that didn’t punish variation but thrived on it. DJing also reshaped how she inhabits the dance floor. Once a pure “partygoer,” she now sees nightlife as a feedback loop: dancers sustaining the DJ, the DJ sustaining the dancers. She’s learned to listen compassionately, to stay on the floor not out of consumption but solidarity. To honor the human behind the music. That’s why Errancy matters to her. Not as a venue, but as a living community: a home transformed every 3 months with intention and care; food on the table; sound tuned with devotion; organizers supported; dancers held. It’s where she’s felt the dance floor operating as a collective body rather than an anonymous crowd. For her set at Errancy, Truly Unhinged steps in as @yannaalynette has said, “less in her head and more in her heart.” Join us next week as we celebrate Truly Unhinged’s 30th rotation around the sun. 📸 @obhishekdekhchi

Atlanta-raised and Chicago-rooted, DJ Matriarch moves between worlds; Club, Techno, Juke, Jungle. Their sound is Black, Queer, and uncompromising. Each mix rejects the myth that rhythm must be orderly, reclaiming what the European ear once called “chaos” as ancestral organization, as living memory. For Matriarch, DJing Techno or Jungle or Juke, is a spiritual act. They call it flow state, but it’s something deeper: a collective release that pulls everyone in. You can’t be a wallflower here. Either through dancing or just a swing or a head nod the experience is always fully immersive. Since returning to Chicago, they’ve found community in its queer underground; a space defined not by individualism, but by mutual care. “I play for my community, my community supports me, and vice versa” they say, honoring a Chicago tradition of world-building through sound. They carry the sacred lineage of Black queer dance music forward while refusing to let it be co-opted or sanitized. At Errancy, DJ Matriarch invites dancers to leave shame far from the floor. Expect a night that’s raw, transcendent, and rooted in love: a reminder that when Black queer people make music, they make new worlds. 📸 @zacharyrhuff

On December 5, Errancy’s seventh edition returns to turn Chicago’s snow into a warm dancefloor. Dm for info! Truly Unhinged opens, back for her second Errancy to heat the dance floor early with some soulful grooves. Yanna Lynette follows—fresh off a powerful set barely two months ago—carrying an intergenerational Chicago lineage and heart-forward blends. Next, we’re honored to welcome Shaun J. Wright, pumping the room with rhythms rooted in house, ballroom, and beyond. To close, DJ Matriarch pulls toward Baltimore & Chicago club tradition—open-format selections spanning techno, club, and juke. Powered by Void, and our amazing crew: @jontypaul & @911_emergency_hotel (lights + installations), @ellifiona (food), @grinchcard & @kalerub (bar), @carriedst & @ritmolechon (security). Flyer by @sonido.ines (inspired by the 1967 Chicago blizzard)

Born and raised in Pilsen, Mo Mami carries the neighborhood’s soundscape into every set: house, freestyle, and disco from her mother, regional Mexican music and cumbia from her father. Family parties taught her early on that music dissolves tension—“even if the tias were beefing, everyone would still get up and dance cumbia”. That lesson shaped a lifelong belief in music’s power to gather, heal, and transform. Her teenage years brought her into the basements of the far South and West Sides, where juke parties and footwork battles revealed a raw, cathartic freedom. “You never forget your first juke party”—the unity across races, neighborhoods, and styles showed her how Chicago’s underground sustains community outside the gaze of the mainstream. Today her style is global bass, a practice of mapping sound across continents and languages. She thinks of her sets as a globe in motion, progressively guiding dancers through Mexico, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Chicago. Sometimes, people approach her with tears or smiles: “this was my mother’s favorite song.” For her, that recognition is the core of DJing—speaking everyone’s language through rhythm and memory. Against a media landscape that vilifies the foreign, she insists on revealing commonalities—Iranian funk next to cumbia—as an act of connection and resistance. Beyond the decks, Mo Mami organizes Fever Dream, a Pilsen-based party centering queer, femme, and BIPOC DJs. A safe space to explore queerness and create one’s own fabulous, sexy reality, it embodies much of what Errancy aspires to be: intentional, community-driven, and defiantly ours. She also served on the planning committee for Chicago’s city-funded House Music conference, helping shape “Beyond the Beat,” a conversation on love, consent, and accountability on the dancefloor. Tomorrow at Errancy, Mo Mami brings high-energy global rhythms, nostalgia, and the courage to experiment. Her creative intention is simple but profound: “the human essence is weird, so find it.”

This Friday, Errancy Dinner & Dance returns for its sixth edition! DM us for the ticket link. Yanna Lynette opens with an open-format set spanning classic and forward-thinking Chicago house. Our resident TSiBiNKi follows with their signature sound, setting the stage for headliner Mo Mami, who takes the helm with a high-energy global bass set, fusing Latin Rythms, House, and underground club sounds rooted in her Chicago upbringing. spliffany evans closes the night with an otherworldly blend of juke, jungle, and dubstep. We’re powering the room with a top-notch Void sound system and our returning crew: @jontypaul & @911_emergency_hotel (lights + installations), @ellifiona (food), @grinchcard & @kalerub (bar), and @carriedst & @ritmolechon (security). Flyer: @sonido.ines

Yanna carries a tradition that spans generations. Their great-grandmother spun soul, funk, and R&B in her living room, while their grandfather still holds down Chicago house picnics on 98th and Parnell—now in their 10th year, filling two lots with sound and family. Raised in that continuum, Yanna understands music not as entertainment but as inheritance: a spiritual, ancestral practice carried through time. For them, DJing is about heart and soul rather than technical perfection. Lessons from elders echo in every set—“don’t play from your head, play from your heart; this music is gospel.” In Chicago, that spirit is second nature: DJs who find joy in the mix, who let the crowd feel their intention, who remind the world why Europe looks to Chicago with admiration. Their sound affirms a simple truth: house, funk, soul, techno, footwork, and juke are not separate genres, but one collective Black message stretched across tempos and frequencies. At Errancy, they will bring this lineage forward inviting the crowd to move with them in rhythm, spirit, and joy. 📸 @zacharyrhuff

spliffany evans is a Chicago-born DJ whose journey begins in the basement house parties of their cousins, where heavy bass first pulsed through the walls and into their body. Even under the watch of a strict mother, music became both refuge and revelation—an early companion to a queer identity that took shape through R&B, juke, and long commutes from Queens to Brooklyn on the MTA. Rooted in bass, hip hop, and Chicago’s footwork traditions, spliffany evans’s sets carry that formative intimacy into the present. Jungle, with its dub and hip hop lineage, is a recent love—woven seamlessly into footwork patterns, creating a dialogue across Black diasporic sound. For spliffany evans, the subwoofer is not just a machine but a site of memory, comfort, and release. Their practice is improvisational yet intentional: curating psychedelic, transportive sets that push beyond the walls of the house and into collective experience. At Errancy, spliffany evans will draw on their love for bass as both grounding and expansive—an embrace that invites dancers to lose themselves, to feel the low end as oceanic, maternal, and unbounded. 📸 @zacharyrhuff

Raised on the South Side of Chicago, Julian Green weaves memory, rhythm, and deep intentionality through their music. Their relationship to sound began even before birth—moving to the beat of Missy Elliott’s Get Your Freak On from inside their mother’s womb. Raised by a house head and surrounded by familial summertime gatherings, music quickly became a foundation for community. Rooted in the sounds of house, footwork, and juke, their open-format sets reflect the richness of Chicago’s musical lineage. Blending tempos and traditions, Julian stitches house rhythms into 160 BPM footwork and slows juke tracks into deep house grooves, refusing to separate sounds that grew up together. In DIY spaces like Errancy, Julian finds the intentional organization of dance and community that they’ve been searching for in Chicago’s busy nightlife. Here, Julian will craft a night that feels like a hug— embraceable, warm, and restorative. Closing out the evening with carefully selected melodic tracks, they aim to offer an unforgettable space for movement, connection, and joy. 📸 @z.acharyh