Plymouth’s Steve Bell is a soulful and deep house lifer who has spent more than three decades turning side rooms into the main event. From Pacha Ibiza to Home Sydney, his long, groove-locked sets are the stuff of after-party legend. Resident for DancersHip, his monthly show is a regular No.1 on the Mixcloud charts.

Some DJs chase the main room. Steve Bell makes the side room the place to be. Behind the decks since 1991, the Plymouth selector has built his name on marathon sets, often up to eight hours, that roll through soulful, deep and vocal house with zero gimmicks. Just records, a proper sound system and a crowd that loses all track of time.

His education came in a Covent Garden basement. In the early 2000s Steve held down residencies every Tuesday and Friday at The Gardening Club, the old Rock Garden venue where DJ Harvey’s Moist parties had already made history. He played there week in, week out, right up until the club shut its doors and the site was turned into Apple’s flagship store.

Back home, he built something of his own. Through the noughties Steve owned and was resident at the Candy Store in Plymouth, “one of the greatest clubs in the country”, according to Mixmag. Brandon Block was such a fan that the club gets a mention in his autobiography. At the same time Steve was running online record store Needle to the Groove, shipping limited and upfront promos, fresh off the press from New York, Paris, Berlin and London, to DJs and diggers everywhere.

The passport stamps followed: Pacha Ibiza, Ministry of Sound, ADE in Amsterdam, Café Mambo and Home in Sydney, with dates from Miami and New York to Dubai. Along the way he has shared the booth with Roger Sanchez, Masters at Work, Todd Terry, Barbara Tucker, Sam Divine and Grant Nelson.

Today Steve is resident DJ for DancersHip, the Plymouth house music brand that has brought the likes of Todd Terry, Danny Rampling and Café Mambo to the South West since 2014, and co-founder of Kings & Queens and Aura. His monthly DancersHip show has topped Mixcloud’s Global Soulful House, Global House and UK Deep House charts since 2020. The side room, it turns out, has gone global.