We Worked Out the Best Dance Records to Get High To

If you haven't glanced at a calendar yet, or just generally find keeping track of the date a difficulty, you might not have realised that today is the 20th of April. Which means, apparently, that it's 4/20, even though it's actually 20/4, and because it's 4/20 we all have to get really excited about the fact that for some reason - probably something to do with the malajusted mildew-y wasters who populate Reddit, spewing opinion and Dorito dust everywhere - 4/20 is a THC-laced day of celebration for the world's stoner population, a kind of crusty Christmas for small town lads in HUF socks who spend their pocket money on ten bags of lemon haze and Twiglets.

Weed and dance music don't seem like the most natural of bedfellows. As we all know, weed makes you sleepy, unresponsive, and happy to spend hours sat on a shitty sofa in a shitty lounge watching shitty stand-up clips, eating shitty snacks. Which is why the stoners in your life are more likely to listen to Cannibal Ox than Carl Cox.

Without wanting to come across as the kind of drug-bore you meet in smoking areas the world over, jaw flapping in the breeze, a white membrane of some substance or other clinging to my philtrum, it's obvious that most forms of music we go out explicitly to dance to — or are made with dancing in mind — are suited to drugs that don't immediately make you feel like your brain has been replaced by a rock, and your limbs with timber.

Still, like most of us, dance music is partial to the occasional doobie so, given that we're all baseball cap wearing manchildren who slavishly believe anything and everything American is worth importing, we thought we'd run down a few of our favourite hydroponically grown tunes that make us want to sneak in a spliff past the bouncer and crouch down on the floor for the kind of surreptitious smoke that's never looked inconspicuous ever.

MALA - "COMO COMO (THEO PARRISH REMIX)"

Dubstep's original, Baikal deep incarnation, was about as weedy as club music got. It was deliriously deep, tripped out and cavernous, seemingly designed for spliff-waving at FWD. Mala was one of the scene's pioneers and the man responsible for a slew of records that were heavier than Ric Waller before he stepped up to the treadmill with Harvey Walden on Celebrity Fit Club. This dreamy re-rub of a tune from his Buena Vista Social Dub style Latin American Jaunt, Mala in Cuba, by house motormouth Theo Parrish ticks all the necessary boxes for a stoner essential: it's quite long (you don't have to get up and change it for eight minutes), it's slow (which'll weirdly sort out that annoyingly thudding heartbeat), spacey (get ready for a journey, maaaaan) and, most importantly, pretty pretty. Which is pretty much all you want when you're high. Everything needs to be slow, long, and pretty.

ALEX SMOKE - "DUST"

Alex Smoke is called Alex Smoke and people smoke weed and the song's called "Dust" and the houses of habitual caners are usually pretty dusty because being regular tokers are more likely to have rinsed the overdraft on Dr Pepper than Mr Muscle. Aside from that, "Dust" is the kind of melting, warped, intricate record that sounds really, really great when it accompanies the deep sea exploration videos you've muted on YouTube after falling into bed after that ill-advised third joint.

MODESELEKTOR & NINJAMAN - "WEED WID DA MACKA"

I saw a Modeselektor set in Barcelona once after smoking a joint. I think it was them. Might have been Moderat actually. Remember Moderat? I think they had the album which had the drawing of someone punching themselves in the face on it and I think I bought the deluxe edition of it for reasons I've never really fathomed. Anyway, I don't remember any of whoever's set it was that I saw but that's what weed does to you. You forget everything: how to pay rent, cleaning your teeth, Modeselektor sets. Ban this sick drug now.

MASTERS OF DA HARDCORE - "MARIHUANA GETS ME HIGH"

Ever smoked an unexpectedly potent blunt in the bowels of a sand dune in North Norfolk just as the sun sets after a day spent inhaling burnt burgers and getting horrfically burnt? ver then had a near total breakdown in said dune after said blunt and forgotten who you were, where you were, why you were there and who these fucking weirdos you're with who're toting a crate of Stella and a few balaclavas down to the sea are? No? Put this on after stubbing that single out and get ready to experience total fucking horror. I never want to see the seaside again.

BLAZE - "LOVELEE DAE"

Aaaaand relax. Ok, bit tenuous this one as it's not actually about weed in any way, but still, the group's called Blaze and the song's called "Lovelee Dae" and it's sunny as I write this and it's probably a lovely day to sit outside inhaling plants wrapped in paper in a car park somewhere. Enjoy yourselves, lads and lasses.

Josh Baines is on Twitter