Strut proudly presents the first definitive retrospective of one of the most influential labels and producers of Chicago house music, Cajmere and the seminal Cajual Records imprint, celebrating a huge 20 years of hard jacking classics and seminal US garage. It started from a love of early Chicago house and as a hobby, piecing together tracks on a sixty-buck keyboard, a cheap four-track and a cheap drum machine". Curtis A. Jones, chemical engineering student and long-time 80s video games obsessive, then left a Masters course at UC-Berkeley, returned to Chicago and unleashed his first DIY tracks in 1992 on the Underground Goodies EPs for ClubHouse, setting the blueprint for his early raw, cut-up production style. Soon after forming his own label, Cajual (with the CAJ taken from his initials), he unleashed the madcap, bubbling groove Coffee Pot (later re-titled as Percolator), a worldwide club hit. The early years of Cajual confirmed Cajmeres reputation for gritty dancefloor perfection with the infectious, tongue-in-cheek conversation Chit Chat and his first release with vocalist Dajae, who would become a regular collaborator. Their Brighter Days became a definitive calling card, exploding in a host of mixes by Cajmere himself Todd Terry and Masters At Works Louie Vega and reaching no. 2 on the Billboard Hot Dance Music / Club Play chart. Jones would unleash his green-haired electro-punk alter ego, Green Velvet, in 1993 and create the Relief label for this very different side to his work. Meanwhile, Cajual continued its reputation for raw quality with a collaboration with Derrick Carter, Dream States, and further Dajae classics (Get Up Off Me, Day By Day, U Got Me Up). By 1993, Jones had begun to bring the second generation of Detroit techno pioneers into the Cajual fold. Glenn Underground and Gemini both stepped up with deep dancefloor workouts the epic Detroitism, The Wheel and Le Fusion as Cajual continued to set the underground pulse.