“Sometimes Mo’s brother tells me, ‘You’re more a brother to Mo than I am.’ So I think that’s nice, yeah?” Originally inspired by EBM and Belgian New Beat, early Glimmers sets took on the distinct eclecticism of true record obsessives, and the result has been that over the years, huge swathes of new wave, acid house, psychedelic jazz and especially disco has mysteriously disappeared from Belgian record shops.

So best to ask the experts. Where are the best vinyl hunting grounds? “If we’re at home in Ghent, we go to Music Man,” says Mo. “It’s been there for over twenty five years. It’s a distribution company as well. Most of our record collection is built up from that store. Whenever we’re in London, we try to shop there too. Secondhand stores too. Tokyo is amazing as well. In one particular area, go down, there’s a shop, go, up there’s another one. They’re everywhere.” So we take it you’re vinyl purists then? “No, we just buy vinyl and we record all the vinyl onto CDs,” says David. “Just to save our backs.”

Even their name has a cheeky music obsessive quality about it. They were originally known as The Glimmer Twins, a la Mick and Keith, who unfortunately know a juicy lawsuit when they see one, and so the duo hastily shortened their name to the Glimmers, keeping future petty violations to the arcane world of amassing bootlegs, rare reissues and re-edits.

Their sound has been captured on mix CDs such as ‘DJ Kicks’ on !K7, ‘Side Tracks’ on jazz imprint Blue Note and ‘Schizophrenia!’ on Eskimo, the record company the duo founded and named after the former Eskimo underwear factory that they used to spin at. (No, it wasn' underwear for Eskimos. It was underwear for Belgians. But is the underwear any good? “It’s very solid, proper, classic underwear,” says David. “Not too trendy.”) Eskimo are a big label now, releasing the likes of Radio Slave, Ivan Smagghe and Lindstrom, but The Glimmers aren't as involved as they used to be. “Now they just do their thing and we advise them sometimes,” says David. “We started our own new label, Diskimo. It’s just for our productions. Now we’re in total control over whatever we release.”

The next release for The Glimmers is ‘FabricLive 31’ out next month. How does it compare to ‘DJ Kicks’? What can we expect? “Well, it has a different feel. That was important,” says David. “Every compilation that we do should have a different feel to the others. I think it represents quite well how we play when we DJ at Fabric. Every time we play there we have a very open-minded crowd that is ready to party so you better make the party happen. They come in and they start jumping. That’s how it should be everywhere.”

Is that not how it is in Belgium? “No, people come in late. At first they’re all standing and looking at each other – who is going to start first? In Belgium it takes a bit more time,” says David. “That’s because clubs don’t have closing hours so people have a lot of time to just stand there. In the UK it’s different. There’s a certain time that it closes and you always finish with a full room.” So which do you prefer? Surely a true record nerd would want to keep spinning as long as possible? “I prefer London because you always end up at the peaktime, with the crowd chanting “More, more, more!” That doesn’t happen in Belgium. They’re like “Let’s leave, leave, leave” and at the end you’re left there with thirty people.”

We didn’t have to point the RA gun to get the goods this week: point a microphone at Mo and David and ask them to pick out ten records, and they bubble over with enthusiasm. Out of the many thousands in their collections this is the ten they picked. First five from Mo, then five from David.

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Tangoterje – Diamonds Dub

Paul Simon – Diamonds Dub (Tangoterje Edit) [Supreme]

Mo: The first one is a disco edit of the Paul Simon track ‘Diamonds on the Sole of Her Shoes’ by Todd Terje. I’ve always liked the original, and Terje just made a very nice spaced out dub version of it. We played it Saturday near the end of the night and it’s the perfect track to end up the night. It’s very atmospheric and very musical. My favourite Paul Simon album would be a soundtrack he made with ‘One Trick Pony’ on it – that’s my favourite Paul Simon track. I know his music from Simon & Garfunkel when I was small. My mum used to have those records. But the ‘Graceland’ era, I remember one of the first clubs where we played was like a guy called Mike Anthony, and he did a DJ contest in his club to search for new residents. We did it and won it, so that was our first residency. That was a time when the clubs had their own record collections. So we learned a lot from this guy’s records. I remember one of the girls who was working behind the bar, ‘Graceland’ was her favourite. Yeah, the Terje remix, I bought it last week. If we’d meet Terje a bit earlier, we could have got it, but if I see a record in the store, I just buy it. I wanted it directly. I don’t want to mail “Come on, send me this.” I just buy it. Support your artists!

Antena – Camino Del Sol [Permanent Vacation]

Mo: This is a repressing of an old album from ’82 of a French band. It’s a track that I had for on tape for a long time on a mix from an old cosmic DJ called DJ Loda from Italy. Then suddenly I heard another tape by Harvey, and so I decided to chase down the repressed album. ‘Camino Del Sol’ is a great atmospheric track. I don’t want to say ‘Balearic’ but it’s a classic. It’s good for warming up or to close the night off. Whenever you feel like, okay, now I might get away with it, then you play it. There’s a French girl singing on top and it’s very sensual. It has a lot of bird noises in it and it’s very sunshiny. In the lyrics she’s singing about how they’re somewhere in the South of France, you can see the scenery around you and it’s great. I’ve been there, I have a few friends there and I’ve been there a few times on holiday. It’s a nice area, I must say. By the hand of God.　[listen]

Phoreski – Phoreskinz Vol. 1 [Bare Fist]

Mo: This is kind of a bootleggy thing. There’s not that much info on it. But it’s a very dirty disco kind of groove. We love them, all those dirty grooves. It’s the first track that I ever saw on this label. I just bought it last week and I think last we did three DJ sessions and I played it three times. Did I mention it’s dirty?　[listen]

DJ Almost – Beat Heavy

DJ Almost - Beat Heavy [D-Classics]

Mo: The next one is another disco-y bootleg. No much info on this one either but it’s an even dirtier disco groove than the Bare Fist one. This is the kind of disco sound we like. It’s really raw and throaty and dark.

Troy Pierce – The Day After Yesterday

Troy Pierce - The Day After Yesterday [Spaceships & Pings]

Mo: Something more electronic. It’s a vocal track. I picked it up and I liked it. I like the slow groove of it for playing in a warmup, or for radio use or late night. A great sound. A bit more in the minimal thing but still with very adventurous production. We really like all kinds of music so we always try to take the best bits from all styles. Like minimal, we don’t have that much, but I’ll listen to it and if I really like it, I pick it up. We buy the ones that stand out. The other ones I’m not interested in! It’s a different kind of groove but definitely a groove. I even see similarities with some minimal to the old disco style that we like: stripped down, a groove that goes on endlessly, just goes on and on. With minimal, it’s also just a very small thing that keeps on repeating and repeating. But if we take a track from the minimal genre, it has to be warm. I can’t stand it when it gets too cold. For me, atmosphere and vibe is about heat and warmth. So no matter what track we select in what style of music, it has to have a certain warmth. And a good bass.

Liquid Liquid – Optimo [99 Records]

David: Liquid Liquid. You know the band? They’re from New York, early eighties. I think they were a very big influence for what LCD Soundsystem is doing now. It’s very bass and drums, a very live feel, but then it’s also dance music. We love everything that Liquid Liquid do. Their records are very rare. It’s so good when you find them in the shops. They get reissued now and then but the original pressings are quite rare. We have most of the originals. Some we paid a lot of money for! We like almost every song they’ve done but the one I have chosen is Optimo. It’s a track on an EP which has like four tracks. All four of them are great but Optimo is really one of the biggest ones I think. There is even a club is Glasgow called after that name. It’s great too. We’re playing there on Sunday I think. I first got this record in the early days, like in ‘87/’88 when we started DJing we first heard that track. And one of those tracks on the EP, the bassline is used by Grandmaster Flash as well for ‘White Lines’. So we knew that track as well in those days. We played it out a lot and we still play it out if we can nowadays. Over all those years we’re still not tired of it. So that means it’s a good record. They were on a label in New York called 99 Records and they had several different bands as well in that period, like ESG, who have just released a new album. But Liquid Liquid is not together anymore.

Kaos – Cerebral Tremolo [Rong Music]

David: This a German guy who did some stuff on !K7 as well. This is a twelve-inch he did with one of the guys from Liquid Liquid – Sal Principato. It’s a very nice track. The percussion stuff and vocal elements from Sal Principato, you hear it in there. It’s like a ten minutes of dance music kind of thing, a bit like – a bit more disco, but you can compare it with the LCD kind of thing. We got it on CD more than a year ago and pushed the guys from Eskimo Records about it. “Bring it out. It’s a great single.” But they didn’t go for it. And now it’s signed on Kitsune Records! Disappointing for Eskimo.

Phantom Slasher – Gruble

Phantom Slasher – Eat Them Jeans – Gruble [Noid Recordings]

David: This if from a double album of re-edits by Phantom Slasher. It’s an official album, but if you listen to it, you hear really disco tunes which they’ve re-edited more to the standards of today. It’s just great. Noid already did a lot of 12”s like this, Harvey was involved, The Idjut Boys were involved, all these nu-disco/old disco kind of people. It’s got an amazing cover as well. We’ve been big fans of that label for ten years now. There are eight tracks on the album. The one that I like most is ‘Eat Them Jeans’. There’s another track on there called ‘Staying Noid’, which is ‘Staying Alive’ by the Bee Gees that they rip off. They’ve just given a new title to it. If you listen to it, you hear original tracks and so it’s not written by them. It’s quite bootleggy.

Kaos – Cerebral Tremolo

Black Devil Disco Club – 28 After [Lo Recordings]

David: It’s a band that originally formed in the seventies I think. It’s like Italian disco kind of thing. There was one record that was very popular on the Internet that you could buy that was bootlegged and reissued all the time, and the original guys thought like “Oh, we’re hip now. Let’s make a new album!” They’ve just made this new EP album kind of thing, a six-track album. They were recently in Belgium like two weeks ago. I didn’t meet them, but a good friend of ours, he went out for dinner with one of the band and then he told us a little bit about him. He’s already sixty years old. It’s great to see sixty years olds still making music. Me? If I make it to sixty, why not?

Das Etwas – So Deep [Urban Myth]

David: This is a very new one. It’s a German name but it’s not a German band at all. It’s just two DJs, DJ D from London and Pete Z, doing an EP together. Pete Z was involved in the Nuphonic stuff like Block 16, and he also did keyboards with Harvey. It’s a very synthesizer disco kind of thing, but then very techy. You can play it out easy for more people than just an intimate party. But it’s just two weeks old. I’ve heard it three times and I’m getting more and more into it. So I think it’s a great track. We’ve played it a couple of times in our DJ set. Once they didn’t react that much. I thought that people would react much more, and then in another club it went down well so it depends on the crowd you have. For us, if a record works more than four or five times in a row, you keep on playing it, then sometimes it becomes very big. This is one of the new ones that we immediately tried out on the dancefloor. Sometimes you buy new records and it takes four or five months before you start playing them. Sometimes we’re very late with records, which is not a bad thing, because I don’t mind when they’re are made or when they are big. I don’t care.

The Glimmers 'FabricLive 31' will be released in Europe on December 4 and in North America on January 23, 2007.