Reggae's most decorated selector has just been let loose on one of house music's most valuable back catalogues. David Rodigan, the BBC 1Xtra veteran who has spent nearly five decades building his name in sound clash culture, is overseeing House of Roots, a three-part remix project that hands Defected Records classics to producers working in dub, jungle and drum and bass. It is the first time Rodigan's name has been attached to a project inside house music's own canon rather than adjacent to it.
What's actually in House of Roots?
The series opened on September 11, 2026 with a dub remix from drum and bass pioneer Shy FX, reworking Fish Go Deep and Tracey K's 2005 vocal house staple "The Cure & The Cause."
Jungle producer Clipz follows on September 25 with a junglist mix of Soul Central's "Strings Of Life," and dub reggae engineer Prince Fatty closes it out on October 9 with a dub version of The Vision's "Heaven." All three tracks then get collected into a 7-inch vinyl box set, expected on October 23, complete with individual sleeve art and a 16-page booklet.
Why let a reggae selector loose on house's vault?
The link-up traces back to Rodigan's set at Defected Croatia in 2025, where the label's team saw an opportunity in his crate-digging instincts rather than his genre. Defected built its identity on 25-plus years of deep and vocal house records that have already been picked apart by remixers inside the genre; handing three of them to producers from reggae's orbit is a different kind of test, one that leans on rhythm lineage rather than shared scene politics. Dub, jungle and drum and bass all trace back through the same sound-system culture that shaped UK house in the first place, so the pairing is less of a stretch than the press framing suggests, and more of a reminder that those lines were never as hard as the genre tags imply.
What happens after the vinyl drops?
House of Roots is billed as a one-off three-track project rather than an ongoing series, but the format, a heritage house label opening its vault to outside genres under a credible curator, is an easy one to repeat. If the vinyl box set sells the way Defected's other reissue and anniversary products have, expect the label to go looking for its next Rodigan.
