What is Love Injection, and why does a fanzine matter?
In a culture that now discovers music through an algorithm, Love Injection has spent ten years insisting on the opposite: a printed fanzine, handed out on a dancefloor, made by people who are actually on it. Barbie Bertisch and Paul Raffaele started it in 2015 in New York, and it grew the way scene institutions do, sideways. The zine became a radio show, then a DJ partnership, then a production duo, then a record label, all of it documenting the city's dancefloor as a living thing rather than a feed.
Where does the name come from?
From exactly where you would want it to. Bertisch and Raffaele landed on the name while dancing to the New York classic 'Love Injection' by Trussel at The Loft, David Mancuso's legendary invitation-only party and the spiritual root of the city's disco-into-house lineage. That origin is the whole ethos in one image: a name born on the floor, at the party that taught New York what a party could be.
The best dance-music institutions are not apps. They are people with a record bag and something to say.
What's on the compilation, and why now?
Ten years in, Love Injection has pressed its first compilation, 'A Declaration of Universal Love,' out on BBE Music, the London catalogue label that has spent decades doing this kind of careful, dancefloor-literate archival work. It is a genre-crossing set, open-eared by design, stitching new material together with tracks previously unreleased on vinyl, and the digital edition carries a continuous mix. The title is not decoration. 'Universal love' is the Loft's old creed, the idea that the floor is for everyone, and pressing it onto wax in 2026 is a quiet argument for what New York nightlife is supposed to be.
