Crazy by Matty Innocent and the Teesside Club Culture Behind It, Explained
A Middlesbrough DJ, Producer and Lecturer Builds Deep House at Club Length for the Floor
Crazy runs for six minutes and 55 seconds, which tells you who it was made for. Matty Innocent released the deep house single Crazy on Guilty Pleasures on 11 April 2022. Its length belongs to the DJ booth rather than the radio edit.
Matty Innocent’s Crazy is in the playlist below, alongside other house and tech house picks from this desk, and his artist profile tracks the rest of his coverage. The track came to ElectronicMusic.News through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news sites. Press play and let it run its full length, then read on for the Teesside scene behind it.
Matty Innocent Builds Crazy at Club Length for DJs Who Need Room to Mix In and Out
That is no accident. Innocent has spent close to 30 years in underground dance music, most of them on Teesside. So Crazy is the work of someone who has spent decades watching floors respond to records in real time.
British house music has long been made by the people who play it out. A DJ who produces knows what a track needs before it reaches a system. It needs room to mix in and out, and a groove that holds steady while the next record is cued.
Length is the first clue. A track that runs close to seven minutes usually leaves space for long transitions. As a result, two records can overlap without a clash. Radio edits cut that space away. Club versions keep it, because the floor never hears a track on its own.
Crazy sits in that tradition. It combines deep house with elements of bigger-room, mainstream dance music. Meanwhile, Innocent’s own roots are in underground house, tech house and techno, the frame he works inside. Since its release, the track has been picked up by the music sites Aliens Love Earth and INFOMUSIC. So has the European Indie Music Network.
Close to Thirty Years of Teesside Club Nights, Rooms and Studios Sit Behind the Track
Innocent has lived in Middlesbrough all his life. By 2023 he had been a touring DJ for 25 years. He had also run music events in the town for just as long. His career covers club residencies, radio broadcasting, event promotion and gigs in Ibiza.
He also took the engineering side seriously. He graduated from Teesside University with a first-class degree in music technology, then added postgraduate teaching qualifications. Today he lectures in Music Technology at university level and works as a recording engineer.
That combination shaped what he did next. In April 2023, Middlesbrough had just lost two venues, Base Camp and Westgarth Social Club. NARC reported the closures at the time. Innocent responded by opening his own room. Rhythms Music Bar opened at 15 Baker Street on 28 April 2023. Its launch night ended in DJ sets, including one from Innocent himself.
The plan went beyond a bar, though. NARC described a custom-built studio on the second floor, with a vocal booth and a live room. It also listed a practice space and a teaching facility for recording, mixing, mastering, DJing and production. Later, Teesside Live reported in August 2023 that the next steps were artist management and a record label. He is also the driving force behind Distinction Studios and is involved in The Rhythms Project. Both initiatives support emerging artists in the North East.
His own catalogue sits inside that bigger picture. Fever Pitch came out in June 2021 on MojoHeadz Records, a year before Crazy. More recently, In Da Bass Bin appeared on Rushin Records’ We Are Rushin, Vol. 1 compilation in March 2026.
Crazy by Matty Innocent Sits Between The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers and the House DJs He Supported
Two influences come straight from Innocent’s own account of his sound. The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers both turned sound design into the main event. They built tracks around textures and treatments as much as melody. That interest in sound design and experimentation carries into his production, even on a smoother deep house groove.
Three more names come from the line-ups he has played on. Over the years he has supported James Zabiela, Darren Emerson and X-Press 2.
Darren Emerson spent the 1990s in Underworld before building a long career as a tech house DJ. That path from band to booth matches the tech house thread in Innocent’s own background. X-Press 2, the English house act, reached number two in the UK in 2002 with Lazy, featuring David Byrne. The hit showed that club-built house can cross over without losing its groove. Similarly, James Zabiela made his name with technical, effects-heavy sets. That kind of mixing depends on tracks with clean, usable sections.
These are working connections rather than claims of influence on Crazy itself. However, they place the track where it belongs: in the same booths, on the same systems, for the same floors.
Where to Hear Crazy and Follow Matty Innocent From Middlesbrough
ElectronicMusic.News’s curator team: “Crazy is a DJ’s track in the plainest sense. It runs nearly seven minutes and comes from someone who has spent decades deciding what holds a floor. It works best played inside a set rather than skipped to on a phone.”
For DJs and listeners who like deep house built for long transitions, Crazy is a sound place to start. Play it loud, and play it in context.
Hear Crazy on Spotify and YouTube, then follow Matty Innocent on Spotify, Instagram, Facebook and X.
About The Author
