You can hear it at the top of Slater St, a low pulse bouncing off the once-grimy warehouses and garages, getting louder as you make your way down the road, until the pulse is no longer just that anymore; it's a thump. A sharp, incessant thump that stops for a second before it starts again. On. Off. On. Off. And at the heart of this noise is a shop, a shop selling space age disco sounds, feeding the habits of a generation of head nodders and disco dancers, some of whom are lined up at the counter, heads facing the racks of records, not speaking, listening, always listening...

By 1989, the acid house explosion had given birth to a market of record hungry kids. The shops of London and Manchester were weighed down with Chicago Trax, Italo House and New York's groovy garage. And in Liverpool? In Liverpool there was close to nothing, so when three students decided that an hour's journey along the M62 to Eastern Bloc wasn't as much fun as it used to be, 3-Beat Records was born and dance music in the city had a home. They moved into clubs too, bringing the likes of Weatherall, Harvey and Slam to G-Love a night they started with scouse legend, John Kelly. It was voted Best Club by Mixmag in 1991.

Sixteen years on, 3 Beat has just been given a £30,000 makeover (as they say on Richard & Judy), a homage to the impact dance music has had on this city. And there's always a buzz around the shop, people looking for that tune, for that remix, you can see how much they want it.. this is what music does to people. Then there's 3,000 others. They don't live in Liverpool, but the reputation of the shop is such that they buy their tunes by mail. And who shops here? How about Sasha, John Digweed, Danny Howells, John Kelly, Yousef, Paul Oakenfold, Graeme Park, Dave Seaman, Groove Armada's Andy Cato, Timo Maas ... the list goes on and on and on. At 3-Beat they must be doing something very right.