What makes a good dance music documentary?

Case in point: 808 acknowledges that the “distinct beats” of Planet Rock “echoed throughout nightclubs and on the streets, inspiring the development of new musical genres”, but even with Arthur Baker’s involvement, Dunn somehow left out the serendipitous episode when Baker hired a guy with a drum machine to come to the ‘Planet Rock’ session, a guy who just happened to have an 808, thus inadvertently helping to spawn electro, freestyle, Miami bass, house, techno, funk carioca, ghetto-tech and so on.

Finally, a great dance music documentary should have a pithy conclusion. No spoilers, but Hyper and Free Party reflect on the legacy and influence of their respective subjects, and both feature emotional and satisfying endings. A conclusion doesn’t have to be too analytical, but just enough to summarise and justify the past hour or so.

In the final stretch of The Art Of The DJ, Lawler reflects on the best feeling as a DJ: “It’s when you get to a certain point in your set, and you just feel it in the room,” he expounds. “You just feel it. You can’t smell it, you can’t see it, you can’t touch it, you just feel it.” After hours of screening dance music docs, and listening back through interviews, this writer doesn’t have a cast-iron tangible conclusion, but a very enthusiastic Trinder sums up the whole process succinctly: “The music drives it,” he insists. “You’ve got the right synch and archive, and in just a couple of hours you go: ‘That’s what it should be.’”