About

Frank Solano and Chris Santiago learned house music the way Chicago kids did, tuned to WBMX and B96 while the first wave of house DJs was inventing the form on air. By the late 90s their education had moved to underground raves and after-hours house nights, where they spent every weekend watching the second wave of Chicago legends work a floor. They met at university in 2000, and a year later they were holding down Friday nights at Zentra, the room that booked the best underground house talent in early-2000s Chicago. It was the first of several residencies that put them alongside the DJs they had grown up studying: Derrick Carter, Mark Farina, Green Velvet and DJ Heather.

For a few years their paths split, and each found success on his own. Solano made his name as a solo producer, releasing across the house underground and sharpening the melodic instincts that shape Local Options today. Santiago formed Santiago & Bushido, which went on to score Beatport #1s and dozens of Beatport Top 10 releases. When the two came back together as Local Options, they brought everything those years had taught them.

The records are deep but driving and built around melody. They come from an era when a Chicago DJ played deep house, tech house and disco in the same set and nobody asked what to call it, so Local Options write for the place where those sounds meet. It is a sound that travels. Local Options have reached the Traxsource Top 10 several times and were named one of Traxsource's Ones to Watch. Marco Carola, Mark Knight and Sam Divine have all played their tunes, and those three DJs rarely share a crate. The catalogue runs from a remix on Defected's Glitterbox and tracks on Toolroom compilations to releases on Nite Grooves, Large Music, Guesthouse Music, Sub_Urban, Moiss Music, No Fuss Records, Peking House and Seven Music, with remix work for Milk & Sugar and Candy Talk.

They have never chased a release schedule, preferring fewer records that still work years later. The next run arrives at the end of 2026 with two new releases on No Fuss Records, and beyond that there is a finished body of new material looking for the right home. Twenty-five years after that first Friday night at Zentra, the job has not changed: read the room, respect the lineage, move it forward.