Reviews & features: Clubs

Crate Digging: Lenny Love

Baby Loves Disco's superstar DJ tells us what gets the toddlers' toes tapping

Baby Loves Disco is certainly one of the more unusual gigs that I do, and it’s actually a bit of a misnomer because it’s really a club for adults – albeit with young children in tow. I can’t exclude The Trammps’ ‘Disco Inferno’ (Atlantic), it’s an…

Destroyaz and Rolando set to take over Substance

The club celebrates its 50th event with an international techno line-up

Adam Richardson, promoter at Substance, explains how they are celebrating their 50th club event: ‘We were very mindful of organising a 50th Substance party which was both special and representative of the club over the past six years. As such, we’re…

Eat, sleep and breathe: Hot Dub Time Machine

Aussie DJ/ VJ Tom Loud shares his tour habits ahead of his Fringe appearance

What time is breakfast? Early! I lost the ability to sleep in when I turned 30! No matter how late I stay up, (often VERY late, my show finishes at 3am) I’ll be having breakfast before 9am. I make up for it by taking disco naps before I perform. Tea…

Crate Digging: Marcel Heese

Tresor resident Marcel Heese shares his favourite tracks with us ahead of his Unseen takeover night

Phase ‘Binary Opposition (Process 1)’ (Token Records) pretty much stands for the typical kind of club techno I love. It’s deep and hypnotic, yet powerful. Great production work and very detailed. I’ve been playing this in every single set for months…

Madrid vintage funk act The Sweet Vandals to play Four Corners

The soul night is joining forces with the Edinburgh Intl Jazz & Blues Fest

‘There’s been an explosion in the number of bands playing the same music we do over the last few years,’ says Simon Hodge, one of the promoters of the Bongo Club’s long-running funk and soul night Four Corners. ‘There are two reasons for that: one is…

Interview - Mike Slott, Eclair Fifi and Machinedrum of LuckyMe

Glasgow DIY label set for Edinburgh Festival clubnight

Mike Slott (producer) I met Dom [Flannigan] who runs LuckyMe in Borders Books. He was sneaking flyers into hip hop magazines. We got chatting, we liked similar music and in Glasgow if you’re into a certain kind of music, you bump into the same people…

Crate-digging: Nick Hollywood - Electro Swing

White Mink Electro Swing Speakeasy club set for 2011 Fringe

Nick Hollywood created the White Mink: Black Cotton compilation album, which gave birth to the White Mink Electro Swing Speakeasy events. Making their Fringe debut, Hollywood lets us know what to expect from his set. Just out on my own label is the…

5 Questions - Xplicit

Xplict are Scotland’s prime purveyors of hard drum & bass and they don’t disappoint with their Festival date as they are joined by Shy FX, who helped to transform early hardcore into the drum & bass we know today with tracks such as ‘Jungle Love’ back…

Soma night makes a rare visit to Edinburgh for the Festival

Soma Records Night DJ duo Slam are rare visitors to the east coast, but the Edge Festival has tempted them across to the festival once again. Headlining a showcase for their seminal record label, Soma, formed back in 1991 and releasing Slam’s own…

LuckyMe decamps to Cabaret Voltaire for the Festival

David Pollock talks to the Glasgow-based record label/art collective

This has been the most important year yet in the evolution of Scottish electronic label LuckyMe, and this third annual Edinburgh Festival event featuring their friends, collaborators and signees should be the perfect showcase for local supporters and…

Taste returns to Edinburgh's reopened Liquid Room

The Liquid Room's Sunday regulars are back

Here are some reasons to attend the 16-year-old Taste club night at the Liquid Room as the club re-opens in the middle of the of the Edinburgh Festivals

Headspin festival date to be its last

DJ Yoda date marks end of 12 years of clubbing

As Headspin comes to an end, DJ/promoter Allan Dunbar talks to Henry Northmore about their final date and why they’ve booked DJ Yoda to play their last night.

Hot Mess takes modern angst theatre into the nightclub

Experimental look at contemporary relationships from hot young playwright

Despite feeling increasing pressure to give in and follow every other hot young thing to London, playwright Ella Hickson doesn’t want to leave Edinburgh behind. A graduate of Edinburgh University, Hickson wrote and directed her breakthrough Fringe play…

Guilty Pleasures: Assembly festival club night aims to please

Two and a half hours of guilt-free pop, every night of the festival

A spanking brand new Assembly venture for this year with DJs, dancers and special guests floating in for two and a half hours of guilty fun each night. Straight-up pop is promised for those not wholly ashamed of their Hall & Oates and Toto…

Two Tribes: Xplicit and Musika

The two big club events bringing the festival to a suitable climax

The closing weekend of the Festival Fringe has become a traditional highlight in Edinburgh’s clubbing calendar. And this year doesn’t disappoint, with dates from Vegas!, Optimo, Tackno, Taste and more across the bank holiday weekend, but it’s two…

Bongo Club Cabaret

Seduction, celebration and imagination

Beginning with American roots folk straight from the Bible Belt (though without the morals), the Bongo Club has created a cabaret of seduction, celebration and imagination. Thoughts that variety is dead are dispelled by ingenious performances from the…

EH1 Festival

Inaugural all-day celebration of dance music culture

Colours and Streetrave have decided to celebrate their 20th anniversary in style, and you’re all invited as they present perhaps the biggest club event Edinburgh has ever seen – the EH1 Festival at the Royal Highland Showground out at Ingliston. ‘It’s a…

RAW

The highs and lows of clubland

Aerial work can often be filled with magic and mystery, as you watch a performer fly fearlessly through the air. That bravado, however, is based on many things — not least the person behind the scenes making it all happen. ‘The aerial technician is so…

The Black Dog and Mr Copy set for Soma Records Night

It has become a bit of a mainstay at the Edge Festival and Glasgow’s premiere label, Soma Records, is back once again for its annual showcase of all that’s great and good in the world of house and techno. This year’s line-up includes seminal UK techno…

Wire

‘Discotronic pop, art punk, twisted folk, electronic love and beyond,’ promises promoter/resident DJ Craig Jamieson at Wire. ‘Scotland’s most eclectic soundclash celebrates the best in innovative and cult music.’ Jamieson will be happily living up to…

Headspin

Always keeping it fresh and funky, the Headspin residents supply a four deck mix of hip hop, funk, electro, house and any other flights of fancy that take their mood keeping the dancefloor rocking at all times. For their festival special they invite…

5 Questions: Gamma Ray Dali

We talk to Gamma Ray Dali who orchestrates the madness that is Confusion is Sex, a multi-sensory clubbing experience featuring live sets from Big Ned and The Leg vs The Pineapple Chunks and far more besides for this Festival special.

We Are . . . Electric

The Midweek club that matters, Gary Mac’s We Are … Electric, celebrates its fourth birthday with a two-part party of electro funk and punked up electronica. First up is German techno and house genius DJ T (pictured) alongside a live electronica from The…

5 Questions - Krishma Bachoo

5 words to describe the Obscene vs Volume experience? Friendly, anything goes, genre-less, bass-fuelled, mayhem. 4 things you love about the DJs/acts on the bill? Everyone is playing for free for Maggie’s Cancer Caring Centre’s & Myeloma UK. MC…

Messin’ Around

One of the London Jazz Café’s longest running nights (12 years and counting) takes a trip north for the Festival. DJ Adrian Gibson will be mixing up ‘the good stuff’ – jazz, funk, Latin and soul – as showcased on over 70 compilation albums he’s produced…