Clubs
ELECTRO POP DOLLSKABEAT Club For Heroes at the Wee Red Bar, Edinburgh, Fri 24 Jul; Huntley & Palmer’s Audio Club at Stereo, Glasgow, Sat 1 Aug
You suspect that Lucy Ross (aka Dollskabeat) might not be one of these musical prodigies who make music look all too easy. ‘I had no idea it would be so bloody hard,’ she says. ‘I had loads of ideas floating around my head and I sang them into my mobile phone under my bed covers so no- one would hear me’. It’s not your typical tale of classically-
trained brilliance from an early age. The Leith-raised Ross’s biggest musical influence was her bass- playing dad, who introduced her to the ‘warmth and soul’ of his 70s vinyl collection. After that she ‘used to doll myself up and get into raves in the early 90s when I was about 12,’ falling in love with the sounds of the 808 and 707 without really knowing why. As an adult, she has lived variously in Edinburgh, London, Japan and also Glasgow, where her debut single ‘Zodiac Rising’ was recently released by Optimo Music.
She names her current influences as ‘anything from Joan Armatrading to Ryuichi Sakamoto to new electronic producers – Martyn and I:Cube are pretty good,’ but never listens to chart pop: ‘it’s died a horrible death and been embalmed with cheap plastic’. Instead, Ross confounds entirely legitimate comparisons of her music to Italo disco and electro by pointing out that people don’t recognise ‘the classical influence to my melodies or the hip hop influence to some of the beat patterns’. But there’s time enough yet, because her own star is only just emerging. (David Pollock)
www.list.co.uk/clubs
Ellen Allien
TECHNO KAPITAL The Caves, Edinburgh, Fri 31 Jul
‘Ever since her mix tapes first found their way to us at the start of the decade, we [the trio of DJs and promoters behind Edinburgh night Kapital], have been strongly influenced by Ellen Allien,’ says the club’s Barry O’Connell. ‘Everything we’ve heard, particularly her live DJ sets, have ranked amongst the finest electronic dance music that we’ve been exposed to.’ That’s high praise, but it’s hardly undeserved, and
also no surprise that O’Connell is as excited about this event as anyone else who craves more appearances by big-name underground DJs on the Edinburgh scene. After building a career as a techno DJ of some note in the early 90s milieu of her native Berlin, including a stint as resident at the legendary Tresor club, Allien
made perhaps her most significant contribution to dance music culture with the formation of her own label BPitch Control a decade ago. Specialising in the same intelligent, minimal cyborg electro which Allien herself now produces, the label has been responsible for key early releases by Modeselektor, Apparat and Kiki among others. A particular treat should be the opportunity to see a
proper techno show in one of the city’s most atmospheric but criminally underused venues. ‘We had been looking for a venue for years until I went to a random one-off event at the Caves,’ says O’Connell, who promotes the night alongside Michael Ford and Brad Charters. ‘I was amazed by how unique it was in a city where we’re rapidly running out of venues. It didn’t take long to convince the boys this was the perfect home for Kapital.’ (David Pollock)
HOUSE SHUR-I-KAN Tronicsole at the Admiral, Glasgow, Sat 25 Jul
Tom Szirtes has very kindly interrupted his music-making time to speak to The List. But what can he be working away on? Another atmospheric down-tempo slow-burner under his DJ and production alias Shur-I-Khan? Perhaps his on/off membership of improvisational live dance outfit The Bays is on again? ‘No,’ he says, ‘I’m writing the soundtrack to an iPhone game right now. I’ve never done it before, so we’ll see how it goes.’
This isn’t an unusual state of affairs for Szirtes, who grew up in the Hertfordshire town of
Hitchin, went to university in Bristol and now lives in London. The producer of a bunch of EPs and two artist albums (Advance and Waypoints, as well as an as-yet-untitled third) for Jimpster’s Freerange label, he used to work as a videogame programmer for companies such as Sega. ‘I was playing piano at the age of six,’ he says, ‘but at the same time, I was one of those
geeky kids who spent a lot of time in front of a Sinclair Spectrum or a Commodore Amiga. Of course, the technologies involved in both later merged, so it’s now not that much of a departure for me to make music on a computer.’ Describing his style as ‘dance music with soul’ (‘I know that sounds a bit crap,’ he qualifies),
Szirtes draws upon the influence of drum & bass, jazz, Jean Michel Jarre and Art of Noise to create a clean, sophisticated sound. Not only that, he even runs more than one label: his co- running of one of these, Dark Energy Recordings, with Glasgow producer Milton Jackson, is what precipitated this very live date. (David Pollock)
38 THE LIST 23 Jul–6 Aug 2009
N E V H T E M E L L E H C M ©
I