Clubs
INTRODUCING . . . Scratcha DVA
The best new venues in town. This month:
FLAT 0/1 Residents: Darrell and Dom on Wednesday, Rory Hamilton and the Feel My Bicep team on Thursday, Tom, Anton and Ewan at Friday’s Only Fools and House, Korben Dallas and Nushta Droganova (aka Thunder Disco Club) at Saturday’s Power Tools, and Duncan Harvey and Jack Isosceles with Button Up on Sunday. ‘It’s mostly people I know through the Art School,’ says music programmer Claire Harrison. ‘I used to be the events programmer there.’
Guests: ‘We’d like to have them, definitely,’ says Harrison, ‘but I think what we’ll do is build up slowly and get our reputation as a good bar together, then see where we go from there.’ Music policy: ‘There’s a lot of disco, that’s the common thread between them,’ says Harrison. Otherwise, expect fun 80s hip hop, funk and soul on Wednesdays, house with a heavy hint of Italo and cosmic disco on Thursday, Friday and Saturday and, perhaps most intriguingly, what the press blurb describes as ‘a mix of sleazy R&B, 50s and 60s pop, jump jive, Jamaican vibes and exotica from a bygone age’ on Sunday.
What they say: ‘The owner of the Lucky 7 Canteen next door got a hold of the lease for the place,’ says Harrison, ‘and decided to reopen it as a bar and club space to complement the restaurant. It’s a free drinker with a 3am licence, which I don’t think there are many of in the centre of Glasgow. Not many you’d want to go to, anyway.’ What we say: Cheap and cheerful student-focused establishment it may be, but the fun flat theme and a superior line- up of DJs playing music that steps far outside the norm gets us excited. (David Pollock) ■ Weekly Wed–Sun at Flat 0/1, Glasgow, see listings for details.
44 THE LIST 9–23 Sep 2010
GRIME/BASSLINE CLOAK X DAGGER The Caves, Edinburgh, Fri 17 Sep.
‘People always say Edinburgh crowds are behind the times, but they’re really not,’ says Cloak X Dagger’s co- promoter Ema Johnson. ‘They’re really up for it and they’re interested in good music. You know, everyone has the internet now anyway, it’s teaching people to be open minded and to give new music a try even if you don’t know exactly what you’re going to hear.’ That’s just how Johnson and her partner Nikechi Oruh, aka DJ and sometime BBC Radio Scotland presenter Profisee, are hoping people will react to their brand new, hopefully tri-monthly night. Formerly the promoters of the capital’s Volume! night, Johnson says the pair have been influenced by the fact that at the time, they saw no other clubs in the city which would stray beyond clearly defined genre
boundaries. So this debut night for Cloak X Dagger (Johnson pronounces it ‘Cloak ex Dagger’) has been blessed with a wide-ranging and high-quality guest line-up, topped off by Scratcha DVA, aka Hyperdub recording artist and London grime and bassline upstart Leon Smart. ‘Of course we’d love to get a big name who’ll sell out
the event right away,’ says Johnson, ‘but it’s more important that we get someone we respect. We’ve been listening to Scratcha for years and his name is on so many grime productions we like, so we’d really love to see him perform ourselves. We don’t know what people might expect, but he’s eclectic and he covers a broad range of genres.’ Also appearing will be LuckyMe heads The Blessings with a live AV set, Edinburgh rapper Simba and Joe Acheson’s Hidden Orchestra, the latter being a collaborator in the planned label wing of Cloak X Dagger. (David Pollock)
HOUSE/TECHNO HOTBOX Universal, Glasgow, Fri 17 Sep.
‘Hotbox started completely by accident,’ says the night’s main promoter and DJ Dan Wilson. ‘I’d heard there was a decent-sized club [Pivo Pivo] looking to get some nights going in Glasgow on good terms. I got quite excited about the idea of putting something on at last, but when I went to speak to them I realised they were only really interested in getting big guests in. But they had a date available, so I stayed up all weekend emailing every agent I could think of, and just by pure chance I managed to book Paco Osuna.’
Wilson still names that opening night as the best so far in Hotbox’s short history, although further dates over the last year in the Universal and the Admiral have played host to guests such as Ryan Crosson, another favourite. While he’s running these larger nights with international guests on a roughly bi-monthly schedule, he also has a monthly pre-club residency called Hotbox: Four to the Floor, which features local guest DJs, and has just moved to new venue Gambetta from Black Sparrow.
This first birthday party looks set to give Osuna a run for his money, though, as Wilson has finally managed to book Mothership and Get Physical recording duo Italoboyz. ‘I’ve been trying to get them for every single big party we’ve done in the last year,’ he says excitedly. ‘I’m a massive fan of their production and their DJing, the music they play has so much energy but they don’t seem to take themselves too seriously either. As far as artists who define the Hotbox sound go, I think they hit the nail on the head.’ (David Pollock)
Italoboyz