July 2010 (Week 2) Clubbing Listings: Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and Dundee

Edinburgh

Club: JakN
Venue: GRV
Date: 10th July

Three is the magic number for techno and house club JakN, when they feature S3konZ on three decks over three hours for a princely three pounds. Support comes from Ryan Turner and FuK-NuT with more bar groove DJs to be announced.

10.30pm-3am, £4 / £3 before 12am


Club: Headspin
Venue: Bongo Club
Date: 10th July

It's the second last regular Headspin night before their swansong with DJ Yoda next month (don't worry, there will be special one-off events in the future), so here's a chance to grab an intimate dance with the resident DJs Allan Dunbar, Steve Austin, Dava and Bongo Dave. Visuals from Foundlight.

11pm-3am, £5

Club: Frequency
Venue: The Street
Date: 11th July

Frequency moves to the The Street basement for a four hour pre-club warm-up of dirty, fidgity, and bassy house rubbing shoulders with techno drunk on Detroit and acid. Kris Meja (Fixate Records), Tony Nicol (Fuse) and Shaun Johnston rock the foundations.

9pm-1am, £0

Glasgow 

Featured Club of the Week: Wrong Island
Venue: Nice 'n' Sleazy
Date: 10th July

Wrong Island celebrate resident Teamy's birthday this month with plenty helpings of techno, disco, electro, dubstep and more with resident Dirty Larry.

Lo-Quality spoke to Teamy and chatted new ventures, new tunes and self-indulgence.

So, it's your 30th birthday! What is lined up for Wrong Island celebration-wise? "Shhhhhh! Don't tell everyone! Wrong Island is always a fun and drunken affair so I imagine it'll be much the same this month. I'm going to pack a bag of records later tonight and I'm thinking I'll pack things that I associate with my friends or vice versa. It's probably a bit self-indulgent but if you can't be self-indugent on your birthday, when can you be? It's not like I'm known for restraint at the best of times."

What tracks will feature on the night - any new material you've recently got your hands on and will play out for the first time? "Yeah, I recently started working with my friend Aleks on some music of our own and so I will be playing the final version of our remix of Hot Chip's 'Alley Cats' on Saturday and maybe some other stuff. I got sent some nice promos this month which I'll most likely play out: something from the new Den Haan EP on Supersoul, a new Ramadanman cut and other stuff. Mostly though, I'll be sticking to stuff people will recognise. It's a party after all."

What's happening for Wrong Island in the year ahead? "We're DJing at the Electric Frog Carnival in August which I am very excited about as Liquid Liquid are playing. The Hot Chip remix we did has a very obvious tribute to them at the end. It's also our third birthday in September. We should get planning a special party for that.

"We have so much fun doing the party at Nice & Sleazy, so that will definitely be staying on the calender. We'd like to bring some guests to the city but it's not easy financially. I can't help but feel that smaller affairs are starting to become to way people are headed, whether that's because people are skint or because of a general malaise towards big, soulless clubs (or maybe clubs in general, I don't know.) Sometimes guests are a let down as they've been so hyped up that they can't live up to people's expectations. I'm not exactly old school but I still like nights that have residents only or the occasional guest when it's a special night. You get a much more consistent night-out that way. It's a lot harder in some ways though as you don't get anything to grab people's attention. It's worth it in the long run though."

Just how Dirty will Dirty Larry be for this special birthday event? "I heard he hasn't washed in over a month in preparation. If that isn't Wrong, then I don't know what is. Haha!"

11pm-3am, £3 / Free before 11.30pm

Extra: Check out resident Teamy's mix to promote his new night 'ayeTunes'! "It's a busy weekend for me; I've just started a weekly pub shindig at MacSorley's and the de facto first one is this Friday (9th July). I'm going to try to make the Friday pub thing something a bit different from what we do at Wrong Island. I don't really think club music should be heard in pubs. Certainly not a full night of it anyway. It sort of pulls away from the essence of what pubs are about for me, namely drinking and talking with friends. So this will be more the sorts of things that I'd listen to in the house or maybe after hours."


Club: Subculture
Venue: Sub Club
Date: 10th July

It's all very secretive this week, with a 'super secret' guest hitting the decks with resident Domenic. Suspicions point to a T in the Park DJ; Carl Cox, Plastikman, Sven Vath, Ivan Smagghe, Dubfire... we can but dream... until Saturday night when all is revealed!

11pm-3am, £10

Aberdeen

Club: Everything Else Sucks
Venue: Origin
Date: 10th July

Grab a cheap and dirty music fix from Everything Else Sucks and their residents' night, hosted by Djamba, Eezma, and Krazzy Martin for the finer things in life - electro, house and techno!

11pm-3am, £5

Extra: Check out the EES's Courtyard Party at Enigma on 31st July to warm up for their special guest August slot!

Have you got the Urge?

Urge Mode is a new Scottish net-label, assembled as part of the "single unifying outlet" Black Lantern Music; artists from all walks of life and different scenes have the opportunity to release their music - think of a mall for goods, divided into different stores. Indeed browsing round the Black Lantern site is like rifling the rails of dance, and the remit is so broad that head of sub-label Urge Mode, Morphamish is not sure if there is one at all - "there's room for any interesting music."

The website is a three channel collaboration, and he explains that each channel can be considered as different points on the same map; Neverzone, Weaponizer and Urge Mode "fulfill overlapping functions within Black Lantern Music." Neverzone looks after the experimental hip-hop and electronic side of things; Weaponizer holds the trip-hop and art-rock slant, and Urge Mode keeps a keen eye on the dancefloor. "Again it does overlap a fair bit - we don't want to be majorly strict with ourselves. Weaponizer puts out some dubstep and Neverzone some electronica, but it's always in keeping with its identity. It's just nice to have faith in each other's choices, and not entirely needing to confer about decisions regarding what to release, while still collaborating with each other taking the label as a whole forward," says Morphamish.


Three channels are up and running (Urge Mode the most recent of these), outputting 18 releases to date and enabling the team to "get a diverse output that still hangs together as a label." Urge Mode itself was "born out of a love of all bass music, and not feeling the need to stick to a style; to draw from anywhere and everywhere, as long as it's compelling."

To date the label has had three releases, described by Morphamish as "hard-edged and dark", a style Urge Mode dearly loves, but insists that another side will be shown over the next few EPs, sporting melodic, deep and warm tracks based around the experimental dubstep, breakbeat and techno scenes. Pencil in these forthcoming beats in your diaries now, and note the names of Drokkr, Shatterfreak, Tactus, Boondock and Supasub, the latter of which is Morphamish's own collaboration with Club Volume! resident Paranoise. "Overall there will be mellowness, grooviness and outright mentalism in equal measure - many diverse, weird and wonderful releases, plus some special super deluxe guerilla events", he tells Lo-Quality.


How do Urge Mode select these artists? "Natural selection - if they can survive seven death-defying tasks to bring me an exquisitely flavoured delicacy from the very edge of the world - providing it sounds good we'll put it out!"

One thing you will immediately notice about the site is a lack of pound signs or 'add to cart' labels: indeed the music is free download, and it's difficult to see where the money-making element comes into it. "The ethos is just to put out great music without compromise, to as many people as possible," he explains, "It's all free download. These days unless you are pretty big you are only going to make money from from live shows anyway, so why not give people the music, we want it to be heard." And with that, Lo-Quality is astonished at how easy and uncomplicated it almost seems; in the battle for distribution rights and peer-to-peer clashes here is a division of labels who will let you access music for free, on the reasoning that it if you dig it you'll probably make the effort to see the artist live. As a portion of illegal downloaders will agree, downloading is similar to Fopp Record Shop's 'Suck it and See' policy - why spend money on a track you'll detest, when you can make a decision prior to purchase and spend your money in the right places; like on a gig you actually want to see, than a CD you may end up using as an indoor frisbee.

So what urges will we feel when we hear the new Urge Mode releases? "Whatever feels natural at the time, you'll know when you feel it. Most often it's to frolic naked, grinning, skipping and shouting for joy into the great beyond for a bright and beautiful tomorrow/tonight."

Grab live Urge Mode action when Morphamish and Texture perform at the Wickerman festival's poetry stage this month.



Urge Mode Artists and Releases

• The Crooked One A.K.A. Blackmass Plastics (Rag and Bone, Combat) - 'The Spinal Conflict EP'
• Drokkr (Stupid Fly, Crossroads)
• Paranoise (Volume, Nerve, Apparition)
• Stick 430 (Irridium, Cube) - 'Don't Forget The Mixer'
• Tactus (Jungledub, Abaga records)
• Leith Weapon A.K.A. Operator (Scandinavia, Mighty Robot)
• Morphamish+Texture (previously Double Helix) (Audiodacity, Labrat) - 'The Urge Mode EP'
• Boondock A.K.A. The Coldharbour Crackhead (Confusion)
• Shatterfreak (Subversus/Stomp) - 'A Stitch In Sine'
• More TBA