www.list.co.uk/clubs Fabio
Clubs PROFILE
DEPARTURE LOUNGE Occupation Edinburgh’s home of ‘heavyweight global sounds’. What exactly are ‘heavyweight global sounds’? Departure Lounge takes in everything from hip hop to funk and jazz to dub with a healthy dose of world music, house beats, Latin, reggae and breaks. It’s hard to really categorise but it all fits a certain groove, a certain atmosphere, a run though a few of their previous guests should give you a better idea as Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Haggis Horns, Bonobo, DJ Vadim, Bass Clef, Kraak & Smaak and many more have graced the stage at DL.
So what’s going on this month? The chaps at Departure Lounge (namely residents Astroboy, Jiminez and Mr Zimbabwe) reach their seventh birthday. Much like the Queen one birthday party just isn’t enough so they have split their celebrations into two. First off on 23 July they keep things Scottish with live guests Captain Slackship’s Mezzanine Allstars and Edinburgh Samba School for a mix of dubby beats and carnival vibes. Returning on 1 August the crew teams up with the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival, for more live action from The Bays. Tell me more about these mysterious Bays They are indeed an unusual proposition: The Bays have never released any music but have become live favourites. Completely free from any restraints a record company would impose, each set is an entirely improvised mix of jazz, funk and dance beats as they live by their motto ‘Performance is the Product’.
Sounds good – any more info? Also joining The Bays will be ‘cosmic beat maker’ Asthmatic Astronaut and the much respected Hidden Orchestra (formerly known as Joe Acheson Quartet) and their mix of loops, jazz and samples. (Henry Northmore) ■ The Departure Lounge Seventh Birthday Part 1, Fri 23 Jul; Part 2, Sun 1 Aug. Both take place at the Caves, Edinburgh.
22 Jul–5 Aug 2010 THE LIST 37
FESTIVAL WICKERMAN East Kirkcarswell Farm, Kirkcudbright, Fri 23 & Sat 24 Jul.
While the likes of The Charlatans, Tony Christie and The Futureheads will be playing across the weekend, the Wickerman Festival has a very strong dance presence with the Axis Sound System Reggae Tent (featuring the likes of Dr Huxtable and Big Toe’s HiFi), while Skiddle once again take things up a notch in the Bass Camp. Rocking out to beats, trance, hardcore and drum & bass with Kutski, Sonny Warton, Jordan Suckley, Utah Jazz and many more keeping the tent moving. However, for many it will be the headline set from Fabio that will get their bpms racing. A DJ since the early days of club culture, he was at the coalface as drum & bass was first shaped from the lumpen rock
that was dance music. ‘We were all house DJs back in ‘88,’ he explains. ‘We speeded up the breaks and people just went crazy. We loved house music but this was edgy, we just found that the energy level went through the roof. This was our own thing, an urban, London take on dance music.’ Starting his career at pirate radio station Phase One, he then moved on to Kiss FM and helped to bring D&B to the masses on Radio 1 alongside frequent DJ partner Grooverider. ‘There weren’t superstar DJs when I was growing up. There was just Jimmy Saville,’ laughs Fabio.
Never one to plan out his set, Fabio likes to keep things spontaneous. ‘I like to play a couple of tracks, see the reaction and take it from there. As a DJ you have to be able to adapt to any situation.’ (Henry Northmore)
Toby Shippey JAZZ/FUNK/LATIN LIZZARD LOUNGE 2010 Picture House, Edinburgh, Fri 30 Jul.
Toby Shippey, the founder of the Lizzard Lounge club night and later Scots fusion group Salsa Celtica, is waxing nostalgic about the good old days. ‘We used to bring bands over from Cuba and New York,’ he tells, ‘and they would say: “This is the best club, nowhere else in Britain has anything like this.”’ Which might all just sound like he’s playing up his part to anyone who wasn’t actually there, but Edinburgh clubbers of a certain age still speak in hushed tones of Café Graffiti’s Lizzard Lounge and what the venue at the bottom of Broughton Street meant to the booming scene of the day. Then, the jazz, funk and Latin sounds of local DJs and musicians like Niki
King, Finley Quaye and LL resident Jo Malik ruled the city. ‘I studied in Glasgow,’ says Shippey, ‘and then lived in Brighton, but nowhere I’d been measured up to Edinburgh in the late 90s [Lizzard Lounge ran from 1996 to the Café’s closure in 1999]. Tell anyone who goes out now and they won’t believe that Edinburgh was better than Glasgow for clubbing, but it was. We had Café Graffiti, The Venue, La Belle Angele and the old Bongo Club, and all these places are gone now.’ Although Shippey believes the night was of its time, and has resisted
calls to revive it over the last decade, the opportunity to celebrate Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival’s anniversary with a one-off show featuring James Brown’s trombonist Fred Wesley, the Rumba Caliente Afro Latin Soul Orchestra, rapper Ty and Malik was too tempting to resist. ‘Funk seems to be a dirty word at the moment,’ he says, ‘but these things go in cycles, and I guarantee you it’ll be on its way back.’ (David Pollock)