Clubs
OUTSIDE THE FESTIVALS
‘WE’RE LOOKING TO THE FUTURE NOT THE PAST’ Hitlist THE BEST DANCEFLOOR ACTION*
✽✽ How’s Your Party? Dubstep, bassline and more from special guests Jackbeats (Cheap Thrills) and Malente (Fool’s Gold, Exploited). Sub Club, Glasgow, Fri 27 Aug. ✽✽ Jackhammer The closing weekend of the Festival is always a smorgasbord of excellent nights, and this double bill of techno, Ben Sims and Phil Kieran, is among the best. Wee Red Bar, Edinburgh, Fri 27 Aug. ✽✽ Sugarbeat and Karnival The Cab offers two parties over the weekend with big breaks from Jackbeats and AC Slater (Sugarbeat) followed by house from Yousef (Karnival). Cabaret Voltaire, Edinburgh, Fri 27 & Sat 28 Aug. ✽✽ Big’n’Bashy Teaming up with Electrikal for a night of dubstep from Hatcha, Swindle and Taz Buckfaster. Bongo Club, Edinburgh, Sat 28 Aug. ✽✽ Tackno ‘Big Top Tackno’ helps to end the festival with joyous abandon. Electric Circus, Edinburgh, Sun 29 Aug. ✽✽ Technofest More techno excellence from guests Depthcharge. The Universal, Glasgow, Sun 29 Aug. ✽✽ Numbers Glasgow’s premier party collective, this time featuring the electronic might of Actress (pictured). Sub Club, Glasgow, Fri 3 Sep. ✽✽ Highlife A new and eclectic bi-monthly night from the guys behind Slabs of the Tabernacle and Huntleys & Palmers Audio Club, this month with local live guest Bamboo Palace. La Cheetah, Glasgow, Sat 4 Sep. ✽✽ Melting Pot Andrew and Simon return after their summer break with another night of high-quality disco, and guest Todd Terje’s coming with them. Admiral Bar Basement, Glasgow, Sat 4 Sep. ✽✽ Naive Following Aeroplane’s recent split, Stephen Fasano, aka The Magician, makes only his second solo appearance anywhere. Stereo, Glasgow, Sat 4 Sep. 26 Aug–9 Sep 2010 THE LIST 77
Count bassy
Henry Northmore catches up with the prolific Hervé (and his many alter egos) as he guests at Fuse’s second birthday
F use have slowly built up their reputation as a serious contender on Edinburgh’s club circuit. Tucked away in the West End of the city at the recently rebranded Lane (formerly Berlin), as the name suggests they have been fusing music with scant regard for genres as long as the bass is heavy, welcoming guests such as Kissy Sell Out, Eskimo Twins and Filthy Dukes, while securing a residency at Ibiza Rocks Hotel alongside Leeds’ Wax:On.
Now as they reach their second birthday they have invited Hervé to help them to celebrate. ‘I want to try and entertain people with strange and exciting club music,’ explains Hervé (aka Joshua Harvey), ‘with a set where you can see you’re catching the audience by surprise, where it suddenly takes a turn, playing different styles of music, not just one genre, because I think that’s really stale. I couldn’t just play house music or dubstep all night, I’d just stop DJing.’ If you don’t recognise the name Hervé, you surely recognise one of his other alter egos, The Count, who, alongside recording partner Sinden, gave us recent shimmering electro hit ‘After Dark’ featuring indie lads Mystery Jets. Their debut album Mega Mega Mega comes out at the end of August. ‘It took us two and a half years to make, and along the way we threw a lot of tracks out, we started evolving into more global music, more Afrobeat stuff with more techno elements.’ However, it doesn’t contain 2008’s massive club hit ‘Beeper’, an incessant slice of bleeping bassy rave featuring Kid Sister. ‘It’s nothing to do with snobbery, we love that tune, but it’s not us anymore. It would be awful to shoehorn it in just because it was
big back then. We’re looking to the future not the past.’
Hervé certainly isn’t keen on standing still. There’s not only his Count pseudonym but also Speaker Junk, Action Man and Voodoo Chilli, as well as a host of other aliases. ‘I think it’s probably one of the stupidest things I’ve ever done really,’ laughs Hervé. ‘Obviously if I unified all the other names I could be more “famous”, for want of a better word, but my focus is on creativity. We all have an ego but my real focus is on making music, so it becomes multiple personalities. It becomes easier to deal with all the different music I make because it’s like six or seven boxes and when you put your head in one you can forget about the others. It makes things easier in my strange brain.’ Alongside his Cheap Thrills and Ghetto Bass compilations, one of the biggest tracks he’s produced of late (under the Hervé moniker) is his collaboration with Fatboy Slim and the stomping mechanised funk of ‘Machines Can Do The Work’. ‘It was very unstructured, just jamming and we came up with a few tracks. It was specifically built for the club, our main priority was getting a real club banger out there.’ He’ll also be using this Edinburgh date to road-test some of his latest tracks. ‘This’ll be my first gig outside London where I’ll play a whole bunch of new stuff, hoping to send people bonkers and climbing the ceilings. If it doesn’t I’ve got a lot more writing to do.’
Hervé guests at Fuse, The Lane, Edinburgh, Fri 3 Sep.