Disco

Interview: Nicky Siano set for date at Glasgow's Melting Pot

Nightclub pioneer on the heady days of disco in 70s New York

After a summer recess, Melting Pot returns in September with a first time visit from legendary New York disco pioneer, Nicky Siano. Co-founder, co-owner and resident DJ at The Gallery, the iconic 70s nightspot which later inspired the likes of Studio 54…

Clubbers decktionary - Disco Edits or Re-edits

A guide to the myriad genres of clubbing, from Trouble's DJ Hobbes

(Disco) Edits or Re-edits, proper noun, various styles and tempos: classic (disco) tracks with a contemporary feel, their best qualities enhanced by modern production flair. While a remix often strips instrumental parts out of an original track…

Summer Festivals 2012: Nile Rodgers - interview

The disco legend talks to us ahead of his set at RockNess with Chic

Disco and pop icon Nile Rodgers is recalling the first time his band Chic played Atlantic Records their biggest hit. ‘We emptied the boardroom,’ he says of multi-million selling 70s wig-out, ‘Le Freak’. ‘We started it – “One, two, awwww Freak Out!” And…

Wild Beasts - Smother

Hayden Thorpe and co deliver sleazily brilliant third album

(Domino) Having covered back alley frottaging and the pleasures of ‘girls from Whitby’ on their 2009 release Two Dancers, the four-piece from Kendal have peeled back the net curtains even further for Smother, casting a pale light on the kinks of…

The Rizla Riverboat Shuffle on the Waverley Steamer

Optimo and Melting Pot DJs play second set on board landmark Glasgow landmark boat

David Pollock climbs aboard the Waverley Steamer as Melting Pot and Optimo set sail on another Rizla Riverboat Shuffle It wasn’t meant to be more than a one-off party in a unique location, but the DJs from Glasgow’s Optimo and Melting Pot nights had…

Gays in Space promises LGBT-friendly clubbing with a cosmic theme

DJ Space Cadette talks us through the disco night's ethos

‘What’s in a name?’ your man Shakespeare once said. Well, a lot apparently, if you are Gays in Space, one of Glasgow’s newest gay nights. ‘People’s initial reaction is often a bit confused, thinking the name sounds really stupid,’ admits organiser Hazel…

French producer Vitalic takes live band on road for UK tour

Latest album Rave Age fuses disco with rock

In the near two decades since he started making and playing music, Pascal Arbez has managed to surf the waves of taste without being trapped in the hole of typecasting to any particular scene or genre. Discovered by Michael Amato, aka The Hacker, and…

Exposure: Glasgow act Golden Teacher take their live dance music to club nights

Bells From the Deep End EP out on Optimo Music

Another winner has emerged from the Optimo Music stables, with the sleazy Dinosaur L-isms of Glasgow’s Golden Teacher. One of the greatest things to have hit the city’s dancefloors in memory, the ad hoc assembly are a collaboration between members of…

Interview - François Kevorkian on beginnings, inspirations and love of music

We talk to the influential New York DJ as before he plays Melting Pot's twelfth birthday

To celebrate their twelfth Birthday, Melting Pot have invited François Kevorkian to play their 350-capacity home, The Admiral. More familiar with playing much larger venues, this will be a rare occasion to experience the legendary New York DJ in such…

Crate Digging: Mighty Mouse of Disco Circus

The eclectic DJ gives us a peek in his record bag

I didn’t plan to pick any of my own music, but I’m way too proud of this not to. Du Tonc ‘Darkness’ (White Label) is the first single from a new band I’m doing with Matt Van Schie (from Australian band Van She). It was quite a challenge because…

Crate Digging: Billy Woods of Supermax

The disco-loving DJ lets us in on a few of his favourite tracks

Is Dinosaur L’s ‘Go Bang’ (Francois K Mix) (Sleeping Bag) the greatest modern dance record ever made? It wasn’t one you were likely to hear out very often before the advent of the push-button DJ, if only because the house generation suffered from a…

Tony Humphries, Prins Thomas and Driza Bone to appear at Scottish Soulful Weekender 2

Organiser Yogi Haughton picks out his line-up highlights

‘We lost a lot of money,’ is one of the first things Yogi Haughton says about last year’s debut edition of his Scottish Soulful Weekender, a live-in party in a Dumfries hotel for fans of his particular axis of musical taste – broadly, Northern Soul and…

Friends - Manifest!

An insidiously hooky album that's sometimes brilliant, sometimes bloomin’ annoying

There are songs you can’t get out of your head, and then there are songs you wish you could get out of your head. In the latter category: ‘Hey Baby’ by DJ Otzi. In the former: Friends’ ‘Friend Crush’ and ‘I’m His Girl’. The Brooklyn band’s well-blogged…

Crate Digging: Melting Pot's Simon Cordiner and Andrew Pirie

A selection of tunes ahead of the disco night's eleventh birthday

Fonda Rae ‘Living In Ecstasy’ (Mood II Swing mix) (Wave Music) has to be one of our favourite ever records. It’s now a classic, a timeless house track featuring a fabulous vocalist from the disco era in Fonda Rae and the superb house producer Mood II…

New York's The Rapture set for UK tour

After a tumultuous period, the band are back on track with new album In the Grace of Your Love

‘It’s been a real up and down five years,’ says The Rapture’s drummer Vito Roccoforte on the line from his home in New York City. That’s something of an understatement. In the half-decade since their second full-length album Pieces of the People We…

Flesh - Sick Electricity

Disco-pop debut masterminded by Stephen Lironi and Douglas MacIntyre, featuring Sharon Martin

(Creeping Bent) The brainchild of producer Stephen Lironi and label boss Douglas MacIntyre, Flesh is based around the ice-cool voice of Sharon Martin and aspires to an electro-squelch, dancefloor melange of Chic-styled gloss and the avant-disco diva…

Holy Ghost! - Holy Ghost

New York disco revivalists fail to make any significant advances with the genre

(DFA) In March this year NY duo Holy Ghost supported Australian electropop heroes Cut Copy at the Arches. This debut album also comes in the wake of the excellent recent Cut Copy record, and does little to advance on the Aussies’ good practices.

Clubbers' decktionary: Italo

A guide to the myriad genres of clubbing

Italo (disco), adj. style of disco music commonly attributed to records of Italian origin, c.1978-1985. Essentially electronic disco made with synthesisers and drum machines, Italo has a very white, rigid, European feel compared to its much looser…

Den Haan - Gods From Outer Space

Glasgow duo deliver debut to match electrifyingly sleazy live sets

(Courier of Death) It’s taken them a while to get down to it, but Glasgow duo Den Haan (Matthew Aldworth, aka Crème de Menthe, and Andy Gardiner) have finally arrived with the debut album their electrifyingly sleazy live sets have promised. Beginning…

Bad Mouthin’ presents the best in Disco

Glasgow club's residents are Al Kent and Rahaan

Residents: Million Dollar Disco’s own Al Kent and Rahaan. Guests: ‘Rahaan’s our resident DJ, but he’s actually based in Chicago,’ says Kent (real name Ewan Kelly). ‘Naturally he won’t be able to make it every month, but when this happens we’ll…

Hercules and Love Affair - Blue Songs

(Moshi Moshi/Cooperative) Within the first few seconds of this sophomore album, Andy Butler’s New York-based disco-house collective have achieved Objective A: to lose the one-hit wonder tag after the deservedly monumental success of ‘Blind’ in 2008.

Vintage Violence - new Edinburgh club from the makers of FAST

Glam Rock with a twist

‘It’s pretty rock’n’roll,’ says promoter Chris FAST, discussing the spirit of his semi-regular club night at Edinburgh College of Art’s Wee Red Bar. That should come as no surprise – Chris’ old club FAST was among the very best nights in Edinburgh for a…

R-P-Z at Stereo

Stereo, Glasgow, Sat 28 Aug.

No sooner has Glasgow’s long-running Art School Thursday nighter R-P-Z closed than it’s back in a brand new monthly incarnation for a new venue. ‘The main reason it’s moved is that my DJing partner Bonjour Boi [aka Tom Straughan] has moved to Stockholm…

The Final Night of Club R-P-Z

‘R-P-Z has been the best thing I have ever created,’ says the night’s founder, promoter and resident Hushpuppy, ‘and the most fun I have ever had at a club night, with all the best friends I have ever met. Far more fun that any one person could ever…

Slo-Mo and La Di Da bring disco, house and funk to Glasgow

‘After being stuck in Edinburgh for 12 years,’ says club promoter and blogger Chef De Party (not his real name, you might have guessed), ‘moving through to Glasgow is like finding the promised land.’ Which is a bit harsh on the capital, but then Chef is…