Club Previews

Enter Tron

If you’re not familiar with Tron, the 1982 movie about a hacker who gets forced to participate in gladiator-style digital death games after getting sucked into a mad, neon computer world, then perhaps none of this will make any sense to you. But you don’t have to know the key plot points of Disney’s cult classic and its 2010 sequel to enjoy I AM’s Enter Tron, which takes over SWG3 tomorrow night. All you need to know is that local promoter duo The i AM have used the film as the inspiration for this massive party. There is, fortunately, no prior reading required.

Usually tasked with making the Sub Club dance on a Tuesday night, DJs Ross Anderson and Matthew Craig (aka Beta and Kappa) and their hugely skilled production team will transform SWG3’s new Galvaniser’s Yard into a fluorescent blue netherworld. Previous outings have Tronned up the Subbie, the Art School and the SWG3 warehouse, but this ten-metre-high space is the biggest they’ve yet tackled. “We've upped the ante and taken on our biggest challenge yet, and we required an epic venue to match the ambitions,” said the duo ahead of tomorrow’s enormous show. “[The Yard] has the grand proportions and feel to make our wildest Tron dreams reality.”

The following night at the Finnieston warehouse, the cyber theme is ditched for Run the World: Beyoncé, Friends and Throwbacks. With DJs Homealone and Dee spinning ‘90s and noughties hip-hop and R&B all night long, it promises to be altogether less oppressively digital, and more like a night in Belo 15 years ago. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. Von Dutch caps are not just encouraged but a complete necessity.

I AM – Enter Tron, tomorrow, SWG3, 10pm – 2am, £15

Run the World, Saturday, SWG3, 1pm – 2am, £8

Blawan

After its first outing in March, Animal Farm’s ambitious Blackout project returns to Maryhill’s Glue Factory for a twelve-hour techno marathon in the pitch black. “Ravers should be prepared to shed the shackles of their everyday existence and plunge into the void,” said the Glaswegian techno duo. A series of one-off visual installations heightens the sensory aspect of the day, while Berlin-based Blawan headlines, raining down his gritty “terror techno” on the masochists who make it to the end. Less of a techno festival and more of an art project, this is one that’s not for the faint-hearted but it promises to be one of the most interesting shows seen this year.

Blackout #2 with Blawan, tomorrow, The Glue Factory, 3pm – 3am, £25

Derrick May

A twenty-one year old interview with the Detroit techno originator Derrick May recently resurfaced and did the rounds on social media. In it, May – one of the three early producers credited with creating the genre – talks with obvious passion about where techno music came from.

“A machine has no love nor any feeling,” he says, discussing his hometown’s ingrained association with the motor manufacturing plants that made it one of the US’s great urban centres. “And sometimes the people that work for these machines end up having no feeling nor love. Because they work relentless hours, putting in total commitment to something that is giving nothing back.”

“We took these same ideas of machinery, and the sound of the synthesiser subconsciously came from the idea of industry, of mechanics, of electronics. We created things that we considered to be our environment – the machine music: electronic Detroit techno.”

If you missed the chance to see May at La Cheetah in December, be advised: this is a chance that doesn’t come around too often, so get down to Subculture, queue up for as long as you have to, and see one of the world’s most influential musicians working his magic right in front of you.

Before that, it’s Numbers taking over the Subbie tomorrow night with Avalon Emerson, a house and techno DJ from the desert of Arizona who has been quietly building up steam with a series of well-received sets in Berlin’s hippest clubs. A techie who grew up tinkering with computers and later worked as a coder in San Francisco, Emerson’s sets combine old-school, soulful exuberance with the futurism of modern dance music: she is a fascinating talent. With Edinburgh’s Lord of the Isles in support, this is one you probably don’t want to miss.

Avalon Emerson, tomorrow, Sub Club, 11pm – 3am, £12

Derrick May, Saturday, Sub Club, 11pm – 3am, £15

I-F

In January 2014, the radio station Intergalactic FM, based in the Hague and run by the hugely popular underground electronica DJ I-F, ran into tax troubles. It owed Hector the Inspector’s Dutch equivalent over €5000, and facing being shut down, it appealed to its global network of fans for help. The money was raised in 36 hours and the station continues to pump out a 24/7 stream of italo, electro, disco and ambient sounds to this day.

I-F – or Ferenc van der Sluijs, to give him his Sunday name – runs the station like he’s manning the aux cable at a house party, filling the airwaves with whatever takes his fancy. He’ll be in La Cheetah’s miniscule basement tomorrow night, with local techno bods Missing Persons Club in support.

I-F, tomorrow, La Cheetah, 11pm – 3am, £12