Annual Glasgow roots music festival Celtic Connections isn’t one you’d necessarily associate with club music, but they throw packed, spontaneous and often pretty wild after-hours events featuring live music and DJs that might just expand your horizons if you give them a try. As well as the below-mentioned World Beat Bothy event at The Arches, there are also Celtic Connections Festival Club nights at The Art School Friday through Sunday every weekend of the festival. Elsewhere this week, a pair of UK electro luminaries drop by the Sub Club, and a globe-trotting underground techno legend lights up La Cheetah.
The i AM presents: Simian Mobile Disco – Sub Club, Fri Jan 16
Among the biggest names in British electronic – not to mention producers of such A-list artists as Arctic Monkeys and Florence and the Machine – Simian Mobile Disco make a low-key return to the Subby for a special all-night-long DJ set at the invitation of The i AM. Expect heavy duty adventures in analogue aplenty from the duo, AKA James Ford and Jas Shaw, who released their latest album ‘Whorl’ last year, and who tour top clubs the world over year round (they were resident’s at London’s XOYO in the final quarter of 2014) and subsequently always have their fingers pressed firmly on the pulse.
Celtic Connections 2015: World Beat Bothy – The Arches, Fri Jan 16
The Beat Bothy returns to Celtic Connections with more late-night floor-filling sounds fusing folk and world music with heavy dance beats. Playing live will be veteran London-based collective Da Lata – who splice samba, bossa nova and African elements with funk, jazz, psychedelia and dub – alongside Scottish electro-Celtic pioneers Halcyon and Belgium-based Colombian percussion trio La Chiva Gantiva. There’ll also be DJ sets throughout the night from Duncan Ballantyne and Lewis Robinson.
CODE w/ Luis Flores (live) – La Cheetah, Sat Jan 17
Originally hailing from Guadalajara in Mexico, now based in Berlin, Luis Flores has been exploring the dark recesses between techno’s countless molecular sub-genres for the best part of two decades now, building a cult following in the process with releases on labels including Droid, Micro.Fon, Hidden Agenda, Antena and Nopal Beat. His live sets – which are usually largely improvisational and often brutally minimalistic – combine both hardware and software, and range across the sound spectrum from hard to hypnotic. Expect the unexpected.
Words: Malcolm Jack