Over the last year, along with some friends, I’ve been putting on a monthly night of live electronic music in my home town of Aberdeen, Scotland. Initially we were testing the water with a couple of events to see who was out there locally creating electronic music and in a way that could be performed live. It turned out that there were loads of people creating electronic and experimental music and doing live performances in all sorts of ways. The night has now gone from an informal gig night to a club environment where we follow up with DJs who also get the chance to experiment and keep the party going. The hope was to connect everyone and create a bit of a scene with the focal point of an actual regular gig on a relevant line up, to promote that music and in many cases give people their first chance to play live and I think that this is starting to happen.
Are there any other Elektronauts putting on similar events or jam nights? It would be nice to connect with anyone doing this. I would love to hear about your experiences and swap ideas for making events as interesting and exciting for the audience as possible. We’ve started including VJs and I have just bought a Gopro so we can mix in some live projection of what is happening from the performer’s perspective.
Are there any folks on here that live in the UK that are interested in visiting us up in Aberdeen to do some live performances? I would throw that invitation out to any location in the world but at the moment we are constrained by our budget. I’ve had the pleasure of putting on some bigger acts from outside the UK and it can get pretty expensive. If you were on holiday in Scotland, happen to have your machines with you and fancy a gig I’m sure we could accommodate you though!
The night I put on is called Binary School and here are some links to info about it should you want to check it out further:
Nice to see someone pro actively getting this kind of stuff out of home studios & into clubs/venues!
Several of us ran an Elektron bash a few months ago with the aim of testing the water re future events in Yorkshire. There were some very talented people from these very pages there, putting on a fully fledged Electronic night was discussed & seems like the next step.
I’m sure some of those involved would be interested in your night. Shame Dataline isn’t still in Edinbugh
I think this is great what your doing keep it up. I’m planning on live sets with my Elektrons and other hardware later this year so I’ll keep up to date with your site.
Your 250 miles from me but it’d be good to visit at some point if I get spare time later on in 2015.
Good luck though
Rob
I’ve been organizing and playing monthly live electronica nights at a small venue here in Zürich for almost two years now: z.l.u.t. (Zürich live underground techno).
The dogmata are:
-as little djing as possible. I avoid booking djs at all, if i can fill the night with live perfos.
Every edition has a special hardware focus, next time it will be volcas, but we’ve had an elektron black machine night, homemade midi controllers, monotribe, monomachine, etc.
This means i don’t mind laptops on stage, but they should not be the center of attention…
focus on pushy, dancy grooves but open to experimental/noise/electroacoustics as well.
no facebook, no physical flyers, just an email newsletter - venue cap is 120, less if the room is filled with three hardware setups…
I have no clue where we’re going with this, but it is good fun : )
Thanks for the positive messages! I would be keen to get involved in an event in Yorkshire, my girlfriend is from there and I’ve got family down that neck of the wood too so we come down regularly!
I am sure I could round up a couple of folk who would be up for joining the party!
Sounds right up my street. I like the idea of having specific hardware focus however I think we’d struggle here in Aberdeen to get enough people who own/use the same set up. Do you ever do any live recordings of the night? Would love to hear some of that!
Well, it’s not always strictly gear-themed, but i ask the artists what they intend to show up with, then i pick what i think is their sexiest piece of gear and use that as a visual for the newsletter, etc.
We manage to record about every third show or so… : )
Not disciplined enough in that aspect…
here’s some videos i found, all taken at z.l.u.t.
Kid Schurke (on monotribe, this was a special case, because Kid Schurke used only a monotribe, nothing else)
St. Plomb (on ableton + guitar player + percussionist)
F.E.M. Ensemble (5 guys, too much gear to list! from octatrack to original ms20, etc. – btw., this was our second night, in may 2013)
and some audio:
Monochord (on all three black elektron machines)
there’s more, but i don’t want to spam…
we haven’t set up a recording archive (although we planned to, at first), and we leave it up to our guests if they want to post their recordings.
Great idea! I’ve been wanting to do something like that in my city (Miami, FL)
Anyone on this forum from the Miami area please contact me, would love to set up a monthly night of live electronics + DJs!!
Sounds right up my street. I like the idea of having specific hardware focus however I think we’d struggle here in Aberdeen to get enough people who own/use the same set up. Do you ever do any live recordings of the night? Would love to hear some of that![/quote]
i’ll add our recording from the black machine night as well:
big thanks goes out to MichalHo, really fun to play out and doing a big jam at the end of the night with all machines together
We’ve started booking some bigger names for this year, thankfully they are based in Scotland (or visiting at the time) which makes it semi-affordable however, if we wanted to book a bigger name based somewhere else in Europe for a one off gig then the cost goes up exponentially.
I was wondering if you guys in Yorkshire fancied joining forces along with any other group for that matter, to book some interesting acts that you’ve always wanted to see doing amazing live electronic performances. We have a sort of cooperative thing going on here where we spread the costs between a few of us, if we were to add a couple more well organised gigs with other coops to the mix it then becomes a) much easier to negotiate a good price and b) no one gets too exposed financially.
Just listening to your soundcloud guga. How about taking your machines over and playing your Retroflex tracks? Really cool sound!
Just confirmed Neil Landstrumm for a live set in May and working on getting Alex Smoke for later in the year. Very excited about both of these! The rest of the year will mostly be unsigned acts. Anyone who fancies a trip to Scotland give me a shout!
I am in West Yorkshire. I bought an Analog Rytm a couple of months ago. I would be interested in meeting up with like-minded people.
However, it must be 15 years since I stepped foot into a nightclub and I tend to be more interested in soundtracks.
But I do have plenty of spare time as I have few commitments.
I will subscibe to this topic to see what progresses. You could use Meetup.com to arrange a meetup as it does allow you to keep meetings private and you can moderate new members.
Retroflex is mainly a collection of old tracks which aren’t ready to be played, it would need a bit of work to get them together in a liveset without a laptop and i wouldn’t really like to use it anymore, i’m trying to use only hardware and i’ve started to work on some new tracks but far from having something playable
but apart from kidding, i would really like to come and pay a visit…first, i need some 