- During the last weekend of March, Red Bull Music Academy came to Glasgow for the first of four consecutive weekends of events in four UK cities. Glasgow's edition took in club nights, lectures, radio broadcasts, workshops and a sound installation in one of the city's most famous art galleries. A slightly giddy spring feeling had hung in the air for a week or two beforehand, so the timing felt right for a buzzy quasi-festival, even if the weather turned out to be a little drab.
The programme kicked off at The Art School on Thursday night. Sui Generis: Artists On To Their Own celebrated artists who perform solo, and its primary attraction was Koreless's dramatic headlining set, which finished with a rapturously received outing for his own "Sun." The evening's only live show was the highlight though, with the spectral, Afrobeat-tinted work of another Scottish producer, Cain, working wonders in the building's downstairs Vic Bar area.
Friday began at the Gallery Of Modern Art with Loops With Numbers. By a distance the most conceptual event of the weekend, Loops was an A/V show that saw intense visuals projected onto a gigantic white sphere to a soundtrack of specially created tracks by Kowton, Adesse Versions, JD Twitch, Luma and more. Many, myself included, thought Loops may have worked better as a walk-in exhibit running constantly over the weekend, but it made for a highly immersive event nonetheless.
Next was Optimo Pequeño Espacio, which saw the DJ duo play to roughly 30 people at a tiny new bar in the city centre. Once everyone got used to the broom-cupboard intimacy, the party grew into one of the weekend's highlights. Optimo were also on the bill a few hours later at a packed-to-the-rafters Berkeley Suite for From Disco To Disco, an event that also featured Dimitri From Paris and Prins Thomas. This was an almost ridiculously exuberant affair, peppered with the likes of Sabrina's "Boys Boys Boys" and Bronski Beat's "Smalltown Boy," as well as Noo's soon-to-be-released belter "Must Be The Music."
On Saturday evening, JD Twitch hosted his new night, So Low, at the out-of-the-way Poetry Club in the city's west end. It wasn't officially part of the RBMA schedule, but Optimo's heavy involvement in the programme made it seem that way. Colin Potter of Nurse With Wound played a spellbinding live drone set, bookended by excellent cold-wave and new-wave selections from Twitch. Later that night, Derrick May headlined Subculture at Sub Club, where the likes of Traumer's "Hoodlum" stood out in a sea of rolling house and techno.
The Sub Hub, a new bar, venue and creative space in a large loft just off Buchanan Street, was the location for RBMA Radio's Live From Glasgow broadcast on Sunday. I caught 45-minute sets from Nightwave, Harri & Domenic and Optimo, with DJs and patrons alike labouring under the weight of the previous days' exertions. A Night With Lucky Me at the Glue Factory finished off a wonderfully varied weekend, with Jacques Greene interspersing choppy house cuts with dark, bassy fare such as Oxia's "Domino." And then, rounding things out in fun-loving fashion, Eclair Fifi put a smile on everyone's face with an airing of Drake's "Know Yourself."