- He doesn't seem the paranoid sort, but Marcus Lambkin, AKA DFA's Shit Robot, may be developing a minor complex about Glasgow. The city is as DFA-mad as anywhere I've ever been—and the fabulous cosmic disco to be found on Lambkin's occasional 12-inch communiqués is always enthusiastically lapped up—but he's never played to the sort of crowd you'd expect. Whether at an ailing night in a too-large venue (Blitzkrieg Bop at The Arches in 2006) or a strange midweek slot in a doomed space (The Beat Club the following year), Lambkin's audiences here have tended, through no fault of his own, towards the sparse and hesitant.
This show at the monthly Men and Machines night suffered from similarly reduced numbers, with the early-autumn saturation of clubbing options in Glasgow—nights featuring Alex Smoke and Prins Thomas in venues a stone's throw away were the tip of the iceberg, competition-wise—largely to blame on this occasion. Small crowds can, though, be an occupational hazard for those who put clubs on at Stereo, an excellent upstairs-downstairs bar, restaurant and venue that suffers and gains, in different ways, from being situated down the sort of dank alley previously only of interest to Murder Tour groups. Sympathetic booking rates for promoters mean, though, that most can enjoy putting their night on at one of the friendliest and most aesthetically pleasing spaces in the city without worrying too much about the lack of passing trade. So it is with Men and Machines, which was borne out of a show on Glasgow University's Subcity Radio, and where a family atmosphere usually prevails in spite of the erratic numbers.
These factors lent most of Saturday evening the feel of a not unpleasant, but hardly pulse-troubling, social club, albeit one with an impeccable soundtrack of recent DFA cuts, one or two of Lambkin's own languid gems and lashings of old-school, piano-laden New York disco. The crowd even did its bit, for the last half hour or so at least, by putting aside excitable talk of party scandal and actually getting up to dance, meaning that by the time Lambkin finished with a delicious, unreleased Carl Craig version of Bowie's "Looking for Water," the place felt at least moderately jumping, putting an extra sheen on what could, in less relaxed circumstances, have been something of a wash-out. As I'm sure Marcus Lambkin realises: it's not him, it's us.