High times in the Highlands: Exploring the outer reaches of Scotland's music scene

The setting is nothing short of astounding. Surreal even, given that few other world-renowned British treasures become the home for goggle-eyed ravers. Hearing Hunee’s ‘Rare Happiness’ or Martin Solveig’s joyous rework of Salif Keita’s ‘Madan’ as the sun dips over the highlands would be akin to an Ibizan skyline if the moment weren’t intermittently dampened by flashes of sideways rain. With a Denis Sulta-headlined summer edition in the works for later in the year and with few dedicated venues catering to anything other than karaoke bangers, the OutDores all-dayer has quickly become a vital addition to a place where options remain limited for dance music fans. “At a certain point there wasn’t that much choice in nightlife or variety up here, so from my perspective that’s what inspired us,” says Andrea Mackintosh, who alongside her partner Johnny Wilson runs the Inverness record label, mix series and club night Hypnotic Groove. “We had to build something on our own doorstep, something affordable that urges people to try something new,” adds Johnny. “That’s what we’re trying to do, at least.”

For Inverness producer and DJ John Clark, who goes under Debukas for his techno alias, this DIY approach to partying lead him to adopt a similar style with the birth of local label 2Sox. Looking towards the Motor City for its musical ethos, 2Sox emerged not from the crashing of machinery that we associate with Detroit, but from the relative silence of Inverness. “We’re blessed living here. We have the Highlands on our doorstep and an endless amount of good air to keep the brain fresh and provide inspiration,” says Clark. “We’re blessed with a small city centre in a way where you’re only a short walk away from that other venue, that shop that sells Buckfast, and that afterparty. It helps fuel an infectious enthusiasm amongst the Inverness electronic underground.”

In that, a microclimate of dedicated promoters and DJs evolved with a shared mantra of ‘build it and they will come’. While the 1000-capacity Ironworks welcomes those DJs popular enough to fill its walls week in, week out, the Tooth & Claw – a near pitch black attic box room that Hypnotic Groove calls home – is essentially the only ready-made small venue in the city that allows any form of independent creativity to prosper. On a a sidenote, it was within this darkened sweatbox on OutDores eve where I was first introduced to the self-coined sound of ‘Highland hip hop’ through Jackal Trades and the zoot suited Spring Break, a genre that is equally baffling as it is weirdly engrossing.

Elsewhere, carpeted boozers usually reserved for football matches and male strip shows are fitted with soundsystems and turned into improvised, no-frills attached hubs of alternative nightlife. The Revenge, Marquis Hawkes and Glasgow favourites Harri & Domenic have all performed in these makeshift spaces that for the past decade have been made possible by the likes of MacKenzie and Co. “It sounds terrible but we don’t have any other choice than to do it like this,” says MacKenzie. “We’re still learning, and we’re out of our depth in a way but it would be so disappointing if Inverness didn’t have any form of club culture. My job as a promoter I guess is to increase the amount of people who are interested in what we do here. We need to do that here in order to survive as a scene.”

“You will find a pool of talent in most cities, but we have something very special in ours. You see a lot of the same faces about but never tire of them,” adds Clark. Call it the air they breath, the water they drink or the ease of access to tonic wine, in these hard-to-reach places real scenes emerge that are just as important to the community they serve as whatever ‘next big thing’ comes out of Glasgow or Edinburgh. With a parting gift of shortbread given to me by MacKenzie’s mum, I return below the border, and even after spending eight days in a van no bigger than an ‘affordable’ London home I leave thinking that I’ve only just scratched the surface.

Jack Needham is a freelance journalist. Follow him on Twitter