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

In my immediate surrounding there is nothing to see but open water, mud, geese and a petrol light blinking red. Having been told the best way to visit the Highlands is via a motorhome tour, getting stuck in the middle of Loch Lomond five miles from the nearest pub isn’t really honouring that recommendation. Half way through an eight-day road trip across Scotland in an entirely unreliable M Reg caravan, things aren’t entirely working out as I planned. As night quickly draws in, I shout out the window for directions. “What’s that mate? Where’s the Slam Tent?!” comes a yelled reply from a hotel garden drenched in drizzling rain. It’s unexpected, but in one way or another you’ll find the influence of electronic music in Scotland in the most unlikely of places.

In the commuter belts, highland towns and industrial cities cut off from the wider world by sluggish rail services and the near-impossible-to-navigate Scottish terrain, devoted crews of DJs and promoters are creating their own dance music culture; one that is shunning bigger Scottish cities such as Glasgow and Edinburgh in favour of hidden epicentres of hedonism and forward-thinking electronic music.

“I think doing the ‘Slam Tent’ at T In The Park has definitely helped spread the word,” says Stuart McMillan of Glasgow’s Slam, the stalwart Scottish duo who for over 25 years have cultivated a love of techno across Scotland and beyond. “Scottish people like to party too, and that's widespread across the entire country.” In the same way Slam came to personify their city’s love of electronic music through a sheer belief in the cause, a wave of producers and DJs are doing the same elsewhere, albeit in more humble environments.

Born and bred in Stirling, a town of just over 40,000 that's a 50-minute train ride from Edinburgh, Sam Gellaitry’s fantastically warped, kaleidoscopic electronica on the outset sounds a world away from the market town where he grew up and currently lives. “You know Highland Spring? We get that straight from the tap here so there may be something in the water,” says Gellaitry, with an appropriate hint of sarcasm.

I meet him in Stirling and as we drive through the countryside surrounding his hometown, Gellaitry talks of his dual infatuations with happy hardcore and Atlanta trap, two seemingly unconnected genres that have influenced his blistering ‘Escapism’ EP series. “Some wouldn’t expect my type of music to come from here, but when you’re from here it makes perfect sense,” says Gellaitry, as he looks out across a landscape of rolling green hills and electricity pylons. “Nothing has the same feel as Scotland does and that really affects people. You can use the uniqueness of Scotland to your advantage, and I really run with that in my music.”

Gellaitry’s neck-snapping productions have found an audience on US turf, where legions of enthusiastic Americans have racked up millions of Soundcloud plays while the artist was still in his teens. “American fans are more vocal about my music whereas Scottish fans would just say ‘aye, it’s alright,’” he says of his transatlantic fanbase. Now 20 years old and signed to XL Recordings, this global acclaim has culminated in several headline US tours, a recent performance at Coachella and a DJ Shadow support slot in the bag. In light of his success Stirling has become a necessary equilibrium where “everything just feels normal” for Gellaitry, giving him some form of respite away from the surreal hysteria that becomes everyday life for a producer who has Will.I.Am in his contact list.

“Most people who grow up in Stirling don’t stay here, or those who do stay here don’t enjoy it because it’s so small, but I find the opposite. If I’m doing shows in Europe or America coming home to where everyone knows each other is great. The location, the scenery, the people, it’s all quite grounding for me.”

“Scotland has a grit to it in the industrial areas like Dundee or Aberdeen, but you’re also never too far from the sea and there’s an amazing contrast in that,” cites Neil McDonald, otherwise known as Firecracker Recordings artist Lord Of The Isles. Now based in Edinburgh, McDonald was born in the picturesque surroundings of Fife on the east coast before moving to Dundee as a youngster, and now regularly takes himself back to nature to find new inspiration.

“It’s got such a long coastline that you’re never too far from the sea, and if you go up to the highlands it almost feels like you’re on the end of an island,” he says, describing how the expansive, ever-changing landscapes of Scotland became embodied in his 2016 LP ‘In Waves’. “When it gets dark at 3pm in the winter you’re in the studio, and in summer when it’s light you’re making the most of your time outside. There’s a melancholy aspect to that, and I think being from the northern hemisphere has something to do with it. It’s where you’re from, it’s in your heart really. Well, it’s either that or the whiskey…”

On the north east coast of Scotland lies Aberdeen, the Granite City named so after the towering grey-stone that dominates the skyline of this tough area. Aberdeen is a city of contrast, one where expansive coastlines lie just beyond the city’s industrial heritage – it’s shipping port. Dance music here shares a similar juxtaposition. On one side there are the commercial nights that rule most cities but on the other, there are names like Ida aiming to change that. As a resident DJ at Tunnels – the Sub Club of Aberdeen, if you will – under the Let It Bleed banner, Ida set up her own bi-monthly ode to the TB-303 in Acid Flash in 2015. For the Finland-born Ida, Acid Flash looks towards classic Chicago house and Drexciya-era Detroit techno to offer an antithesis to the tech-house events that rule some parts of Aberdeen.

As one of the few female DJs in the city, Ida wants to change what is still a male-dominated pool of talent. “When I started there were no female DJs, and as far as I’m aware I’m still the only one,” she says. “I’ve been trying to get more women involved here in Aberdeen. That’s a big ethos behind Acid Flash, it’s about sticking together and building something new.” Emphasising under-the-radar talent and a cheap thrills party for Aberdeen’s skint Art School students, welcomed Acid Flash bookings such as Glasgow locals Elisha and Rebecca Vasmant have injected some much needed diversity into the port city.

Travelling four hours up the road and through the Cairngorms, the largest national park in the UK and the type of blissful setting you will only discover after battling the elements in the middle of nowhere, I arrived in Inverness. Making my way to the outskirts I find myself overlooking the crashing tide of Loch Ness at The Dores Inn, a picture-perfect spot owned by an ex-raver that on April Fool’s Day caters to a more diverse crowd than usual. Tourists order their token haggis, neeps and tatties at the bar inside while out, couples snap new profile pictures amid the backdrop of the UK’s most revered monster-dwelling landmark. Aside from it being a day of rare sunshine in the Scottish highlands this would be just another ordinary Saturday if not for the 400 Innis & Gunn-fuelled Inverness locals flooding the otherwise silent opening of Loch Ness with chants of ‘HERE WAE, HERE WAE, HERE WAE FUCKING GO…’

The occasion, and the reason why faux pro cyclists and perplexed old dears alike are staring in our direction with bemusement, is OutDores, a homegrown all-dayer that's welcomed Feel My Bicep’s Hammer for its second year celebrations. “We haven’t got investors, we don’t have a dedicated club and you can see that we haven’t got big money,” says Mark MacKenzie, resident and promoter of OutDores alongside long-time drinking pals Ally Ridgers and Cisco Rodrigues. “But that’s what it’s all about. Even though it’s out of necessity rather than choice, it’s about building something... And hopefully getting some enjoyment out of it.”

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