Pick of the clubs

PULSE & KARNIVAL – GREEN VELVETThere are very few Underground DJs who can still command a huge fan base which crosses genre and style. House-heads, techno lovers and indie kids share the same love for Curtis Alan Jones aka Green Velvet. It’s impossible to match Green Velvet’s spectacular show; championing an alternative musical style and aesthetic well before Will.I.AM, the green Mohocked cyber-punk looked different.

He looked like a super hero from a comic book and like any comic book hero, he had to fill a certain criteria to be classified as such – firstly a humble, mundane daytime job must hide his alter ego and Curtis had the perfect one; he was a Chemical engineer at Berkley University.

At night, like Spiderman, or Batman he would practice. Armed with a $6 keyboard, a tatty old drum machine and a 50’s style radio mic, he took his first steps towards musical freedom.

His sound was an experiment based on what makes him who he is... a belief that everything you come into contact influences who you are. Be that plinky plonk, bit-crushing video games, or cut up, jacked samples of 80’s Chicago house, or Sci-Fi sound effects from his favourite movies. Green Velvet explored his tastes, dissecting the sounds which made him feel an emotional response and did this using electronic equipment, sharing his hypothesis and inferences as club tracks.

Using cold orchestrated atmospherics of being lost in space from a film score (or our own humanity) themes as such are ever present in his music, and fit perfectly with his Alien vocals. Velvets alternative rock inspired sound (thank you David Bowie) lyrically touches a note with us when we’re in a club, never obvious, he is speaks truly hence we believe in his words and we sing along.

That’s how his gigs go, you sing... he spins disc’s, drops samples and sings his message as clubbers at Potterrow tomorrow will discover.

These days his bright green mohock is all but gone, but he’s older, wiser and more comfortable with himself. He’s spent the last twenty years exploring what it means to be a man and a machine.

Why doesn’t wear a costume anymore? Perhaps after 20 years of being a superhero, he doesn’t need it

Potterrow, tomorrow, 10pm-3am, £14

• Other nights to check out this weekend include, BCM World Tour at Mood tomorrow, featuring CO2 cannons, confetti showers, lasers - BCM décor, BCM resident DJ Doc C & Jim Etherson (£6). Evening News readers can get on guest list for Friday (B4 11pm) by calling 0131 550 1640 and quoting password DOC C.

Electrosexual @ CC Blooms, with Lucky Luciano and Jack Jones fire out high nrg belters between 10pm and 3am... and it’s free.

If you’re feeling brave or brave enough to risk partying on a boat this weekend then the Perversity September Boat Party is promising to fend off the cold and raise the tempo thanks to DJs Tommy Kay and David Grant who’ll be playing house music from 6.30pm till 11pm – buses from Edinburgh, tickets £20.