East Coast: Slide, shuffle, and mix it up!

Every year the British Universities Snowsports Council (BUSC) organises the British Universities Dry Slope Championship (BUDS); there, that's the abbreviations out the way. This involves the ski and snowboard teams from most British universities congregating at Midlothian Snowsports Centre, or Hillend to regulars, for two days of fierce competition over several disciplines, including: slalom, GS, boarder dual, team parallel, big air, boarder-x, slopestyle and pro-am competitions.

All well and good, but why is Beats telling you all about this distinctly lifestyle sounding event? Well because everyone knows any good ski holiday's on piste activities should be equalled if not bettered by the apr's ski. And this year's party is looking hot, with the Friday night frivolity at City nightclub headlined by audiovisual maestro's The Eclectic Method. Even if the name doesn't ring any bells, chances are you've seen one of their many productions, either on the MTV show Mash, in hip-hop documentaries like Freestyle and Scratch, or as part of music videos for the likes of Fatboy Slim and U2. Their methods of splicing clips of TV and movies with music in a turntablist fashion are certainly not unique (if you caught DJ Yoda's At The Movies tour you'll have a rough idea), but the skill and speed with which they mix and match, combined with the variety of musical and visual content, is simply breathtaking.

Jonny and Geoff of Eclectic Method took some time out from their hectic schedule in Madrid to swap a few emails about their upcoming performance and explain what they are all about. First, can you explain what to expect for someone who's never seen or heard you before? "Audiovisual jamming; you see what you hear," says Jonny. "The backbone of our performance is a dancefloor romp through the best music from the classics to the latest underground, and its flesh and blood is audiovisual samples from every kind of pop music, TV show and film you can imagine," says Geoff, "We're all about subverting expectations, creating juxtapositions, and making a party go off in a really original and fun way."

Equipped with turntables (DVD and CD), mixers, and scratch mixers, each takes turns manning the different decks, drawing on inspiration from the likes of Emergency Broadcast Network, and a special shout-out from Jonny goes to Coldcut and Hexstatic's Timber, a "classic audiovisual composition using images and sounds from the rainforest and the logging industry." How do you co-ordinate the show? "We don't really keep track at all," says Geoff, "communication between us is usually just about what tempo and overall vibe to improvise at... The most inconvenient moment is when we accidentally drop the same instrumental music on CD and video acapella on DVD simultaneously, thereby perfectly remaking the music video in its original form. When that happens it ends up looking like we're not doing anything up there!"

Do any of you ski or snowboard? "I ski, am useless on a snowboard," says Jonny, while Geoff, who does not partake at all, mentions their gig at the Sundance Film Festival, where they asked if they could hire tea trays to ride down the nursery slope at a resort in Park City: "The ski assistant just gave us a withering look."

The Chairman of the inter-university team committee, Harry Quartermain, explains the reasons behind choosing the act; "Basically we wanted to put on a good show, and we knew that the Eclectic Method lay on an awesome audio visual mash up, a very special kind of cutting and scratching with videos clips. They're billed as 2 Many DJs but with videos, so it's going to be a musical journey for sure." The Eclectic Method will be supported by hip-hop crew The Urban Nights, and a fine selection of Edinburgh's best resident DJs with representatives from Sugarbeat, Motherfunk, We Are Electric, Access, Bass Syndicate, Split, and Xplicit, all playing across three different rooms in City nightclub. Then for those who are competing there's no time for a hangover as competition continues throughout Saturday, culminating in a student-only prize giving ceremony and black tie dinner at the Corn Exchange. But even if you're not competing or a student, there's still lots to get involved in with live DJs and bars to entertain you whilst watching the competition, and the Eclectic Method and more on the Friday.