Last of the Mohawkes

When record label/art collective/party-makers LuckyMe found themselves trying to put on a club night in a bar with no licence, they went back to the start, and held it in a West End tenement. Furniture was pushed to the side, minimalist prints hung from the walls and gelled striplights were carefully positioned to light the DJs and hallway. Ikonika (Hyperdub) started lining up her minimalist 'emotronic' dub. An invitation was sent, tongue-in-cheek, detailing drugs policies and demanding the flat's owner was duly thanked. But, unless they knew your face, no invitation meant no entry.

Whatever you're thinking, LuckyMe is not about exclusivity. You just have to be lucky enough to know one of them.

"It was something I have always wanted to do," says rapper/promoter/manager Dominic Flanagan. "There's a big afterparty culture with us - the whole thing's a big house party. Because these things are kept so low-key and based around people who all know each other, we do risk being seen as exclusive. But nothing is done to try to make us look cool, we always try to make it very approachable."

Dom is the father of this Glasgow-based extended family. "Some are beautiful. Others, ugly", promises their slickly styled press. Don't be fooled: the usual commune connotations do not apply. Between the DJs, promoters, visual artists and vocalists, there's no ugly ducklings here.

The label is home to DJ/producers like Hudson Mohawke and Rustie, two names bathing in their own coolness right now, as well as less well heard of, but equally cherished, members - Mike Slott, Mr Copy, Nadsroic. There are many interrelated collaborations - HudMo, for example, has recorded with Mike Slott as Heralds Of Change, was the DJ half of the DJ/MC duo Surface Emp with Flanagan (aka Dom Sum), produces for Nadsroic, and plays with Rustie. The others are similarly incestuous. Their website offers a family tree of everyone who is involved. It entirely sums them up.

I could throw about the names of some of the excellent club nights -  the monthly Ballers Social Club, at the Glasgow School Of Art and The Ivy - or perhaps the labels their artists release on - Warp, Wireblock, Dress2Sweat - and you'll probably recognise them. But while their many achievements and projects could be listed all day, you can find them all online. What's more interesting is how this DIY family emerged, and what it means for the scene they emerged from.

Although with affiliations to hip-hop, dubstep and electro, the music they produce is, as you'd expect, indefinable. A group of people this devoted to music and fashion couldn't just follow a style. But rather than pinpoint their music as indefinable or, worse, make up a lazily inappropriate adjective - "wonky" - it'd be best if people just relaxed and enjoyed the sound.

Ross, aka Hudson Mohawke, seems relieved when I tell him I don't want to discuss this. "I think people try to define it so much because you just can't, so there's a constant discussion on it. It's not trying to be anything, I don't have any new genre in mind when I'm producing."

The group started out when a few friends decided to make music just for them - they were, and still are, "just doing [their] thing". They started doing their thing in public in 2002 at Stereo, now The 78, with a hip-hop night where the atmosphere was anything-goes, and people who loved music could share this love, maybe by getting on the decks and showing it aurally.

Ross ended up a resident by the time he was 15. “At the time there were lots of average hip-hop nights. I don't want to be disrespectful to them, but we always wanted to do something more than just another standard night.”

This respect for other scenes is typical to the one they have created; it emerged from a Scottish hip-hop scene more likely characterised for its bitchiness and rivalry, modelled on the American precedent. Their nights and their music wasn't intended to be innovative, or original, but they were. Surely the ultimate definition of effortless cool.

"FreakMenoovers was good but they were quite different to us", continues Ross. "They put on a party night and ours was... more of a participation listening night.”

He looks a bit embarrassed when I pick him up on this phrase. “I suppose what I mean is that it was a bit more involving. It wasn't anybody's direct intention to put on nights like that - there wasn't a collective or anything then – it was just people putting on records they liked. I was too young to be going to any clubs at the time, really - I'd go to FreakMenoovers when they had a big guest on, which they often did. But Stereo wasn't meant to be a night like any of the those."

Their website, which began in 2007 when the label was formed, thanks the "somewhat mystical musical environment of Glasgow and its art school" for providing a home, but their emergence is probably one of he defining examples of the magic of this musical environment.

In 2002, the hip-hop scene in general was dominated by the cocky MC, dressed to impress, taking centre stage, while the earnest DJ spun behind him, subtle, undecorated. In Scotland, hip-hop "was never really credible," says Flanagan. No longer a rapper himself - "it's a bit cringeworthy, looking back" - he agrees that the collective, whether intentionally or not, has changed the expectation of what hip-hop can be.

"What happened wasn't a statement against the MC. There was a certain zeitgeist for the role of  producer which happened around the time of the producer becoming so important. In electronic music, which is also a big part of what we do, the producer has always been king. But in terms of hip-hop, the producer became more important around the time of Jay-Z's Blueprint album. The reason Jay-Z became credible was because of the production on his record. Suddenly you could be a superstar producer."

HudMo is the classic example of a star who has been allowed to shine because of the way the scene's become.

"Ross is a shy guy, or he certainly was, but things moved away from this sense that there had to be a frontman. It's a good thing because it means it's all about the music. It's more honest as well. You don't have to pretend to be something you're not."

The latest buzz name in the worldwide hip-hop scene, he's also a classic example of the down-to-earth ethos of the group: just turned 23, still lives with his mum in the Glasgow flat where he began to make his music while still at school. A DMC UK finalist at the age of 15, he had the Stereo night, among others, to showcase his turntable skills. But his biggest help has been the internet, and this shift in the scene.

“Oh, it's definitely been the best thing for me," he says. "I'm the last person who was going to be going out giving people demos or anything. I'm lucky, I've not had to do much of that. A couple of years ago I'd have had to sell myself to bigger artists.

“I just put some stuff online, gave things away, and it totally worked out for me. It was in no way planned, I honestly wasn't even out to get noticed; it was just for my friends and myself really, to have a collection of what I'd done somewhere.”

His beat tape, Hudson's Heaters, started life as a collection of tracks for MCs, who got hold of it and liked it. "It got a really good reaction, but they all said there was too much going on over the top, and they wouldn't be able to rap to it. That's how I progressed into the more instrumental stuff I'm doing now."

This idea of accidental progression, of ideas and concepts coming together haphazardly, is the DIY essence of LuckyMe. "We weren't trying to create a huge relationship between, say, the music of Rustie and Christina Kernohan's photography," says Flanagan. "I was just doing stuff when it needed doing, I didn't know anything about how the industry worked. It was like, my friend does this, another does this, so I'll ring them up and use their skills.

"The result has been an interesting juxtaposition of low culture and fine art. It's never been my natural taste to go for graffiti fonts and the expected iconography. I like the idea of mixing up the elements.

"There's this whole feeling that we are sort of young and naive and there's strength in numbers."