Club Together: Headset on their Gay Garage Fringe residency

During Pride Month of 2019, Headset’s Gay Garage staged its first-ever party spanning fourdance floors across The Mash House inside Edinburgh's Cowgate. The newly christened night was a culmination of the influences of founder Nick Karlsberg, aka Skillis: the nostalgic rhythms of UK Garage, growing up a gay boy in Scotland, and his background within Edinburgh’s underground music scene. 

Some six years later, the unlikely formula of Headset’s Gay Garage is still working wonders on dancefloors in Scotland and in Skillis’s current city of residence, Bristol. In anticipation of the club night’s Fringe residency, spanning four Monday nights at Edinburgh’s Sneaky Pete’s, Skillis gives us an insight into the night’s origin and evolution.

By the time Headset’s Gay Garage was created, Skillis was a seasoned promoter in Edinburgh, having run techno and bass club night, Headset, since 2014. The idea for a bouncier, queerer sister venture came after a run-in with DJ Noodles, co-founder of UK garage project, Groove Chronicles. “Noodles was playing at a gay garage night in London, and I thought it would be a good concept to replicate.” Skillis snapped up the original Gay Garage promoter, Twice Shy, to play at one of the first events for the Fringe in 2019; “It all went down really well and since then, I've just kept it going.”

The creation of Headset’s Gay Garage equally spoke to Skillis’s lack of affinity with queer events in the Scottish capital. “I started Gay Garage because I was starting to discover my own identity... everything was very repressed,” he recalls. “I found it quite hard to identify with a lot of the queer culture that was happening in Edinburgh… there wasn't a cultural in-between within the usual gay bars and underground club music.” Skillis noticed a shift in other UK cities, where queer culture and UK electronic music mingled more freely: “They had queer nights which were also about the music.” Less ABBA bootlegs, more UKG shellers.

While aspects of the city’s queer scene didn’t strike a chord with Skillis, changing societal attitudes in Scotland made being an out, gay man that bit easier. “Scotland kind of ruined my life as a closeted gay kid,” he says, referencing the commonplace homophobia of the noughties. “Then I came out and it kind of saved my life because all of a sudden [I was surrounded by] the friendliest people in the world… It was because of everyone’s support that I felt I could start an event.” In the same year as Headset’s creation, Scottish MSPs voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Marriage and Civil Partnership Bill. “It was a crazy time, [everything] changed so quickly.” 

This support from the wider community has become an integral part of the nights, with drag queen hosts, all queer DJ lineups, and dancers taking centre stage. “It's just got gayer and queerer as time goes on,” Skillis says. “It went from playing girly garage tunes into a wider range musically… We play a lot of gay house, Ballroom and some US queer club stuff.” This appeal to clubgoers beyond garage-heads reflects Skillis’s inclusive approach across the board. “It's for all queer people. I don't like exclusivity within scenes, clubbing is meant to be about deconstructing identity and what we have in common. That can be within the queer world as well.”

The queer community in Bristol, where Skillis relocated three years ago, has embraced Headset’s Gay Garage just as readily as Scottish clubbers. “It's probably one of the biggest queer events here,” Skillis says. He reflects on the differences between the two cities: “Bristol still has this culture where everyone's going out constantly, [the city] is so celebrated from within as well. [August] is the only month of the year where [Edinburgh becomes] a loud culture… Bristol is the opposite.” With the onset of the Edinburgh festival comes relaxed licensing for nightclubs, permitting venues to extend their opening hours until 5am during the month. So, does Skillis expect to see packed dancefloors until 5am this year round?

“I've had to put in a lot of work to get my Fringe Headset Gay Garage residencies busy… the Fringe hasn't even been that busy for a lot of promoters,” Skillis reflects. “The Festival is so expensive that it prices out locals, it prices out bringing in guests [or] artists and it prices out people travelling to Edinburgh to experience it who aren’t very well off.” The vast costs associated with the Fringe has made performing and attending impossible for many. 

Yet despite these drawbacks of being a promoter amidst a cost-of-living crisis, Skillis remains optimistic about the upcoming month. “My expectation is that it's going to be good.” With lineups of local heroes, a collaboration with Sneaky Pete’s residents, Ride n Bounce, and some of the capital’s favorite drag queens on host duties, each Monday of the Fringe is set to be a joyously queer, two-step-filled belter. 

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Headset's Gay Garage, Sneaky Pete's, every Monday of the Fringe