Sneaky Pete's

April Jai is a Scottish pop artist currently residing in London. April has released 2 original EPs as well as a stream of singles – including the TikTok viral hit “It Ends With Us” – which has moved April from “the girl with the guitar next door” to “the queen of sad songs”, as referenced by her peers and fans. April’s ability to tug on emotions through her songwriting, combined with her chill pop production style gives her the key to her audience’s heart. Join April and her band for her only Edinburgh headline show of 2023.

Sending it into the start of next week every Sunday at Sneaky Pete’s.

London electronic experimentalist Loraine James joins us for an intimate gig-time live performance this October following the release of Gentle Confrontation, her third album for Hyperdub (label home of Burial, Dean Blunt, Laurel Halo).

Breaking the mould of a predominantly white male IDM scene, James’ stunning hybrid sound meshes IDM with R&B, jazz and UK drill and grime influences. It’s chopped and screwed but honest, bare and emotional. With Gentle Confrontation, she lets us into a new chapter of her real and sonic life in which she examines her past and present – a personal and musical leap forward, delivering a totally unique and personal vision of electronic pop music.

She says this is the record a teenage Loraine would like to have made, with musical tendencies that reflect that time, too. It’s a positively languid, enjoyably disjointed set made while listening to her teenage favourites: math rock and emo-electronic such as DNTEL, Lusine, and Telefon Tel Aviv, which drew her back to her adolescence. Featuring an ever more diverse set of peers, the album places them into Loraine’s unusual musical settings and draws out sensitive and reflexive performances. At other times the album stretches out into a drifting ambience as if trying to find a sense of bliss in the everyday.

Summer is over, we’re acclimatising back into small smelly spaces with big soundsystems for the next seven months.

Almost a year on from our 5th birthday party we invite Abena back for a session, this time at Sneaky Pete’s.

Abena makes up one third of the excellent “All Hands on Deck”, a collective for women, nb & trans DJs that hosts open decks parties and workshops in and around the UK. Over the last few years they have made an indelible mark on the “scene” with their sub heavy, rhythmically intricate and dubbed out sets for parties at Tresor, Venue MOT, TWH, Field Maneuvers, Boiler Room, Keep Hush & Redstone Press. Sharing stage with the likes of Mala, Josey Rebelle, Ace Moma, FUMU, Iceboy Violet, Shannen SP & Simo Cell, Abena continues to rise, and yet stay grounded within the community driven moralities that make this whole thing we love tick. Having shared the stage with them before, Lewis Lowe will be on warm up duties and jumping into the mix with Abena later on into the event.

Dunno, could gush about Abena for another couple paragraphs but just come through on the 14th and see for yourself.

Sneaks is 15!

We’re celebrating being here this long by returning to Fruitmarket Warehouse with very special guest Ahadadream and a bunch of Sneaky Pete’s family past and present – and plenty of birthday surprises in store too ?

Ahadadream brings pure percussive energy – drummy club belters that draw influence from sounds across the UK, his homeland of Pakistan, the African Diaspora and beyond. His productions have become set staples for Four Tet, Skrillex, Jamie XX, VTSS and Ben UFO (his edits have even been co-signed by pop royalty Rosalía).

Anyone who’s seen him before knows he absolutely tears the roof off anywhere he plays – whether that’s closing 6000-capacity Printworks, Glastonbury, Panorama Bar, Fabric or sellout nights at Sneaks.

Plus we’ve got a stacked lineup of some our favourite local DJs across both rooms to join for the occasion, and like our last shows at Fruitmarket, we’re bringing in some amazing production to match this unique city centre venue.

Visceral yet inherently soulful, ‘Hardly The Same Snake’ is the sound of the Johannesburg-born, Doncaster-raised artist Doya Beardmore finally finding his voice – both literally and figuratively. In practical terms, that involved finding the courage to foreground his gravelly baritone in these gloriously genre-agnostic productions. But it also meant branching out beyond his safety net to figure out the artist he truly wanted to be. As Skinny puts it today, “This album is what I would have created the first time round had I rated my own voice.”

The idea of forging your own path – and shedding skin, so to speak – is integral to ‘Hardly The Same Snake’. Begun pre-pandemic and completed in the spring of 2021, it’s a defiantly outward-looking record contemplating family, religion and major life milestones, from parenthood to death. Where previously Skinny relied on dream diaries as his primary lyrical resource, this time he took notes at design exhibitions, using these unfiltered observations as a jumping off point for songs.

If this superb second album proves anything, it’s that it doesn’t matter how much Skinny errs on the side of self-deprecation – he remains one of the UK’s most fearlessly original voices.

Skinny Pelembe’s second album ‘Hardly The Same Snake’ is out on April 28th on Partisan Records.

Before next month’s sold out party with Joy Orbison we’ve snuck in one last residents party before the year draws to a close

As usual Palidrone residents bring a generous serving of genre-bending club heat plus a fresh stack of exxxclusive new music straight from source — Palidrone residents’ tracks have been spun by Jamie xx, Nina Kraviz, Anz, Eclair Fifi, LCY, Solid Blake, TSVI, Logic1000 and more!

Hot Mess is Scotland’s longest-running and, some would say, most beloved queer clubbing institution.

Eschewing big-name guest DJs and performance acts in favour of a back-to-basics approach, the party’s success derives from two simple factors: ecstatic, dramatic and arousing music, from tear-drenched orchestral disco to high-NRG alt-80s classics and bleepy psychedelic techno; and the devoted crowd of dancers who make the party a playful taps-aff delight month after month.

It started in 2010 and a few years later found its long-term Edinburgh home at Sneaky Pete’s, where it’s been a place of queer comfort and joy for people of all genders, sexualities, ethnicities and ages ever since.

For its 13th birthday, host DJ Simonotron is absolutely cock-a-hoop to be bringing you BIG HOT MESS at the Fruitmarket Gallery Warehouse. It’ll be the biggest Hot Mess party there’s ever been! We promise to blow your mind while simultaneously giving you little forehead kisses and calling you a good boy. Wear whatever makes you feel HOT and get ready to dance your pants clean off.

This is an earlier-hours party! Doors open at 8pm and we finish at 12 midnight, like Cinderella at the rave.

Chase Petra is a band that exists out of necessity. In other words, within this project, making music is not so much a choice as it is an inherent and inextricable feature of life. ? Their debut album Liminal features quarter-life-crisis pop rock tunes rooted in early 2000s pop punk and indie rock. Meanwhile, the songs’ subject matter runs the gamut, covering everything from issues of social justice (i.e. sexism, classism) to personal growing pains and on to topics of a more nefarious denotation. ? Hailing from Long Beach, CA, Chase Petra is willing to go just about anywhere and try just about anything and they are very much looking forward to the future.