Limbo sets out to bring you consistently great live music in a well produced environment.
It’s a live music club that takes place mainly at The Voodoo Rooms, Edinburgh, but occasionally in other venues/cities, too.
Each night sees the right mix of the most established, brand new and freshly breaking live acts* from Scotland and beyond alongside great music from the Black Spring DJs. The audio production is augmented by equally high-grade visuals, with motion graphics, short films and other video art projected on to the full-sized screen behind the stage.
Described as the ‘barometer of pop’ by the press, you’re guaranteed to see/hear the best music every month with consistently reliable, high grade entertainment.
There are generally three live acts on each bill and they go on stage on at 8.30, 9.15 and 10.00pm.
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*Previous live acts are listed here and there’s an older archive of Limbo events and bands here.
BLACK SPRING DJs
The BLACK SPRING DJs, aka Hobbes (Hobbes Music, Trouble DJs) and DC (also the Limbo VJ), are the duo behind the Limbo.
Currently running his own label (Hobbes Music) and also one half of the team behind Edinburgh’s Radio 1 award-nominated Trouble club night, Hobbes has played everywhere from tiny sweat-boxes in Glasgow, Edinburgh and London to super-clubs in Shanghai and Beijing, Rob Da Bank’s massive Big Top tent at Bestival (sharing the stage with The Human League, Santogold, Chromeo and The Breeders) to wee hot-spots in Warsaw, Sardinia, Vienna, Paris, Berlin, Derry and Ghent. DC is the punk rocking yin to Hobbes’s disco dancing yang and a creative entrepreneur with twenty years of experience in setting up and running companies and arts organisations in the creative industries such as New Media Scotland, Screenbase and Edinburgh’s Fringe Film Festival.
Having recorded of all the bands who have appeared at Limbo since July 2008 (using a state-of-the-art Alesis HD24, 24-track, 48 kHz hard disk recorder), the Black Spring DJs compiled the cream of the crop from the latter half of 2008’s weekly Limbo events on a CD of high grade live recordings called Limbo Live Volume 1. This was released in April 2009.
Since 2011, the core Limbo team has swelled to include photographer/video-maker/web-developer Scott Carroll and designer/scribe Rob Sproul-Cran (who also mans the decks as one of the Black Spring DJs on occasion).
‘Sneaky Pete’s and Limbo at the Voodoo Rooms consistently put on interesting and bang-on-the-money groups’ (Tim Brinkhurst, Young Fathers’ manager, in The Scotsman, Sept ’15).
‘Long running live club night with a superior booking policy in stupidly sumptuous surroundings. Great sounding room. Limbo mixes the best local acts with occasional touring artists and creates a welcoming atmosphere’ (Young Fathers in interview with Australian blog Music Feeds, 2015).
‘Limbo have been consistently creating quality bills for six years so it’s a case of trusting the promoter… (it’s) a fine example of where to find the best new talent in Scotland’ (John-Paul Mason, King Tuts Booker in The Daily Record, 2014)
‘The beloved gig-in-a-club night celebrates the half-decade milestone’ (The Skinny, November ‘12)
‘Go to Limbo, it is awesome!’ (Glasgow Podcart, April ’10)
‘Limbo had a healthy effect on the Edinburgh scene over the past two years, so locals will be happy about its imminent return. The night may have gone from weekly to monthly, but their band booking policy looks as infallible as ever’ (The Scotsman, Jan 2010)
‘Since its launch in late 2007, Limbo has established itself as the place to go to check out new talent and the club played a significant role in its host venue, The Voodoo Rooms, picking up the PRS Music Pub Of The Year award last year…’ (Olaf Furniss, The Scotsman)
‘The centre of Scottish pop music’s gravity has conspicuously moved east’ (Andrew Eaton, The Scotsman)
‘Limbo rock immensely… what makes Limbo stand out from other multi-line-up gig nights across the city – and the rest of the UK for that matter – is the organisers’ ability to select the right mix of bands, as well as the very best in innovative indie music for their shindig… If you want to hear the very best in “who’s cool to watch” then you best get down to the Voodoo Rooms’ (Barry Gordon, Edinburgh Evenings News)
‘It’s a barometer for the live music scene’ (Olaf Furniss, freelance journalist / Born To Be Wide promoter)
‘It is, hands down, one of the best live music programmes around at the minute.’ (Sophie Kyle, Publisher, The Skinny)
‘…one of the definitive places in Edinburgh to see new bands. You always expect a certain level of quality at Limbo and you also get the impression that once local bands have played there they’ve reached a certain calibre.’ (Dave Pollock, freelancer)
‘There are a million and one identity-free flea-pits for bands to play. Limbo, however, adds class and kudos … with a genuine sense of curatorship at play, right down to what records are chosen to compliment the already mixed and matched artists on stage. Far more significant than an average local band night, Limbo is a club that’s select, eclectic and where quality counts, but with a Liberty Hall vibe that’s open to all, just as long as they come equipped with intelligent ears’ (Neil Cooper, freelance journalist)
