On Howard Street in the heart of Glasgow, there’s a store selling a wealth of great electronic records along with the tools to make electronic music of your own. Once you’ve made some, that same shop might just end up distributing your tracks through its network of labels. Quite naturally, it’s become a critical hub for generations of the city’s DJs, producers and other aficionados. The shop is Rubadub, and since launching in nearby Paisley in 1992, its mission has been to make electronic music more accessible. In the early days, that was about getting lusted-after records from Chicago and Detroit over to the UK, blending that import stock with some of the best electro, techno and less easily defined productions from their side of the Atlantic. That ethos has continued to the present, and it’s difficult to imagine Glasgow’s tightknit club scene without Rubadub’s gravitational pull.
