LUXEMBOURG is renowned as a hotbed of financial services rather than a hotbed of experimental music. So it comes as a surprise to learn that Thomas Clarke – aka MR TC, one of the most exciting new talents on Glasgow’s electronic music landscape – counts his childhood there as a major contributing factor in the prodigious musical development that has led him to become a fixture on one of Glasgow’s most respected record labels.

“My family moved from London to Luxembourg when I was five,” Clarke begins, “and I spent my whole life there until I came to Glasgow for university. I went to a huge European school with about 7000 people at it, and it was a great way to make friends from all over the world from a young age. A lot of us were into playing music and we all played in each other’s bands, and there was one booker there who really got what we were about and who would book us to support international acts when they came. We supported The Oscillation, who play the same kind of psych/space-rock we were playing, which was a particularly big moment for us. Most people don’t even know where Luxembourg is, never mind thinking of it as a place for music, but it was the perfect place to develop in many ways.”

Clarke’s early life in music may have been unconventional, but his rise to prominence in Glasgow has followed a tried and trusted path. Clarke, who is also co-resident at the much-loved, bi-monthly Night of the Jaguar at the Art School and has a day job a very short stagger from The National’s offices as programmer at The Flying Duck, has developed his sound alongside a whole generation of Glasgow musicians at the world-renowned Green Door Studio in Finnieston. A tiny and (almost) all-analogue place we’ve mentioned many times before in these pages, the Green Door’s remarkably nurturing Supergroups and Sonic Youths social initiatives have been directly responsible for the wondrous musical output of Golden Teacher, Whilst, Happy Meals and countless others over the past decade.

“What they do there is just incredible,” Clarke begins. “It’s had a huge effect on me, on the way I think, and on the way I make music. My first record (late 2015’s Soundtrack for Strangers EP) was entirely recorded during time I got as part of being on the Supergroups course. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the four tracks I’d done when I finished them – I knew I liked them but I didn’t know if they were good enough to be released. But what I also didn't know was that Stu had passed them to JD Twitch, and out of the blue I got an email from him asking if he could release the EP on his Optimo label.

"I was so shocked and happy, but that's the amazing thing about the Green Door – they make these things happen for people all the time and they do it for very little return. I guess when someone records at the Green Door they won't want to then go and record elsewhere, so it's probably quite good for business, but I don't think that's why they do it at all. They're just great people who're really good at bringing people together, giving them freedom and making them feel comfortable."

The National:

Like most of the Green Door’s most celebrated graduates, MR TC’s music (two EPs so far, both of them on the Optimo imprint) is a delirious mix of electronics and organic instrumentation. That’s an exhilarating result of the way the studio is set up, but for Clarke it was also a function of how he grew up making music in Luxembourg.

“It’s funny, I didn’t know a thing about electronic music or club culture before I came to Glasgow,” he says. “But the day I moved here I bought a drum machine – not to make electronic music on, but because I didn’t know any drummers in Glasgow and thought I would need something to play my guitar to. I was programming rock rhythms into it to begin with, but then I began going to Optimo, the Art School, the Vitamins parties and the like. And at some point it dawned on me that I had one of these machines in my room, and I thought, ‘oh right, that’s what this is for!’

"It's definitely a natural way to work at Green Door too, though, because it's very much a rock recording studio. Dub recording techniques are a key part of what they do, and everything that goes through Green Door has loads and loads of echo on it – there are trademark features that you usually hear when something's been recorded there. And for a kid to be able to use their vintage desks, their analogue tape delays and all sorts of other stuff they have, that none of us would have enough money to buy for ourselves, is incredible.

A third EP is currently in the works, but, having recorded and released his second hot on the heels of the first, Clarke is taking his time with this one, and looking to get it just right. Also in kind with many of the contemporaries who have learned their trade at the Green Door, international recognition has swiftly followed initial, more localised praise. The band (MR TC is solely Thomas on record, but are a full four-piece when they play live) played a sold-out show in London last month, and March has brought gigs in Amsterdam, Groningen, Dresden and Leipzig. The band also play Lyon’s Nuits Sonores, one of Europe’s most revered and adventurous festivals, in May, in what should be the perfect way to kick off what promises to be an exciting summer.

“They’ve put us on straight after (Blixa Bargeld’s industrial legends) Einstürzende Neubauten,” Clarke laughs, still slightly in disbelief at his upcoming proximity to a true underground hero. Bargeld’s machinery-destroying sonic assault will be hard to follow, for sure, but as anyone who knows will tell you, MR TC are more than up to the job.

Thomas Clarke DJs at Paradise Palms in Edinburgh on 1 April and the Berkeley Suite in Glasgow on April 8, and Night of the Jaguar’s third birthday is at the Art School on April 28. MR TC play live at The Flying Duck’s Crossed Wires festival over the weekend of April 29 and 30, and at Nuits Sonores in Lyon on May 27