‘It’s an amazing building,’ says the Bongo Club’s manager Ally Hill of the long-serving cult venue’s new premises in a multi-level warren which stretches between Victoria Street and the Cowgate, ‘and we’re glad to be the ones making sure it’s not only used one month a year. It’s a wee bit like a return to [the first Bongo Club on] New Street with the shape of the new main room and the low ceiling. It’s great for atmosphere.’

The new space he’s talking about will be familiar to festivalgoers as the Underbelly, with the Bongo’s eviction from their old Holyrood Road premises last year leading to a smart and very welcome arrangement whereby the Bongo uses the building outside of festival time. Hill says he’s sad not to see the usual Bongo schedule of events continuing throughout August, but that Underbelly have been receptive to creating an overlap between the programmes of the two organisations.

Although some of the Bongo’s ideas for this year had to be scaled back to concentrate on the move in the spring, one plus is that the Underbelly’s 2013 Fringe schedule will involve the Bongo’s best club nights for the first time. On the festival’s first weekend that will mean 5am-licensed shows from cross-genre performance art sleaze-and-strangeness fest Confusion is Sex on Friday, and swing, soul and doo-wop at Soulsville on Saturday, with more to come on the same nights later in the month from reggae institution Messenger Sound System, soul-jazz club Four Corners, bass music soundsystem Electrikal and more.

Underbelly, Edinburgh, Fri & Sat throughout Aug.