AT home, in his native Detroit, Patrick Scott's DJ'ing usually has a definite old school cast to it. ''For the past eight years I've mostly been a mobile DJ,'' he says over the transatlantic phone. ''I've never had a club residency. I play at wedding receptions,

parties, everything, in lots of

different places around the city.

''That way, I get to play a little bit of everything, which suits me because my influences are just about everything: techno, jazz, r&b, blues . . . Kraftwerk, James Brown, George Clinton. I think I still enjoy weddings best of all. You get to play the people so many different kinds of stuff.''

Talk of weddings is apt, given that Patrick has newly crafted an album, Pieces Of A Dream, which is a happy marriage between differing musical genres and eras, as well as the starting-point for a new Scottish- American family.

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to celebrate a dancefloor union between Glasgow and Detroit; between vintage jazz funk and nineties' house. Prepare to shake a tailfeather and expand your mind to Patrick Scott's grooves, hence Patrick's chosen nom du disque: Scott Grooves.

Expansions is the first single from Scott Grooves on Glasgow's Soma label. It's a modern re-working of Lonnie Liston Smith's timeless fusional classic, and features the smoky vocal stylings from another hero of the first jazz-funk age, Roy Ayers.

How did all this admirable boundary-crossing come about? ''I was in a Detroit record shop when I heard a Funk Da Void track on Soma. I liked it. I called them up. I sent them a tape of my music. They liked it. I'd always loved Lonnie Liston Smith's Expansions, and I'd always wanted to do it.

''It isn't a complicated song to do, and what it talks about is what I stand for: growing, expanding your mind, expanding your range. Anyway, I'd been recording in Detroit for a while with a local bassist called Carl Holmes, and one night I went to see him play with another band in a little jazz club called Floods.

''I walked in carrying a list of songs I wanted us to record sometime, and at that very moment out of nowhere Carl started playing the central bass theme to Expansions.

''It was like 'OK, something just told me what we're recording next.' There was another coincidence a couple of days later when Roy Ayers happened to play a show in Detroit.

''I went back-stage and spoke to him, asking him to sing on our version of Expansions, and he took me seriously enough to give me his home telephone number in New York.

''I called him up two or three times, and his sole concern was not about money, or telling us how we should be recording or playing, but simply that the track be done in good taste.''

This was facilitated by Patrick's musicianly upbringing. ''My dad was a jazz guitarist. He bought my first drum kit, bongoes, a guitar. I was into playing before I was a DJ, but then DJ'ing becomes playing an instrument, too. For a long time I couldn't buy enough records every week, but as I became a veteran DJ that wore off. I'm back into musicianship.

''I'm always in jazz clubs, and I really like musicians. They're doing things that I can't do, and you have to be intrigued by anyone who's a true pro.

''Then again, I find that musicians are intrigued by what I do, DJ'ing and programming drums and producing.''

Trumpeting its release last Monday, Expansions received major approbation from clued-up DJs and commentators on this side of the pond.

The Radio 1 dance-overlord Pete Tong gave it an enthusiastic thumbs up, as did Justin Robertson and Muzik magazine. Things may not be so easy Stateside, however.

''It's in our favour that Roy Ayers is enormously well-respected throughout the US, but US radio doesn't really cater to dance music, aside from a few isolated stations in some of the bigger cities. It's certainly not a nationwide cultural thing as it is in the UK.''

Patrick speaks from international experience, having last month made his British DJ'ing debut in Glasgow as a special guest when Soma mainmen Orde Meikle and Stuart McMillan concluded their long-running residency underneath the railway tracks at the Arches.

''I had no idea what to expect in Scotland, but I played a lot of smooth stuff, nothing hard, nothing that was techno and typically Detroit, and people seemed to like it.''

IN THE meantime, Patrick is working on songwriting with another Detroit-domiciled laddie, Inner City legend Kevin Saunderson. ''Kevin doesn't have a record deal right now, which is cool because he's taking his music back to square one.

''For the future, I might be doing something on Roy Ayers' next album. Further in the future, it would be a dream to work with my heroes, Stevie Wonder, Roger Troutman, George Clinton.

''For the moment, I'm waiting for a Canadian work-permit so I can accept my first club residency, five minutes from here across the border in Windsor, and I'm working on setting up some underground parties in Detroit. We're going to have a good one when the Soma guys come over soon.

''The only problem is we don't have any clubs in railroad arches over here. DJ'ing at the Arches in Glasgow was cool. I never played under a bridge before. Unbelievable.''

Don't worry. Just continue to bust genres by creatively bridging the gaps between them, sir.

n Expansions is available now; Pieces Of A Dream appears on May 27.