Welcome to the Warehouse

Store Street | 27 September

“Welcome home” was the phrase flickering across the brickwork as we headed in to The Warehouse Project’s new place of residence. Returning to Store Street for one year only, there was a holy kind of atmosphere in the air as party pilgrimages materialised. Seasoned club goers returned to their underground nucleus and wide-eyed newcomers soaked up the heritage.

Crack headed straight to the second room where Berlin’s Mr. Ties was bringing his unorthodox rhythm-shifting to a crowd who largely abide by the “DJ idolisation” that he distanced himself from in our interview with him. His total dedication to crate-digging and tiered mixing was infectious on a crowd finding their feet. Warming up the new sound system with a club connoisseur like Ties was a smart programming move. His set showcased the sonic capabilities of the second room and cemented his reputation as one of the most astute selectors on the continent. Then came the eyes-down moniker-donning techno royalty of Carl Craig who floated between the melodious and the unrelenting. Always assertive and still – at some level – enigmatic, Craig fortified his historical gravitas and brought a two-hour masterclass to Manchester’s new nightspot.

The Berlin showcase continued with a main room multi-genre expedition courtesy of Tale of Us, which closed with Caribou’s Can’t Do Without You. The mere teasing of this song’s cloud-nine hook took the night in to the home stretch in perfect fashion and acted as an unofficial curtain-drop on the summer that it has come to define. Once we’d muscled our way out to the smoking area for the last pre-Troxler-mania cigarette we worried we might have left it too late as hordes of bodies bundled in to the main room for a glimpse of the extroverted and sporadically disrobed Seth Troxler. A highlight of his headline outing came in the form of a mid-set drop of Aphex Twin’s 180db_[130] where the dystopian synths flew above the murky party-starting hook. The slightly sinister and rebellious tone of the track played well against the raw masonry of the Store Street warehouse. It appeared that the best of the visuals were saved for Seth and the night became the morning in an extravagant display of house and techno from one of the scene’s best loved personalities.

If this really is the end of The Warehouse Project operating at this scale then this party was as good as any “beginning of the end” can get. The future of the series is still unknown but for 12 weeks, Manchester can throw extravagance at nostalgia and celebrate its legacy of epicurean success.

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Words: Duncan Harrison