They were amazing
Never seen them before live, but heard their mix on essential mix and have a lot of their material, live they had so much energy, it was fantastic to watch them bouncing off each other and feeding off the crowd.
Great drumming with loads of effects and perfectly sync'd, they had the crowd in their hands for an hour (just short of an hour as cheeky Greg Vickers cut into their set early to start playing
) just as (I think/hoped) they'd have done an encore.
I personally didn't enjoy the warm up dj sets, bit too empty sounding some of the tracks, I love things with melodies in, layers and something to keep it all interesting, there were a few good tracks, but that was it, just a few.
Booka Shade stole the night, if you get the chance to go see them you'll dig it for sure
{pictures and video clips to follow later today when I sort them out from the camera}
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Sankeys - the club revamp
At first, I though "huh" what the fk is going on, you enter round the corner instead and go through a bar area, where they were playing downtempo beats, the main club hadn't opened up, must have been sound checking (until after 11.30pm?) and when it did open, went inside to see they had installed new lighting system, ultra bright beam lights everywhere that run in 3 colours, red, green and blue (the blue being the brightest that does your eyes in) along with similar lights behind the DJ area (which is now at one end of the club - there's now a bar where the DJ bit used to be)
Soundwise, it's as good, no better imo, which was a shame as it should be at least twice as loud, too many times you could hear the crowd talking too much over the tunes! - there's also a heavy bleed through of sound from upstairs (which looks far too bright, American, and very very commercial)
Also the owner was walking round handing out glo sticks, loads of them
Is he trying to recreate the feelings of a big outdoor event in a small club? (the size of the club looks a lot smaller now)
Sadly the atmosphere at Sankeys was muted until Booka Shade did their thing, whereby even a dance-music-hater would have been up dancing to their stuff.
The old Sankeys was better imo, as it was darker and had that dingy/dirty club feel to it, like the clubs/warehouses of old, now it just looks bright like something toddlers would like for a 'kiddy rave' night.