Booka Shade @ Sankeys 06/10/06

[blue jammer]

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}

--

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.

[Danny C]

Originally Posted by blue jammer

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}

--

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.

Must admit I was a bit dismayed when I read that Dave Vincent (the owner) was taking his inspiration from Fabric. I couldn't quite see how Sankeys could fit into that.
Anyway Scott, I've got this horrible image of some sort of a cross between the living room and discotheque royale's? Don't like the sound of upstairs at all?
Hopefully it will retain the atmos of the old sankeys? Manchester is running out of atmospheric clubs, only the roadhouse/music box spring to mind (or the Park!! lol)

[Saysay]

Me and Cano were thinking of going sometime in december, cheers for the review.

[blue jammer]

Here's some pics from the night:



(basement, just so you know where you are - you might have forgot!)



the bar, where the old dj bit was



new dj area



main area



upstairs - very very bright - shades needed!



upstairs - dj bit



back downstairs bit later on



two of booka shade in action

[nics]

wow, get your gigs on..............bright or what!!!

[woody]

that looks like Danny C lol

[Danny]

I thought Dan Ghenacia warmed up pretty well to be honest, he's definately one of my choice warm up dj's. Some tunes dragged, but others were extremely sexy in my opinion. The minimal feel he goes for definately wasn't helped by the fact the room was so bleedin' lit up! It was far too bright in there, hence was more difficult to get into the twisted beats..... Why oh why Dave Vincent was handing out those glow sticks to everyone in the club I dont know - it really did make the place feel like one of those 80's pop bars you find on a crappy town's high street nowadays........ I definately won't be in any rush to go back to sankeys. The place was full of pissed up tw*ats and the crowd was generally very poor, and full of clueless numpties......

Bookashade were ok, but played the exact same set as I when I last saw them, so that was a bit frustrating...... There 12 minute version of Mandarine Girl still sounded amazing though. Others disagreed with me, but I also thought the sound was terrible in places downstairs. In the dark and dingy sankeys of old you could still lose yourself at the very back of the room, where as on Friday night the sound was extremely muffled and poor.

So up until about 2-3 o'clock this was one of the poor-est nights I'd been to in recent months.......

......Thank god for Damian Lazurus.

He came on at 2 o'clock upstairs although we only went up there at around 2.45. Again, it was super hard to get into the music at first with the room being so incredibly bright..... There was hardly anyone up there as well (because bookashade were still on downstairs). At first I kept thinking he would up it a bit and drop a big tune, but he just kept plugging away with weird little jerkers that kept you interested.

He deifinately had his own style and complete control and charisma behind the decks, reacting to the crowd each and every time he dropped a fresh tune. One of the best sets I've seen in a long time, and it was admittedly music I wouldn't really listen too - it was just so abstract and contemporary but granted, the bloke really was a dj you would want playing at your party! Gutted I haven't seen him play before, as he really is worth all the praise he's been getting of late (especially around London).......

It turned we got locked in Sankeys for Dave Vincent's tribal birthday after party, so ended up listening to Lazurus dj right through to half seven in the morning.....!!! Was so refreshinging to see a guy remain on the decks for that long (5 & a half hours), and not just taking the money and doing a runner...... infact, 2 other dj's turned up for the after party, but Lazurus wasn't having any of it! Some of his records were amazing.......

So the night got completely turned on its head imo - at 3'o'clock no less! and just because of the one guy.....

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