Live Review

The Warehouse Project – The Arches, Manchester

• 2nd Dec 2009

Partying in a car park under the arches of Manchester’s Piccadilly train station on a freezing cold winter night. This may not sound like everyone’s idea of a good time but it had me pulling on my trainers and jumping on a train from Nottingham on Saturday to do just that.

The Warehouse Project, which was originally at the Old Boddington’s Brewery, upped and moved to the arches, a hard to find car park space highlighted mainly by the flocks of clubbers apparently wandering to nowhere.

It was my first time at The Warehouse Project and even though it was sold out didn’t feel like people had been packed in. The layout and space is pretty impressive showing why the event so often sells out. The sound quality was amazing, using a funktion one soundsystem, the visuals, big screens and projections on all walls and ceilings diluted the feeling of being in a desolate car park.

First up on the bill were DJ Zinc and Katy B who from what I saw of them seemed to be something of a crowd pleaser, especially when they dropped ‘Take Me With You’ but their early start meant most people were milling around the other rooms.

Major Lazer played a blinding set – only Diplo was dj-ing when it should have been Diplo and switch that together make Major Lazer – only a slight drawback as Diplo certainly didn’t disappoint.

Buraka Som Sistema put in an incredible energetic performance, compared to the slightly lacklustre Toddla T.

Boy 8-bit changed the tempo of the evening and played quite a slow set but he cracked the room and punters were loving it as we went wandering off to find Annie Mac in the main room. She dropped some banging tunes from a wide range of genres and was super interactive with the crowd.

And finally as the end of the night drew close, my personal favourite, Fake Blood opened his set with I Think I Like It which instantly had the crowd going insane and kept them there right up until the ending track Mars.

Fake Blood managed to get the entire artist line up on stage with him partying. Annie Mac displaying some wicked table dancing moves and the crowd couldn’t get enough.

The Warehouse Project have definitely found themselves a Nottingham convert…bye bye Manchester I’ll be back again soon.