Last Friday saw Desolat & Kaluki join forces to bring an inimitable line-up Manchester’s Albert Hall, a disused chapel in the heart of Manchester that’s quickly become the city’s most exciting venue.
Set in middle of the city centre, the Albert Hall sports all of the trappings you’d associate with a chapel; intricate stone carvings rising to the arched ceiling, a fully functional organ behind the main stage and stunning stained-glass windows flanking the crowd. There’s a real sense of theatre that you don’t often get in most modern venues, with the main dance-floor surrounded by a raised amphitheatre, giving the venue a unique feel difficult to find elsewhere.
Kicking things off was Fuse mastermind, Enzo Siragusa. From the moment Enzo took to the decks, the crowd became just one synchronised mass of movement. Starting off around the 120bpm mark, his set moved from funky tech, to techno and then into moved from some bumpy jacking tech house with new track ‘Driven to Distraction’ – Archie Hamilton from his Fuse Label, which saw the majority of the punters foaming at the mouth and screaming for more. As track after track flew by I realised I was Shazam’ing every other song, only to realise that a lot of the tracks being played were unreleased works by Enzo.
Next up was master selector Jackmaster, who has steadily established himself as one of the best DJs in the UK. From start to finish his incredible set was a journey through everything good that the electronic spectrum has to offer, everything from Ane Brun’s ‘Headphone Silence’ (Dixon Edit) and his own edit of Denis Sulta’s ‘Dubelle oh XX’, which was a particular highlight of the night. Switching from techno, to disco, to house, it seemed that Jackmaster was going to stop at nothing to get the whole crowd going.
Closing proceedings was none other than Desolat’s main man himself, Loco Dice. Starting as he intended to go on, Dice immediately propelled into some heavy, fast-paced cuts of raw and jacking techno and house. His innate use of reverb, delays and other unique sounds that shape his sets, constructed his own dropping build ups on tracks like Lula’s ‘Twilo’. With his trademark bounce behind the decks, Dice was clearly enjoying himself, keeping the crowd going strong until 4am.
All in all, the night was a solid techno feast and massive success. The crowd left beaming, revved up and hungry for more at after parties across the city.
