A weekend in Manchester and Leeds dancing

So Friday night I went to see the DJ’ing skills of the man himself DJ Harvey with the Unabombers, all 3 of which made for a very exciting night at Gorilla, the night on a whole was amazing, the acoustic’s for the place though were a lot to be desired, think its the curved metal roof that causes the issues, more suited to live bands than DJ’s, but apart from that the night rocked it.

Unabomber’s got everyone up and dancing and DJ Harvey kept them going till 4am Saturday morning.

The gig was initially destined to be at the Albert Hall, however due to poor ticket sales, it was moved to Gorilla, apparently only 350 tickets were originally sold for the 2000+ capacity Albert Hall, don’t know how many Gorilla hold’s but from all accounts it sold out on the night, in fact it sold out so much so, that people were complaining about the cloak rooms not being able to take any more coats/bags because apparently they’d “Run out of Numbers” to hand things up with etc

How the fuck do you run out of numbers . . .

I’m presuming they actually meant they had run out of tickets . . though they had space to hang stuff . . forward planning obviously doesn’t work at Gorilla, luckily for me I came in the car, so just nipped outside and dumped it in the boot, so no number worries for me 🙂

The crowd was mostly made up of 30/40 something s with an intermingling of probably this years influx of University students, all were definitely up for it and gave the Unabombers and DJ Harvey a good crowd to work with.

I left around about 2:30am as had to be up bright and breezy for Saturday

Now we arrive at Saturday nights out-of-town adventure involving the charming gentlemen that are Luke Unabomber and Duncan Evans, the night in question involved getting Luke to Leeds for a gig at a little venue called Distrikt where he’d be playing along with Bill BrewsterChris Dunkefield and Haydn Porter to help Distrikt celebrate their 5th Birthday celebrations.

The pick up and journey to Leeds were pretty uneventful, just catching up on the previous evening’s DJ Harvey experience and what we all made of it, gave me a chance to re-acquaint myself with Duncan, who I’d previously met last New Years eve in Brighton ( a very messy affair that will stay in Brighton), spent a bit of the journey discussing with Luke that my SatNav was taking us to Leeds, even though he was fairly adamant that we were going the wrong way or at least a way he would’nt normally go . .

Anyway got into Leeds around 10:00pm spent about 15 mins figuring my way around the streets, as been a fair while since I’ve driven in and around the city centre, but eventually found my way to an off-road car-park behind the Corn Exchange, seeing that place brought back memories of an earlier time in my life when I’d spent many an evening dancing into the early hours at the various Soak, Up Ya Ronson, L’America events that took place there in the 90’s, those were good days and exciting nights is all I can say.

Car parked and paid for, we made our way across Leeds crowded roads and  pavements towards Distrikt,  the venues entrance is hidden in a side alley just off Duncan Street, you enter via  set of doors in the side of what looks like your average office/shopping block and descend a stair case into a low ceiling space where straight away your hit by a wall of heat and noise being created by this evening’s crowd.

Entering the door at the bottom of the stairs your immediately aware of how up for it everyone seems to be, making our way through the crowds to the DJ booth, which is only a few feet away, takes longer than you’d expect because of the writhing bodies dancing all around you, once in the booth all you can see it the heads and arms of those same bodies, giving it large.

Here’s a few pictures from the night :

 

Anyway enough poetic licence, we got in there, Duncan headed to the bar for supplies, while a burnt a couple of disc’s for Luke, as his mis-cared for Mac’s cd drive had died on him.

Already behind the decks where the wonderful Mr Brewster and the just as charming Mr Duckenfield, then it was down to work for Luke, first up it was him and Bill on the Decks, then it was Bill and Chris on the decks and again Luke vs Chris, this went on for about 3-4hours I think, hard to tell the time when you’re enjoying your self, met some wonderful people in there over the course of the evening, even had the pleasure of meeting Buckley and the Legend that is Dave Beer, both of who came along to enjoy the evening with the rest of the crowd.

Me and Duncan just stood back soaking up the music and the view, had a chat with a few of the locals and made a few new friendships while we were at it, quite a friendly crowd are Leeds folk, but then again their Northern, so nothing strange there, think that’s why I always liked coming clubbing here in my youth at places like “Up Yer Ronson2 and Back2Basics, they were always full of nice people and maybe that is why both those nights did so well in Leeds

All I can really say about the night is that I’d completely forgotten how mad and up for it a Leeds crowd are, everyone was going for it like the clappers, Bill, Chris and Luke certainly played the music the music to get the crowd going and they lapped it up and wanted more.

Sadly though our evening came to an end about 3am as we had to get back to Manchester as again all had things that needed to be done in the real world on Sunday.

Would like to visit Distrikt again when I’m not in a rush to get home as really enjoyed it and wanted more, think a night out in Leeds is on the books

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