Kyle Hall and Maurice Fulton in Manchester

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  • Speaking about the Manchester International Festival in the lead-up to the recent 10x10 events, The Warehouse Project boss Sacha Lord-Marchionne said: "It's very brave for [the festival] to acknowledge that people are into house and techno as part of modern-day culture." WHP's collaboration with MIF (where you're more likely to find ballet or opera than dance music) marked both outfits' ten-year anniversaries, and sent a strong message out to those who doubted or denied electronic music's place within contemporary art and culture. Also, for one weekend only, WHP would call the Mayfield Depot home. The onus, then, was on them to deliver something special. I attended the house and techno-focused Saturday night, the second of two 10x10 events. In keeping with WHP's MO, the Mayfield Depot is a gloriously eerie relic of a bygone industrial era. Built more than a century ago, the former train station had been abandoned for decades before MIF saw its potential as an events space in 2013. On entering, I was greeted by high ceilings and a vast stretch of grey dusty concrete—its colossal size made it one of the most immediately breathtaking venues I've been to. Rows of steel columns ran parallel through the centre, with the main stage sitting at one end and the second room at the other. Above the walls on the far side, subdued daylight poked in through the cracked windows. Early on, DJ Koze performed to a semi-attentive afternoon crowd in the main room, and his robust selections were perfectly suited to the room's reverberating acoustics. Over in room two, where the afternoon sunlight was completely blocked out, Mr. Ties laid down a typically eclectic set. The party's most colourful musical moments happened in room two courtesy of Space Dimension Controller and Maurice Fulton. SDC was infectious and playful in his choices, dropping Midnight Star's "Midas Touch" and plenty of the kind of funky sci-fi workouts which form his unique style. Later on, Fulton mixed heavy tribal drums and African vocals into an edit of The Clash’s "Rock The Casbah" to glorious effect. I had expected the party to fill up by the evening, but it never quite got there. That wasn't so much of a problem in room two, but it was difficult to ignore the enormous empty spaces in the main hall. As much as no-one wants to be crammed into a sweat box, the atmosphere suffers when there's so much space on the dance floor. The main stage's minimalist lighting and projections accompanied Paranoid London and Octave One as they delivered explosive live sets amidst a plethora of hardware gear. Joy Orbison followed with bumping house tracks such as Paul Johnson's "Give Me Ecstasy," before Detroit's Kyle Hall fired into a salvo of chunky, synth-driven house and joyous disco. Two of the Motor City's elder statesmen, Carl Craig and Mike Banks, closed the event with a display of Detroit prowess, sounding very much at home within Mayfield Depot's industrial walls. While the lineup was enough to satisfy even the most discerning electronic music lovers, the event's overall vibe was undeniably dampened by the venue's emptiness. As initially striking as Mayfield Depot was, I can't help but feel that 10x10 fell short of its intentions. In the end, it felt like just another warehouse rave. Photo credit: Gary Brown
RA