REPERCUSSION: Underworld headline Warehouse Project
Image credit: Sophia J Carey at The Warehouse Project
Have you ever wished a club night would last forever? Warehouse Project’s Repercussion festival doesn’t quite give you ‘forever’, but eight intense hours of electronic music in a 10,000-capacity venue comes pretty close.
Repercussion is marketed as a festival, but it doesn’t feel like one in the traditional sense. Its enormous indoor venue at Depot Mayfield feels like stepping into another world. There’s minimal signage for directions, or to tell you what room you’re in, or even who’s playing right now. But this adds to the fluid, cavernous feeling of the venue. You’re moving instinctively through the dark, blindly following sound.
Our night kicked off with Caribou live on the main Depot stage. He opened with ‘Odessa’ – one of his most popular tracks, for good reason. That shivering beat is laced with an electric twinge of madness, and it immediately had everyone dancing. His newest single ‘Waiting So Long’ sounded great live, full of bouncy feel-good factor without feeling too vapid or Ibiza-final-boss. The set ended on ‘Can’t Do Without You’, an emotional track with a big beat behind it, plus such tenderly delivered lyrics that I actually felt borderline sympathetic towards all the PDA-ing couples.
We left the heat of the crowd, escaping into the smoking area to get some air. I sat down on the damp paving, had a heart-to-heart with Mariella’s older brother, and gleaned some wisdom from a couple of visiting Australians who were spinning like planets.
Repercussion’s schedule is stacked: even though we were there for about seven hours in the end, we absolutely didn’t see everything or even make it to all of the rooms. The Archive stage was so packed that we couldn’t get a look in all night. Which, to be fair, probably means that good things were happening there. Repercussion also had a DJ takeover in the nearby Star & Garter pub, which we probably should’ve checked out earlier on – when we headed towards it around 11pm, people were queuing round the corner to get in. Nervous about missing Underworld, we had to head back.
What pub could be better than Underworld, anyway? After opening with a euphoric mix of ‘Juanita’, Underworld’s Karl Hyde and Rick Smith led us deeper and deeper into a dense landscape of thunderous techno. I love Underworld’s looping, eclectic lyrics, but this time it felt right for them to give us a more beat-focused set, tailored for a crowd who were there to dance. They played several tracks from their 1999 album ‘Beaucoup Fish’ including ‘Moaner’, an underrated track with a great drop. (I’m still dreaming that one day they’ll play its forgotten partner track ‘Winjer’ live.) Even when you know full well that an Underworld set is going to end with ‘Born Slippy’, that song always leaves the room with a feeling of heady elation. If I was being greedy, I’d have loved to also hear a big track from rave classic ‘Dubnobasswithmyheadman’ (1994), maybe ‘Dark & Long’ or ‘Dirty Epic’, but an hour-long Underworld set is only ever going to be a small taste of their immense discography.
By this point I’d found myself in a group of about eight people, I was having a great time, and the schedule had completely gone out of the window. We saw a bit of Job Jobse, who was playing a kind of grime-trance mashup. Mariella pointed out that we could actually see his baseball-capped head on the stage! Stage presence is mostly irrelevant in this kind of space, but many of the other sets were so busy and smoky that it felt special to actually glimpse the DJ.
We moved to the smaller but livelier Concourse stage for Joy Orbison’s set, which was another standout. I’d be lying if I said I recognised many individual songs, but the set was upbeat, funky and seamlessly woven. Ultimately, you don’t need to be highly clued-up on the electronic scene to enjoy Warehouse Project: just come with an open mind and embrace the atmosphere. Joy Orbison’s set was the sort where you almost forget there’s someone up there mixing the tracks. We were dancing a lot and shouting enthusiastically in each other’s ears, even though no one could hear anything anyone was saying. IT’S REALLY LOUD IN HERE! YEAH!
Somehow it was past two in the morning, and I was feeling dead on my feet. We wandered back to Depot for Floating Points’ late-night B2B with Daphni (Caribou’s alter ego). We’d sadly missed Floating Points’ solo set earlier, although someone on our 4.30am National Express coach home (I don’t want to talk about it) claimed that Floating Points ‘was playing a really bad Björk mix for like ten minutes’ and we hadn’t missed out on much. Sad if true… But the B2B sounded really good. By this point, the crowd was winding down somewhat, and this fluid space-age set was a welcome break from all the high-intensity techno.
It can’t be understated that Repercussion’s schedule is a marathon. Last entry is supposedly 8pm, which feels really early (although the queue is huge, and some people got in much later than that) and the music doesn’t finish until 4am. It’s probably a noise restriction problem, but a more normal ‘club’ schedule – maybe 10pm–6am – would’ve felt more intuitive.
Our last stop was Call Super B2B Shanti Celeste. The thinning crowd meant more space to dance, but the people left standing were still going strong. We left our last dregs of energy on the dancefloor before saying goodbye. Then we trudged out onto the damp Manchester street, walking past an endless conga line of taxis parked on the double yellows. We were faced with the aforementioned National Express coach home – the only way you can get back to Leeds at gone four on a Sunday morning on a student budget.
One of the guys on the coach joked that it was the afterparty, but it felt like a subdued return to the normal world. Everyone was putting their hoods up and going to sleep. My earbuds sounded unbelievably tinny compared to the Warehouse Project soundsystem. At one point, I woke up and glanced out of the dark window; it looked like we were the only vehicle on the road. The dreamlike atmosphere was only broken when we hopped in an Uber back from Leeds bus station and got battered over the head with Christmas songs.
ROWAN’S WAREHOUSE PROJECT TIPS: Bring an empty water bottle (you can fill it up for free). Bring heavy-duty earplugs or your ears will be ringing. Bring deodorant, especially if you insist on taking your top off. Don’t bring a big coat (even if you really want everyone to see your cool new Montbell puffer). Bring lots of friends, or borrow other people’s (thanks Mariella & Finlay!)
Words by Rowan Morrow