Nightlife
Welcome to the Depot: the Warehouse Project's vast, industrial new home
Abandoned for decades, Manchester's Mayfield Depot will now be a new 10-000-capacity ravers paradise. WHP boss Sacha Lord gives an insight into the exciting opportunities the move will bring.
New Year’s Eve 2019 marked the end of the Store Street era, the ‘spiritual home’ of Warehouse Project and venue for 10 out of their then 13 years in operation. This upcoming autumn, they'll journey to a brand new location for their next season – barely a 10-minute walk south of Manchester Piccadilly to Mayfield Depot, a vast disused railway depot and the party series' cavernous new abode.
After lying abandoned for decades, in recent years the Depot has been the site of a handful of events from Manchester International Festival and Warehouse Project, but is now at the centre of redevelopment plans that aim to turn the 10,000-capacity venue into an arts space, music venue and community centre.
But first, it's WHP season, which kicks off with a heavyweight hefty opening party on September 20 – curated by Aphex Twin, no less. Wiggling into various experimental corners of electronic music, he hosts the likes of Lee Gamble, Aleksi Perälä and Nina Kraviz alongside locals such as Acre, Szare and CROWW.
From there, the three-month season continues apace. Welcome to the Depot, for example, invites a long list of artists from far and wide across the dance music spectrum – Sherelle, Jayda G, Denis Sulta and a rare UK club performance from Disclosure being a few highlights. WHP favourites Metropolis will be cranking up the bass and BPMs with Chase & Status headlining a UKG, dubstep and drum’n’bass-heavy Saturday night, and Manchester party Kaluki will also be bringing together global house and techno names like Maceo Plex, Richy Ahmed and Skream.
Skepta, Flohio, Octavian, Black Midi, Floating Points, Djrum and many more are also set to play live sets across the season, plus there'll be a special show from Underworld on a wintry December Thursday. Annie Mac Presents, Feel My Bicep, Adam Beyer's Drumcode, Four Tet and Jamie Jones' Paradise also return to curate star-studded line-ups, with highlights including Four Tet b2b Skrillex (October 26), Special Request (November 2) and Jeff Mills (November 30). Stay tuned for the announcement of their New Year's Eve and New Year's Day parties.
To find out more, Sacha Lord – boss and co-founder of Warehouse Project – reveals more about the season ahead to get you all excited for the end of summer.
Welcome to Depot, the Warehouse Project's new home
© Manox
Can you talk a bit about the history of the Depot, and what first piqued your interest in it as a new home for WHP?
The Depot has been empty for about 34 years – it’s right in the heart of the city centre. It’s very industrial, very gritty – it feels almost quite eerie when you’re in there. Bizarrely, we didn’t even know it existed when we were at Store Street until about three years ago, so for many years we were stood there with this huge vacant space next to us. Sam [Kandal, co-founder of WHP] and I had been having conversations about where we should move next – and then somebody mentioned it to us. In terms of a space in Manchester, which is an industrial city, I don’t think you can get better.
In comparison to Store Street, what will be some of the new challenges of putting on events in there?
With Store Street, we were always limited when it came to numbers. It’s very hard when you have a headline DJ and everybody gathers in the middle of the dancefloor; it can sometimes feel quite congested. With the Depot, it’s a 10,000 capacity space - which doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to be selling it for that capacity - but it gives us a lot more space to deal with. The flow will be a lot better, we’re hoping the speed of service will be a lot better, and actually there’s going to be three rooms in there as well, which gives Sam a much bigger opportunity to book a much more diverse line-up. Sometimes with the smaller size of Store Street the budget became a little constrained. With the size of The Depot, it allows us to be a little bit wacky.
And what new elements does the space offer for WHP parties?
Obviously, there’s a canvas – it’s completely different. Our regulars are very used to Store Street, which will always be our spiritual home, by the way; but I think the sheer size of The Depot gives us so many more opportunities to play with more elements, including production, sound and light. We’re stepping up to a whole new level now – it almost feels like the very first year when we did Warehouse Project back in 2006, where it was something brand new and people didn’t know what to expect.
Can you talk about the soundsystem / visuals you'll be installing into the space?
All I can say is that we’ve run some shows previously in collaboration with Manchester International Festival, and everybody who commented on the sound and lighting said how impressive they were. With such a great space, we’re allowed much more artistic freedom – there’s a lot of talk and work going into the architecture and how the lights particularly are going to look in this venue. We’ll use different artists – the height of the ceiling and size of the space allows for this, whereas Store Street’s facilities didn’t.
Let’s talk about the line-up – what made Aphex Twin a top pick as a curator?
When you look at such a gritty, raw space, you have to set the benchmark. Aphex has played for us in Manchester once before, and it is still spoken about to this day. I believe it is the first time he’s ever curated his own UK show, so we’re setting the standard. We had to open with an absolute curveball, something unique, and I don’t really think you could choose something more unique than that.
For tickets and a closer look at the full programme, head to thewarehouseproject.com.
