Club Review: Sasha @ Tribal Sessions, Sankeys, Manchester

Image: The Manc Photographer

After a near hefty break, we headed off to see Sasha for the first time in over a decade, last seen at Fabric when he had just started his foray into Ableton mixing as part of one of his many technological shifts and advancements over his illustrious career.

If we had been pressed to select an event which would coax us out of our self-imposed 'man like' absence, perhaps only picked the exact venue and clubnight where we're doing so, Tribal Sessions at Sankeys, with its epic history making it surely the only night/club in Manchester worthy of the guest.

Don’t get us wrong, your reviewer here was never a Sasha fanboy. In the late nineties there were guys who would travel the world to see him, take their place up front and covet every move he made, whereas we just loved the Involver albums (listen to his remix of Grand National's 'Talk Amongst yourselves' from the first one, above), taking direct inspiration from them to start DJing and producing.

Sasha's meteoric rise in the late 20th Century was built up at a point were the days when DJs really were gods; whereas today they only seem to be world-conquering rockstars, mere icons. Likewise Sankeys has quite a history, celebrating its 20th year (on and off) in the game.

There was a time when it was voted consistently the best club in the world, and to this day it’s perhaps the doing the best job in Manchester of walking that tricky line between getting the students in and keeping the purists happy. Hence why if there was anywhere in the city we wanted to see him, it would be here. Expectations are high.

Opening up the night are Jozef K and Winter Son, a couple of locals who’ve been playing semi-regularly at Sankeys for the past few years. The club has a history of catching and nurturing local talent, and it seems like they’re onto another couple of winners here. 

Jozef K warms up the crowd with some nice slabs of melodic acid house, whilst Winter Son (also of Ghosting Season) augments the set with a TR-808 and drum pads. The mood of the set is perfect, but it does suffer at some points for being a bit disjointed (there seems to be a big discrepancy in volumes between the 808 and records at times), and for a couple of sounds on the drum pads getting overused. 

Despite these problems though they certainly do the job of getting the crowd warmed up, especially when they drop a couple of garage house numbers. Ones to watch, these boys (check out their 'The Straw that Broke the Camel's Back' below).

The punters we’re seeing and speaking to (at this stage anyway) have come down because it’s Sankeys first and foremost (a group had made the pilgrimage because they went to the Ibiza Sankeys this summer and loved it), and Darius Syrossian spends the next two hours giving those present a lesson in what the classic ‘Sankeys sound’ is all about. 

He mixes seamlessly from house to techno, balancing both with funky acid numbers, always economical and to the point, always slightly twisted, and slowly working the crowd up to where they need to be.

Heading upstairs to check out Spektrum we’re immediately struck by how much louder it is. Whereas the downstairs main room was starting to feel a bit too quiet (far too many people being able to hold a conversation in the middle of the dancefloor), upstairs is piercingly loud. 

Here the Giraffe DJs, the crew behind Warrington’s mind boggling car park raves, are smashing out the garage infused house flavours that seems to be everywhere right now, and over the course of the next couple of hours we’re starting to see a split between the younger crowd heading upstairs and getting the cocktails in and the purists downstairs getting their spots set up for the long haul. 

It’s like a microcosm of the Manchester scene in general, and at times it starts to feel like the club might split in two, gym freaks and students upstairs, and 808 State T-shirt owners downstairs.  

By half one the old guard seems to have come out of the woodwork; guys who may have been watching Sasha 10-15 years ago, pumped full of memories and expectation of what’s to come. We were unsure of what to expect from Sasha’s set, whether it would be a set of classics or up to date. 

Turns out that it’s by and large modern. He starts off slow, with some melodic tech-pop numbers, all twisted vocals and barebones backings. You wonder if he’s starting like this specifically to thin out the crowd (a number of beefy gym types head back upstairs), but he slowly builds up to a classic Sasha set.

We’ve never heard the term epic house being used to describe any other DJ, the term instinctively drawing a wince (there’s nothing lazier in Clubland PR than just making up a sub-genre), but here it is bang on the money. Slow and intense, maximal without being kitchen sink, it draws you in as it ever has.

The dichotomy of the night (and by extension the scene in general in Manchester) brings some brilliant moments with it. We never thought we’d see people dancing in a Juke/Footwork style to Sasha, but there a couple of guys are, and they’re clearly buzzing off it. 

Likewise we saw some older guys upstairs who will have no doubt remembered garage properly the first time round, getting down with the younger heads. Sankeys is at its best when it brings these different elements of the city together, and with dance music still looking backwards for inspiration, it’s the perfect environment for Sankeys to mix it up and show us how it’s done.

You can see all the upcoming Sankeys events here.