Review: Godskitchen From Russian With Love @ MEN

Now i'm not sure what I expected from Godskitchen when they decided to call their latest event 'From Russia with Love', but well, I expected at least something different. On arrival to the Manchester Evening News arena, you could tell it was going to be a good night with a massive que snaking round the building, luckily for us it proved no problem to pick up our tickets and gained quick entry into the arena (though we are sorry to hear that the organisers didn't manage the same for our competition winners)

Rather confusingly we found what turned out to be the house 'room' first, this was basically a DJ on a platform in the main corridor, a rather popular little area, conviently situated between the toilets, the drinking water and a hole in the wall, aka, the bar. Having ourselves a boogie for at least an hour in this mad little setup, it dawned on us that we hadn't actually checked out where the other 7000 or so people must be, so loading ourselves with cider, we set out to find the main room.

After several attempts at entering the main arena through a number of doors, to be greeted with either 'no entry', 'this is only a down door' or 'not at the moment it's too busy', we blagged a stewards head in to let us past, only to find he had let us through completely the wrong door and we were heading down behind the dj booth, an area which looked no fun at all, caused me to rip my jeans and certainly not safe for dancing, at least gave us an excellent view of the main arena, however a view is only half the picture, and back up the stairs we went, finally finding the correct set of stairs.

Anyone who has been to the arena will know that it is of a nice amphitheatre layout, stepped seating all the way round a main floor area. You had to walk down the seating to get onto the main floor, the top of which provided an excellent view of what looked like a sell out event, with the main flloor rammed with people, and the seating areas which were open also nicely covered with those in need of a rest. Now back to the Russia thing. I'm not sure what I had expected, and as many people know i'm not one to judge a night on it's production skills - I go for the music. But surely if you name your night 'From Russia with love' then you surely at least hang a few flags in the air, or have all the arsy stewards dressed up as Stalin? The main room was simply that, an arena with a stage, a big Godskitchen logo and a screen for the DJ. Nowt special about that. The lighting represented nothing in particular, an average collection of bits and bobs hanging from a ceiling rig next to a couple of mobile angels (the gods logo), you got the feeling that the how to organise an arena event checklist, well they forgot to tick the box that said 'production'

DJ wise, we caught a little of Marco V that can be remembered, the rest just came and went (obviously) and presumambly did a good enough job as the dance floor stayed busy throughout. Realistically speaking, we were loving the house corridor a lot more and ventured back that way to grab some more pics and get a decent boogie in before the night was over. Oliver lang proved his worth ten times over, the man is an absolute legend in his own right, rocking the corridor (floor) with all the current favs alongside some house classics. This man alone was worth the journey and very much look forward to catching up with him again in the future.

All in all, a good night, it wasn't mind blowing by any means but certainly nothing to get upset about, maybe i've just grown out of events like this. Missing the train home to end up at a randoms house certainly added to the occasion, by the time we finally made it home I was well ready for Corrie. Must say something that...