Review: Tangled 21st Birthday

Photo: Tangled / Credit: Hybridesque Photography

Remember when breakbeat was everywhere? Plump DJs (below) were headlining Homelands (remember Homelands?), all the Hollywood movies depicted raves playing Freq Nasty and everyone listened to 'Never, Never, Land' on a Monday morning. However as clubland knows all too well that what comes up must come down, and the relentless winds of ‘new’ eventually moved on...

...almost. There has been one club night in Manchester that has been there throughout the lifespan of breakbeat (and trance in the second room). That night long ago earned your respect (probably when Disclosure were busy raving to the Teletubbies), that night is Tangled.

I started going to Tangled when I first moved to Manchester 10 years ago. Back then it was at the Phoenix, and had been running for 11 years already. The set up was, and would remain, straightforward - breakbeat in one room, trance and house in another... and no frills. It was famed for having a dedicated, regular, older crowd, and as a young clubber it gave me a valuable lesson in what a safe, inclusive crowd looked like.

Over the years I drifted away as my groups of friends and tastes changed. When The Phoenix closed it moved to Sound Control, but the odd time over the years that I went back I found that it had maintained much of the vibe (the door staff in particular have always had a lightness of touch not seen in other Manchester Clubs), and had the same residents blasting out the same classics. So when I saw that the last ever Tangled would be on 6th September, I had to go.

I wasn’t alone in making the pilgrimage. It seemed that everybody there were old regulars, coming to pay their respects (the timetable was named ‘The Order of Service’). The crowd was heavily the wrong/right side of 30, I met one lady in the queue who was set there to celebrate her 50th birthday, having been throwing it down in ’97. Absolutely everyone there was up for it from the start, and determined to last the distance (I saw that same woman at 3AM, arms aloft). 

The guests booked were Darren Emerson and Hybrid. Darren Emerson was in the loft, and played a storming set of blissful techno. Honestly I was loving it, but I had to move on, you can hear techno anywhere these days, tonight was always going to be about the breakbeat for me.

Hybrid played a killer set, showcasing the full range of breaks, whilst focusing on their own, cinematic style (as heard above). It shows how much the crowd wanted to savour every moment that when there was an iFail barely a soul left for the three minutes it took to reboot.

The real highlights were the residents though. Steve Thorpe played a couple of sets spanning the whole history of breakbeat, and Terry Pointon played a classic euphoric trance set for the believers reliving Ibiza seasons of old. 

The night was purposefully undersold, so it never felt too packed (even in the middle floor that’s a natural bottleneck). As we left I couldn’t help wondering where the older crowd can go now in Manchester for a good night out, without having to deal with any idiots or their nonsense.

Well, for starters, there’s the afterparty...