The Warehouse Project’s Repercussion: A Joie De Vrie of Jungle

You’re spinning. Slowly and sort of to the beat to the vaguely distant pounding that emanates deep within the cavernous walls. Depot Mayfield. Bodies bathed in burnt orange lights press against your hot skin and then push away into the masses. There is not even a blur of faces; as you can only see your own gazing reflection in their shining wraparound sunglasses – similar to the ones your dad wore when he tried out cycling a few years ago. You love them, they love you, hold their hands, hold their hair back. Shine alongside them and swallow all that is around you, before the dark tendrils of The Warehouse Project sink into your soul. 

Not a bad fate actually, if you have an ear for good music at all you won’t be able to deny the insane levels of talent that grace the Depot’s halls. Whilst I am being a tad melodramatic (yes the toilets are shit but they won’t actually eat you), it is, in the best way, absolutely a place you will get lost. No matter if you have a ‘great sense of direction’ or whatever the chronically in the loop crowd always says. You can’t fight it – just enjoy it, drown in the lights and the genuinely friendly, albeit sweaty, crowds and listen. For Repercussion, the night was dominated by Jungle, a giant band amongst dance music tycoons – beautiful in their art form, and unexpectedly even better live than they sound through my crackling Marshalls. Don’t believe me? Tough. You probably won’t if you weren’t there. Which begs the real question – why weren’t you? 

The Warehouse Project seems to exist as a cosmos that is altogether separate from the North’s infamous clubbing nightlife, and its avid music scene. Potentially a purgatory that feels exclusive to reach – with names like Berlioz, Honey Dijon and Bonobo, it seems almost too good to be true. It also exists to give everyone else a sense of FOMO – expertly engineered to agitate your reflex to believe that every TikTok is actually factual – at an age where critical thinking appears to be almost mythical. It’s elusive, yet everywhere. Growing up from catching the last x43 home from Piccadilly Gardens so I could catch just one more song in 42s – two-stepping blindly in a venue I would say rivals London’s revered raves. Who needs to when WHP is gnawing on our doorstep? Romanticise it all you like – at the end of the day it’s class music that you breathlessly try to hold a tune to (and we all know Tom McFarland’s dulcet tones are not ones that can be replicated). 

With a spotlight on excellent female artists, led by Honey Djion and Jayda G –  I was glad Repercussion ran from day into night. To catch Mancunian neo-soul duo Children of Zeus, and Manchester/Berlin-based experimentalists Space Afrika. With 7 stages there was still always something to see, another corridor to get lost into, and another stage to discover yet another ray of talent amongst a sky of such.