Club: Yousef presents Circus @ Transmission

7th February

Albert Hall

7/10

With the Warehouse Project now having shut up until next season, Transmission has stepped up to fill the gap it has left in the city’s nightlife. DJ and producer Yousef selected tonight’s roster of talent.

Ten Walls took to the stage shortly before midnight, by which point the room was full to bursting point. From the vantage point of the first floor balcony, looking over a sea of ravers grooving away, it was impossible not to get swept up in the rapturous atmosphere. Ten Walls (a.k.a Marijus Adomaitis) played an ambitious hour-long set, despite his rather limited repertoire of material. However what his set lacked in quantity, more than made up for it in quality, with the crowd reacting wildly to ‘Gotham’ and ‘Requiem’ in turn, and to early hints of ‘Walking with Elephants’. Ten Walls’s visual and light show was second to none on the night, with ten beams of light cutting down vertically into the crowd at throughout the set.

As ‘Walking with Elephants’ brought Ten Walls’s set to a raucous close, hotly anticipated duo Dusky took to the stage. The euphoric set that followed was truly one of the best that I’ve seen during my time in Manchester. Highlights of Dusky’s set including the thumping ‘Inta’, with it’s eerie horns blaring echoing through the room, and the old skool ‘Yoohoo’, with its glorious piano backing sending the Albert Hall into a frenzy.

With Dusky’s set having flown by, it was down to Yousef and then Sasha to close the night. The former played a rather uninteresting set, bar the tech sounds of ‘For The Terraces’, which briefly returned the crowd to Dusky levels of activity.

Ultimately Transmission felt a lot more fun and less serious than the Warehouse Project, which I think was partly due to the incredible venue. There are still plenty of Transmission nights still to come, so it’s definitely worth trying to sample some of its unique atmosphere if you can.