MANCHESTER

SANKEYS

VENUES, OCTOBER 2006, COMMENTS

Ranked alongside the Hacienda and Twisted Wheel, Sankeys Soap was one of the most celebrated underground institutions in Manchester. In June of this year, the great venue at Jersey Street’s Beehive Mill closed, this time to be refitted, repackaged and renamed as simply Sankeys. The changes to the venue have been legion, and involve the designs, interior layout, financial structure and operation of the venue. Ideas for the project have been at the back of owner David Vincent’s mind for about a year now, he says, but they were explored with greater urgency following the departure of partner Sacha Lord Marchionne in January. Since 2000 the pair had carried out the often grimey task of opening up the club at the weekends for two nights of essential underground music, and creating the venue’s new future has involved saying goodbye to an incredible past.

Whether it was original, seminal electro/tech house shindig Bugged Out! or more recently Tribal Sessions and the Red Light, the selection of guests that have played at the place is unrivalled. Derrick Carter, Masters At Work, Danny Tenaglia, Carl Cox and Dave Clarke have rubbed shoulders with Squarepusher, The Chemical Brothers and even Bjork. The venue had built a reputation for breaking new music, and for a long time Sankeys Soap was a barometer of the future health of house.

David is enthusiastic about deconstructing this great club and recreating it according to his vision - and there is no nostalgia for the bygone era. Talking to NIGHT during the construction stage of the new venue, Vincent says decisively: “I don’t want to talk about the past, I want to create a venue that I feel comfortable in again.”

The founding idea behind the new Sankey’s is to push the music deeper underground whilst attracting promoters to expand the number of nights from two to five. The music policy will showcase cutting edge DJs handpicked by Sankeys resident and musical director Greg Vickers. The money that was spent on the DJs has been put back into creating a sexier venue, as David explains.

“We’re taking it back to the way that Sankeys Soap was right at the beginning, with proper underground music that rather than those top name DJs. It became a dirty underground club that booked superstar DJs. The new Sankeys has a clean futuristic dynamic and the music policy is changing. We believe so much in the product that people will come in here and they won’t give a fuck who is playing but know the music will be great. And that the venue will look the bollocks.

“Why pay a few hundred thousand on superstar DJs? Some of the best new music is coming from underneath, and we know how to find it. So we put that money back in the quality of the club. You have a big name DJ to bring the people in but if the club isn’t up to it then you won’t get the repeat business.

The experience is going to be a lot more about the venue rather than the DJs. We played the best of underground, but with no musical consistency or sense of ourselves. So we’d have the Plumps one week, Sasha the next, Jeff Mills after that. We weren’t getting regular crowds, just that kind of one-off crowds you see at gigs. So initially we’re going for a new sound, and through the design we’re trying to make the club reflect the sound.”

To do this, Dave bought in Clive Powell and Ian Hewitt from Retail Theatre Ltd to create a beautiful new venue, including a unique lighting concept, that would attract outside interest and iron out some lingering structural problems of Sankeys Soap. Dave and Clive carried out a whistle stop tour of their favourite clubs, taking cues from The Cross, Fabric, The End, Ibiza’s DC10 and a host of New York clubs - and elements of these are evoked throughout the new look Sankey’s. The structural changes were the first to be decided, and were carried out with precision timing by Clarke Gough Joinery Ltd - the venue was up and running with a week to spare. The company completely sound proofed the venue, whilst the old entrance, with its stiletto-snagging cobbles and outdoor cloakroom, has been moved from Jersey Street to Radium Street on the opposite side of the building. The DJ booth has been moved from the far end and given a prominent position over the dance floor. A brand new bar has been installed near what is now the entrance, kitted out in raunchy fetish colours.

“The weirdest thing has been moving the DJ booth to where everyone can see it,” says David. “And getting rid of that L-shaped design that the old club was famous for. It got rid of the dark corners and sound problems too, so no one can misbehave, which has reassured the local council, local developers and the police.”

The main room has been given a new lighting concept by Retail Theatre in conjunction with lighting engineer Andy Akka, who has had a prolific history of creating lighting concepts for independent Manchester venues, including One Central Street and Chorlton’s Chroma restaurant. The concept is unprecedented - there are no parcans or moving heads, just a grid of RGB LED strips that lines the ceiling and walls of the main room. Dubbed ‘the cage’ by David, the installation frames the entire space in a literal cage of colour changing strips. At the DJ box LED fixtures have been stacked to resemble a digital EQ, with the light programmed to bounce up and down in time with the music. In the upstairs room, the same fixtures have been used to slowly alternate the mood of the room, projecting the whole spectrum on to the room’s white-washed walls over the course of a club night. Akka has a knack for the psychological. The downstairs ‘cage’ design causes the venue to feel larger than it is, whilst the upstairs fixtures can be programmed to change at an imperceptible rate, causing the punter to ‘suddenly’ notice that the venue has changed colour.

Explains Akka: “We’re moving away from the whole parcan and moving head thing and have tried to come up with something completely distinctive. We have a five channel by five channel LED grid, and a projector to display visuals from a PC across the back of the club. The sequences rock back and forth over the grid, or light up the whole set for really explosive moments. We’ve also installed a fog machine to provide some low lit haze at the entrance so that people get really excited about the lighting as they come through the door.”

The more chilled upstairs room has been designed by Clive and Ian as a breezy, natural room, complete with nine foot Bonsai trees and floral wallpapers, that has been squarely aimed at the girls. Clive explained that the design of the room owed much to the influence of Ibizan terraces.

“We wanted something that would completely dispel the old image of a grimey music box. The downstairs venue has the music function down pat, but up here the white walls, flowery motifs and the trees evoke an outdoorsy Ibizan summer. It is a venue that will appeal to the girls, not least because it done in flattering bright light, and the idea is that girls - and boys - like to get dressed up and be looked at. So this is a great venue for looking good, whilst continuing to have a credible music policy.”

Of the various changes to the design, policy and personnel at the venue over the last six months, one key element has been respectfully left untouched: the awesome Steve Long-designed Phazon sound system that’s played a key role in rocketing the club’s popularity to stratospheric levels. The sound is still as formidably punchy as ever and, thanks to the new sound-proofing, allows the DJs to explore the acoustic limits of the club.

“The speakers had to stay in the same position,” says David. “ I wouldn’t allow a change - it made no sense to me to rearrange the speakers for no reason. We’ve always built this club around the sound, rather than the other way around. It would have killed me to change a sound system that still inspires me every time I hear it. We’ve got the best renowned system in the world - and it’s not broke, so we don’t fix it.”

Keen to expand the number of trading nights, Vincent argues that the sound system has been a powerful draw for new promoters, while the new deigns have given the venue a hitherto unobtainable flexibility. The home grown evenings will now rub shoulders with top name outsiders: Club NME nights will see regular live music played in Sankeys for the first time in its history, while the weekend will see Bitch, a mixed/gay night, opening on Sundays. Throw in to this diversity a new emphasis on customer care, and we begin to see the ambitious scope of David Vincent’s new operation.

“Sankeys Soap wasn’t a greatly run operation, and we had a few service flaws,” he admits. “Right from the beginning of this project we concentrated on the bars and the operation. We’ve made sure that the bar team works in a totally slick and professional way. We have a waiter service, and we get the tables cleaned quickly, and if a customer has a problem it’s sorted immediately. That’s a big difference. The club will be much more about customer service than lining the pocket of a big name DJ.”

The project also sees local independent operators Andy Spiro and Ross Mackenzie investing in the venue, a pair who will continue to provide financial management and operational support to the project. The presence of Mackenzie and Spiro, who returns to Sankeys having started it all over a decade ago, has given David the confidence to ring in further changes to the venue in the coming months. Eventually, the courtyard and outer buildings will be put back into service.

“We will utilise that area but there’s no point doing it at the moment,” says David of the space. “I think we’ll wait until April, and then when the smoking ban kicks in we will provide a smoking space with some wow factor. There’ll be a garden, and maybe a fake beach area or a jacuzzi for use in the summer. There’s also a garage here that we’d like to turn into a cinema and a bar, a kind of space that will be to Sankeys something like what AKA has been to The End. Andy and Ross have been so useful, and Clive and Ian at Retail Theatre have been just incredible. Those guys, Andy Akka and the builders Clark Gough Joinery Ltd have been a Godsend – they’ve shown total professionalism throughout all this. ”

A blistering Tribal Sessions launch party was held on 22 September, with the various components of the new club - the cage lighting feature, the upstairs summer atmosphere and the astonishing sound system working together to create a head turning venue, filled to capacity with an excited crowd who finally got to see the new venue, and dance to an outstanding homecoming set from Vickers. Sankeys is both a fitting tribute to Sankeys Soap and a bright new underground outfit that is set to make another strong contribution to Manchester’s musical heritage.

Words: Leo Batchelor

Images: Jim Ellam

From: October 2006 Issue

Subscribe to NIGHT magazine

comments

	No comments yet

Add Comment