Review: Derrick Carter @ Sankeys, Manchester

30th Jul 2010

When: July 24th 2010

Reviewed by: Oli Byrne

Derrick Carter is, to be fair, a house legend. So I was pretty excited to to be seeing him for the first time alongside another prolific house producer, DJ T.

Upon entering the bar at Sankeys I heard a personal fave of mine, Nathan Fake’s ‘The Sky Was Pink’ - surely a sign of a god night ahead of us. After catching up with a few mates and having a few beers, we headed off into the main room to catch tonight's warm-up, Get Physical co-founder DJ T.

I was impressed with DJ T’s recent Fabric mix, so was looking forward to hearing plenty of stripped back vocal house tracks, but with a serious groove. House music was indeed the name of the game here, and there was serious groove, but it certainly wasn’t stripped back - DJ T choosing to play far more chunky house tracks to get the Sankeys crowd warmed up. Playing all sorts of house from a lot of eras, DJ T even delved into some fairly 2-step sounding stuff, not to the crowd's enjoyment. After about an hour and a half of this the crowd seemed to grow restless and I could see they wanted more pace, as did we, so off we headed upstairs to Spektrum.

Date: Saturday 24th July 2010
Event: Sankeys Saturday Carnival: Derrick Carter, DJ T at Sankeys
Venue: Sankeys
Artists: Derrick Carter

Here there was a bit more pace with some energetic tech house being played. Loads of nice build-ups and rolling grooves. After half an hour of being upstairs it was 3am, and we headed back down to the basement to see the main man himself, Derrick Carter.

After being warmend up a bit more in Spektrum, I was glad to see that Carter immediately stepped up the energy in the main room and started playing what I honestly have to say was one of the most dancable sets I have ever heard. Mixing seamlessley between techno and house, new and old, keeping energy levels high at all times. There isn't really much more to say, other than it really was one of the most enjoyable times I’ve had in Sankeys - despite the slow start. The only thing I would have preferred was if Carter had come on slightly earlier than 3am.

On a final note, I must say the music in the bar from the Rayon Vert boys was fantastic everytime I went in to get a drink.

Find out more about Derrick Carter here.

Find more events at Sankeys here.

Tickets are no longer available for this event