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Aug 8, 2007

This is the future: some pilled-up nutter going wild as a retro dance-rock beat combo plays a dead festival




I think we all learnt something from this year's DPercussion.

The demise of this fabulous festival has taught me Manchester is no longer a place that wallows in past glory. We have slain Maine Road, consigned Factory to history, hacked the Hacienda to pieces. The Warehouse Project at the doomed Boddingtons brewery was as much of a goodbye as a hello (although the Project is back soon).

And now the live music extravaganza that rose from the IRA explosion of 1996 has at last imploded. The drum has ceased beating for DPercussion. The band has put its instruments down. The dancing is but a shuffling memory. The metaphor has stretched far beyond the field of flogged horses.

So good job then I got round to discovering The Whip. They remind me of Underworld, Lo Fidelity Allstars and, yes, even Apollo 440. Fresh from their appearance at Manchester International Festival, they rocked the roof off DPercussion, which is damn impressive in an open air arena.

Above, there's a video of The Whip performing Trash, my highlight of the DPercussion set, although this particular show is in somewhere called "Bris-Tol".

And below is a fellow raver at the DPercussion Whip gig caught on the Fat Roland mobile phone. I suspect some wag swapped his Nytol for battery acid.

It ain't what you've got, it's how you shake it.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous4:27 PM

    I'm really sad about dpercussion, I always seemed to bump into people I knew in previous lives when I went there and it gave me a good excuse to go to Manchester. On the flip side, my brother did get headbutted there last year. Swings and roundabouts, eh?

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