Drifting off (a) on my sofa, or (b) to see Underworld – delete as appropriate

Yesterday started off normal. A couple of hours on work emails, paid off a boiler repair, noshed on an overcooked pub fry-up, tootled around erranding a few errands, and finally a bus ride home during which I decided to have a nice night in.

After all, I'm getting on a bit, and I sprained my foot slipping on ice at the weekend, and I was feeling a lot better but definitely needed an evening at home in front of a warm radiator and a nice cold Netflix.

And then I saw this tweet.

Back home in Manchester for Warehouse Project tonight - We got lasers!

Tickets: https://t.co/xe1owL5c76@WHP_Mcr #Manchester #WHP#TONIGHT #UnderworldLIVE pic.twitter.com/ueYQ4gRCU3

— Underworld (@underworldlive) December 5, 2019

What? Underworld in Manchester? Why did my butler not tell me about this? I got off the bus. I bought a ticket on my phone. Three hours later, this happened.

I didn't even know they were playing in Manchester tonight. A nice last-minute surprise.

(Volume warning: loud cheers at end.) pic.twitter.com/13aIho5TCo

— Fat Roland (@FatRoland) December 5, 2019

Underworld were phenomenal, with such an infectious energy. How can you not dance when Karl Hyde is gyrating and prancing and flapping and gurning? He's Tyres from Spaced. We all love Tyres from Spaced.

A few days ago, I was laid up with a swollen foot the size of a small Bavarian hamlet. And here I was at the front of an Underworld gig, dancing like an electrocuted narwhal, exchanging hugs and high-fives with absolute strangers.

And what strangers! Hello in particular to the soft-faced woman who was heavily into the Drift series, the pensioner asking for drugs who turned out to be in his 30s, and the Biffy Clyro wannabe who punched his way to the front rail only to have the tallest man in the universe tell him to fudge off loudly until he actually fudged off.

And to think I had planned to spend the evening spilling over the sides of my sofa shoving blocks of lard into my dribbling mouth while skipping through Adam Sandler films looking for the jokes. Fast-forward all you want, Fats, you'll never find them.

Thanks, Underworld, for an unexpected night out. I once blogged in the style of Underworld and compared Underworld to toast. Tonight I became one with them, and I didn't even puke up my overcooked fry-up.

Further Fats: Overheard conversation... (2005)

Further Fats: A low-denominator, low-rent scally by any other name would smell like sweets (2007)

"Vincent Gray. I do remember you. Quiet, very smart, compassionate. Unusually compassionate." "You forgot cursed. YOU FAILED ME!" Bang.*

Bogling on down to the Warehouse Project last night was a bit like-- hold on, my blog-writing lamp has just blown.

Crikes, I've so many bulbs. Why on earth did I buy those coloured bulbs? Oh, there we go: a pack of small Ikea bulbs. Let me just screw this in...

That's better. I can see now.

As I was saying, snooking on down to the Warehouse Project last night was a bit like popping in on an old friend. It was keeping much better since it packed bags and left the cavernous Boddington's Brewery site, and in a snuggly way, it felt like home.

That is until about one in the morning.

You see, the line-up was strong on paper. And there's no doubt that The Whip (record cover pictured) rocked the roof off the place, and Late Of The Pier were head-noddingly spiffing. The DJs, including Simian Mobile Disco, were nothing short of phatasmagorical.

But the rot set in with a dull set from Tricky which was so mired in muddy sound and fearsome feedback, it was just unlistenable.

And then, a terrible thing happened. I can't even bear to write it.

Deep breath.

Reverend And The Makers played. The exact thing I didn't need last night was a cacophonous brew of macho posturing held together by a lead singer who wants to be Tom Cruise in Top Gun but is really just that dribbling guy in his underpants who shoots Bruce Willis at the start of Sixth Sense.

My ears bled. Hammer-headed lyrics. Blundering rhythm. Audience interaction that barely rose above swearing, shit-faced football-chanting moronicism.

Everyone who likes Reverend And The Makers is a crass, sputum-eared simpleton. Oh, I'm angry now.

I've just smashed my lamp. I'm going back to bed.

*that's the guy in Sixth Sense shooting Bruce Willis, by the way. Did you know the underpants guy was played by New Kid On The Block Donnie Wahlberg? You do now.

"I am the trigger for your gun" suggests a relationship that isn't exactly balanced*

Pancake Day, National Novel Writing Month, Healthy Eating Day, National Ketamine Month.

These are events to be respected and celebrated. Especially the last one.

That's why I'm standing on the steps of my palace, gleaming trumpet in hand, and declaring March the National Month Of The Whip.

I caught their barnstormer Trash on XFM whilst me and a few chums were bombing it down to Wales this weekend. Whilst there is every excuse to gnash teeth and rip clothes at the demise of a great radio station, there is every reason to be optimistic for The Whip.

The Whip are the best thing to come out of Manchester since Doves. They're like Gary Numan and Underworld falling into a blender, being poured into Apollo 440's cup, topped with Daft Punk's nuts, and drunk by New Order's Peter Hook.

You can boogie with them at The Warehouse Project on March 21st or buy their debut long-player X Marks Destination two weeks today.

Or you can ogle them in a cracking performance (whip, crack, geddit?) at last year's DPercussion in this here video link here.

I really should buy some fancier robes for announcements of national significance. These are covered in cat hairs.

*the actual line is "I have become the trigger for your gun" but this didn't fit into the space. Editorial decision. Or summat.

DEEPER FRIED FAT: RIP TONY, GRAAH UM

A low-denominator, low-rent scally by any other name would smell like sweets

When I was young and unwrinkly, I went flyposting to promote a night called Automa.

In my misty dreamcloud memory, I wore a hooded top and tried to look street despite spilling wallpaper paste all over my trousers.

It was a partial success. Manchester was plastered with Automa posters right up to the point where I got chased out the city by some bad boy gangster types.

You try running when your legs are stuck together.

It was no surprise, then, to find these Warehouse Project posters discarded near my house. They advertise the weekend just gone, headlined by the leg-end in his own lunchbox Dave Clarke.

The perpretrators of this oft-tolerated crime of flyposting have probably been strangled by some razor sharp bling or, even worse, been made to listen to a 50 Cent album all the way through.

Or maybe, just maybe, they couldn't be arsed and went to the pub instead.

There's an art to a good poster. These ones promoting the Warehouse Project are instantly recognisable thanks to a basic template they use for all of them.

Thank goodness too for Bill Drummond's understanding of a poster that does what it says on the tin, or Underworld's eye for a brilliant image.

Just save us please from the anti-Christ of quality, the Bop.

This infernal itch of a night continues to drown Manchester in low-denominator low-rent advertising that promises, "whilst the rest of club land goes high class, the Bop remains true to its roots... drinks prices are still dangerously low."

They add, "a relaxed dress code means you do get the odd scally". There is no other kind of scally, surely?

This blog post has been brought to you by my inflated middle-class Grauniad-reading ego. I'm off to clean my trousers.

Store Street blues: waddling with the scrotes, the clubbers and the tokers

I'm trotting under a brick-clad bridge down what feels like a road to oblivion when a wiry scroat of a man asks me for money.
Or rather, he asks me for the time. Then money.
I put on my skint face, apologise and walk on. He summons all his fury and describes what he's going to to with my skull if I don't cough up cash.
With a dark but open street ahead, I hurry on to safety with his threats ringing off the brickwork behind me.
Store Street has never been my favourite road in Manchester. I have to make it safe somehow.
If only I'd had The Tattooed Bouncer with me. He was a vicious looking gentleman with ink all over his head, and he impressed me once at a Plaid gig by dragging a casual drug toker out of the Music Box by his throat.
When I say 'impressed', I mean 'terrified'.
But sadly he has died, a claim the deceased bouncer has since owned up to according to local news reports. Fat use for next time I waddle down Store Street.
Here's another idea for making Store Street safe. When there's thrills and pills in abundance, you don't get threats of violence, so maybe someone would be kind enough to convert the street into a clubber's paradise.
Maybe, just maybe, we could bribe some of the great names to spin some plastic mp3s: Armand Van Helden, Layo & Bushwacka!, Dave Clarke, High Contrast, Jeff Mills, Aphex Twin.
I'm free this weekend, so it could run from then until, say, New Year's Eve. It's a crazy idea, and it will never happen. Hold on, the phone's ringing...
...yes? Store Street, yes. Behind Piccadilly train station.... they're doing what? The Warehouse what?
It seems my Store Street blues are over for a while. Maybe now I could walk arm in arm / headlock with the Deceased Bouncer, with scroats fleeing in the other direction down my brick-clad road to oblivion.
Thank you, Warehouse Project: you are about to make the city a more magical place.

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.

It's a project; it's in a warehouse

Time for a Fat Roland night out! Sequence held part two of their Warehouse Sessions last Friday, featuring Autechre, LFO and Massonix, with support from DJs Surgeon, Rob Hall and residents Mark Turner and the Computer Controlled DJs.

Fil and I arrived in the pouring rain at Boddington's Brewery, which has been converted into a haven for lightstick-waving gurners. The Warehouse Project is a great name for the venue on two counts: (1) it's in a warehouse and (2) it is a project, so it won't last forever.

Unusually for us, we got there too early. This is okay because as middle-class toffs, we would have been mortified if we had arrived too late for the watercress sandwiches and the green tree and stilton soup.

>Arms & legs

After wasting time thinking about how we were going to last 'til six in the morning, we each cut off an arm and a leg for a three-quarter pint of beer. It was cheaper to buy a meal than drink a beer.

Half way through the night, we bumped into two guys who were here for the house music night next door. We invited them into our techno ghetto, but they said something along the lines of they would rather cheese-grate their eyeballs whilst being fed their own liquidised fingers. Or they said they'd rather hear music to dance to. One or the other, not sure which.

Apparently, Maggot from the Goldie Lookin Chain was there. This is a random fact and had no bearing upon our evening.

>Rita

I'd better talk about the music. The soundsystem is notoriously quiet, but I expected as much, so I wasn't disappointed. Unlike a few months ago when I went to Alton Towers to find Rita was shut. I mean, really.

I hadn't heard Graham Massey's Massonix before, but I was more than au fait with his 808 State beat combo. It was much of the same: rich, complex, beautiful, a man clearly enjoying throwing everything into the mix and smoothing it over with analogue fuzziness.

>Lazers

LFO were suitably over-serious, with monotone visuals reacting to every metronomic bleep. But the highlight for me was Autechre. Accompanied by a great lazer show (wooo!), their usual fare of disjointed percussion and clattery clicks sounded absolutely fabulous darling. You could hear every whir and every spap. ("Spap" is the only way I can describe Autechre's sound sometimes.)

I didn't gurn, nor did I wave a light stick, but it was nice to hear some top quality electronica / IDM at a gig for a change. And this is someone who went to Take That earlier in the year, so I know me gigs, me.

Ten places I want to see Autechre played

I'm off to see uber-techno-super-gods Autechre on Friday. I'm as excited as pink buckets because you never hear Autechre played in regular pubs and clubs; it's usually all Beyonce Aguilera and the Arctic Monks and suchlike.

Here are ten places I want to see Autechre played:

>At the final of the X Factor. I want to see Ben / Bobby / Betty / whoever warble You Raise Me Up to the sound of synthesisers mating over hot coals.

>At the start of most Sanctus 1 services (this already happens - I'm just plugging them).

>In the heels of every trainer shoe ever sold in the UK. The frequencies should phase out anything that comes out of a scally's mobile phone speakers.

>From speakers fitted into the side of planes, so when they fly low over your house, instead of getting the roar of the engines, they would emit a deafening analogue C major seventh.

>On the Quite Early Show in April 2007, although I doubt my co-presenter Lee would allow it as he likes girl's music.

>As muzak in the lobby of the entrance hall to the parallel universe to which I have been digging a tunnel for the past sixteen years. I've been digging with Christening spoons and hiding the soil in Paddington Bear toy coat pockets, so that my escape plan from this universe won't be discovered by Barbie and Ken who watch over me all day from their ivory watchtowers made not of ivory, but of lego and poo.

>On the moon. Obviously.

>Behind Bjork's voice. She's used Graham Massey and Mark Bell as producers, so the Autechre boys seem like a logical step.

>On a stage in a big Ten Mile-style stand-off between Autechre and 808 State. The Manchester band that comes up with the most original, fartiest sound wins, and the hyped-up audience will mimik TB303 sounds in celebration.

>On my CD player. Well, technically, in my CD player, not on it.

I may have to settle for that last one, although I'm still holding out hope for the parallel universe.