On Saturday night The Flightpath Estate DJ team (me, Martin and Dan this time, the Flightpath's northern branch) supported Pye Corner Audio and Shunt Voltage at The Yard in Cheetham Hill, north of Manchester city centre, a gig put on by Paul Watt and Beautiful Burnouts. The Yard is a lovely venue, an old Victorian building turned into a one room gig space and was close to sold out, 250 tickets sold. We had three slots- an hour before Shunt Voltage (an ambient/ dub hour), a twenty minute interval between the two acts and then an hour after Pye Corner Audio had finished to entertain anyone who decided to stick around.
The ambient hour was fine, we played two tracks each in rotation and gave the room and gathering crowd some warm up music. We were set up on the stage, next to Pye Corner's kit and Shunt Voltage's equipment. A laser show was also set up for added visual entertainment.
I was at the decks when the Shunt Voltage duo took the stage, just one track into my two. One of Shunt Voltage had to reboot his laptop so I stayed at the decks and then when they were ready to go cued up something so that when Shunt Voltage had finished I could just go back on stage and hit play.
Shunt Voltage were really good, two men, a bank of synths and laptops, some FX pedals and a microphone which each member used at different times, gnomic repetitive phrases delivered over the crunching electronic sounds. At times it sounded like Mark E. Smith (aptly as The Fall have a song called Cheetham Hill) playing with early 80s Cabaret Voltaire/ late 80s 808 State, full on rhythms and bursts of synth noise and samples and a series of projections behind them that fitted the music perfectly. Manchester music- not the kind that's filled stadiums this summer but the more underground and leftfield electronic/ industrial/ acid techno that's as much part of the city's heritage as the guitars are.
Resistor
As they completed their set and took their applause I slipped onto the stage behind the decks, waited a few seconds and then hit play. I'd been deliberating about whether to keep the thumpy, electronic energy in the room going, keeping the beats and bpms where Shunt Voltage had left them, or whether I should cool it down. Pye Corner Audio was likely to start with some slow, beatless, ambient stuff I thought but also I reckoned he'd have the audience eating out of the palm of his hand so I decided to keep the uptempo energy going. I hit play and James Holden's Blackpool Late Eighties boomed out. I fiddled with a few knobs, adjusted a few buttons and looked up...
It seemed like at that exact moment every single person in the packed out room was looking at me- instantly DJ imposter syndrome shot through me, 'What am I doing up here? What the fuck do I do next? How did I end up in this situation?' A bit nerve wracking.
Heads were nodding I noticed and I quickly looked down, deciding to ignore them all and concentrate on cueing up the next track, getting it in exactly the right place to mix from deck A to deck B and pray I didn't mess up the transition. I slid the fader across and Jon Hopkins' remix of Daniel Avery's Glitter boomed into The Yard, tough, slo mo four four techno drums and a growing synth noise intensity. I was a minute or two into when Pye Corner Audio appeared next to me and I wondered if he was a bit pissed off that I'd gone a bit too hard- not that there was much I could do about it at that point, I was committed. He got his kit up and running, I mixed into a third track and then he gave me a smile and nod that he was ready to start. I hit the pause button, the track juddered for a few seconds and then I cut the noise.
This picture shows what seemed to be two hundred and fifty pairs of eyes scrutinising my every move. It makes me feel a little anxious just looking at it.
Pye Corner Audio started off with some very ambient synth sounds, quietening the room completely. Some brief interludes of sounds, bubbles and whirrs and then an FXed but recognisable voice came over the PA, Andrew Weatherall talking about smoke and music and coloured lights, acid house as gnostic ceremony. For the next hour Pye Corner was superb, gradually building the set, bringing in rhythms and bass, a larger and entrancing sound. Behind a lot of his tracks and sounds there's a sense of unease, the discomfort and folk horror of 70s public information films mixed with Cold War dread filtered through acid house and rave. The set built- no real gaps between tracks just a seamless segue from to another or the briefest of pauses, the crowd bobbed along, heads nodding, hands waved around, some dancing near the front. It was a superb hour of electronic ambient/ acid house synth music with this track at the heart of it...
Pye Corner finished by bringing the FXed and filtered Andrew Weatherall sample back. I'm not sure if he knows about The Flightpath Estate and our connections to Andrew's music but if not it was a lovely connection and coincidence.
There's something about Pye Corner Audio's music I associate with lockdown. During the 2020- 21 period Martyn Jenkins dropped new tracks onto Bandcamp monthly and the subterranean, dystopic element in his music fitted with those times- but the warmth and communal spirit that is filtered through much of them was equally appropriate, a small community of people isolated from each other physically but listening to the same music via the internet. These things passed through my mind as the projections flashed away and the music filled the Victorian school room.
After Pye Corner Audio ended his set we played some more tunes, from 10.30 through until 11.15, a hardy crew of dancers hanging around for more fun. It was pissing down outside so staying indoors and listening to our acid/ techno disco was the lesser of two evils. Dan got up and played David Harrow's AanDee, a track from Sounds From The Flightpath Estate Volume 2 named after Mr Weatherall and Martyn (Pye Corner) asked about a couple of tunes we'd played, later sending a message to Flightpath Martin saying it was really good night and 'felt like a proper rave'. We kept playing, enjoying the freedom and the sound system. We got some good pictures out of it too. Amazing what coloured lights, smoke and music can do.