REVIEW OF HIT & RUN’S 12TH BIRTHDAY PARTY – HIDDEN, MANCHESTER MARCH 9TH 2019
It’s wet, dark cold and the Manchester rain is dowsing Hidden, the reclaimed mill/warehouse abandoned at the edge of Cheetham Hill and Salford. The reclaimed mill/warehouse is now home to Manchester’s underground bass music. But the grimy weather hasn’t stopped the crowds living up outside at 11pm. This is a feast of an event, with a smorgasbord of sonics, rhymes and rhythms brought together by Hit & Run’s Rich Reason to celebrate its 12th birthday. Yeah, it’s March – and Hit & Run actually started October 2006 but, hey. It takes a while to plan such a party due to the process of collecting the right DJs/MCs being akin to herding feral cats.
The club has three floors and there is no opening lull. Within the hour, the basement and first floor is packed with a mix of 18-40 year olds, all there decidedly on purpose: to dance and absorb the full vibe of a Hit & Run celebration. In the basement, LEVELZ’ producer and DJ, Metrodome, is doing a Masterchef job on just about every genre. How you go from John Legend’s ‘Ordinary People’ to a deep drum and bass boom is something only an instrumental nerd could navigate; Metrodome pulls ‘Take it slow’ on a looping spiral, dips into a dark bass, scratch and returns to the rumble. Such a mix has the early crowd screaming and jumping. And it’s only 11.30am. He weaves in garage, hard house, the Zed Bias remix of LEVELZ’ banger ‘Respect’, rewinds and then creaming off with a reinterpretation of Eurythmics’ ‘Sweet Dreams’. The guys behind me are trilled, hands in the air, not a still limb in the place. T-Man, the drum-in-a-voice MC, comes in on ‘Sex On the First Date’ and rides over Metrodome’s kaleidoscopic beats which kick in like a tyrannosaur before dissolving into a 130 bpm speeded up version of Busta Rhymes’ ‘Give Me Some More’, a whack of Snoop and Dre’s G-Funk’d ‘Pump Pump’ before locking into a pure funk jam which he reels into the soulful ‘So Real’. The screech is like a car coming to a sudden halt while T-Man pulls it forward by double-dipping his vocals under the beat, over and just in front, the hard consonant hitting every one of the 180 bpm somehow. And then slowing it right down to a follow, like a drum over a melody.
The craft of DJs and MCing is alive, kicking and growing at a precocious rate in here. On the first floor, Lenzman is gifted with Fox’s lyrics and an unfazed, nonchalant YungSwegLawd holds the cold second floor. After a no-show from Drae Da SkiMask, Black Josh pulls the vibe out from Inka and, within seven minutes, his ability to catch a rhythm like kids catch colds fires up the room. This is the guy whose MO is creating out of dust, air and every limitation, building a vibe in a vacuum til it becomes a packed room.
The first and second floor are wedged chin-to-armpit with sweating bodies and booming speakers, MC’d by Sparkz and Chunky to a frenzy over DJ Die and Calibre. Chunky is grooving to some R n B, deep soul, his SportsBanger bucket hat tipped over his nose (code for he’s in the vibe and very comfortable). ‘It’s a party, it’s a party!’ he announces as if anyone had any doubt by now.
But some sort of cultural alchemy takes place on the second floor at 2am. Live Hit & Run DJ/MC sets are not just performances in Manchester; they are studios, workshops. As Truthos Mufasa takes over from London’s eminent grime MC, Rocks Foe, Commodo and Biome go back-to-back in a booming dubstep and grime session. Truthos is on a mission to to big up birthday boy Biome and quickly conjures up his surreal vocal magic and Afro-Latinate chants, rhythms and rhymes over a now-cramming crowd. The barrier is pulled down by intense bassheads at the front before security wade in with a frown. I’m not wearing my glasses but I’m sure that there’s a slightly shorter Barack Obama in the front row wearing a fleece-vest and a fanny pack, bubbling along with the same optimistic grin, oblivious to his lack of grimy grit-core fashion. The cute girls fill up the rest of the rows around him so it must be Barack, deep undercover at a Manchester rave, having the time of his life.
There is some sort of sound magic being created here: different rhythms, tempos, a bass so deep, fluid and immense, rich in glitchy breaks and dragged down hip hop sonics. Like pollen to bees, it attracts a plethora of MCs, all with different cultures, vocab, rhythms and tones who blend together to form some sonic beast of rhyme. Chunky grabs another mic, Truthos finds another for Abnormal Sleepz and the three of them share the vocal, welcoming Slay for the final half hour who holds down a fierce series of bars.
‘I’m running out of words!’ claims Chunky. ‘Only joking – I could go on forever and ever.’ And so it seems they could but at 4.10am, well over curfew, the lights go on and the security pull the plug.
But not the party. This wasn’t just a commercial event. Nor was it just a rave. It was a lab and the real celebration is in the evidence that something new was built here tonight, some crazy kind of energy pulsing through voices, ears and bones.
Twelve years of new music collaborations, connections and a home-grown community has no room for nostalgia; Hit & Run is continually careering towards new sounds.