Asylum @ Bowlers - Review

It’s six o’clock in the evening and a cold shroud of white has cast itself over the massive Manchester massive. Outside Bowlers club it’s like the setting of Empire Strikes Back. Snow, snow, and a bit more snow, yet the queue is already reaching the length you’d expect for the hot sunny afternoon at Alton Towers. Then…from out of nowhere (well the other side of the car park actually) comes a stunning fireworks display to let the crowd know that the doors were about to open. Whistles, horns, cheers and alarms ring out loud. The crowd were ready to party and so were we.

Luckily or us our names were down on the good ole’ guest list and five minutes later we were in, watching hungry hoards of happy revellers pile through the doors. (The security were friendly and courteous upon entering the club and were in good spirits).

Moving on we decided to put our jackets quickly into the cloakroom, as we could already see a rather large queue forming. Waiting in the queue gave us time to reflect upon the night ahead of us. For those of you who haven’t had the chance to witness Bowlers yet, it’s a converted warehouse complex consisting of a labyrinth of rooms capable of holding 5,000 people.

It started nearly five years ago as life and was totally uplifting house, until June 1996 when the Asylum came along. This Happy Hardcore and Techno night turned the North on it’s head with the massive topline ups at every event. So New Years Eve the promoters Mat, Jason and Joanne decided to do something a little different to previous years. Rather than keep the main arena as Life playing house all night, it was house for the first three hours then the Asylum for the next three hours then the Ultimate Revival playing Old Skool for the last two hours. The middle room stayed as Life playing house all night and the Basilica at the back changed as the main room changed, being the Asylum for the first three hours then house, then back to Hardcore again.

Talking to Mat in the VIP. bar he said that since the Asylum had become so popular, it would be unfair and impractical to keep the main arena solely house, “there are far too many clubbers who have come for the Hardcore and the main arena obviously has the best atmosphere and the largest capacity. Yet we don’t want to upset out loyal life followers. It just seems the best way to keep everyone happy. You see at Bowlers you can have your cake and eat it!”

So we left Mat talking to his brandy and coke and went in search of some real fun. As we came down the staircase we looked out onto an already busy dancefloor, to see a twenty-give car dodgems ride just sitting there at the back of the hall. So on we jumped, got bumped, felt sick and got off. Wicked. I believe we were bumping to the pumping sound of DJ Absolute at this time, a favourite down at Life, playing upfront house with an upfront personality, jumping up, waving and whistling to the crowd.

A mate of mine pulled me off of the dancefloor. Apparently HMS was bangin’ in the back room so we went through to check him out.

From the tuneful rhymes of uplifting house to the down and out nosebleeding, thrashing, bangin’, hardcore and gabba of HMS. At least I know what the H stand for, Hard. Not just hard but fucking hard. Maybe he should change his name to HMS. I don’t know, at this point my eyes started to bleed. To sanity and beyond. I left to catch Vibes and Livelee who were just about to go on in the main arena. It was the first House/Hardcore swap over and surprisingly there wasn’t a big rush to get from the back room to the main arena as I thought there would be. It was quite civilised in fact.

The last tune was coming from Absolute when it was time for Vibes. Time to turn up the BPM’s, increase the heart rates and see the temperature soar. The whole crowd moved in unison to those first few beats, then mayhem broke loose with the individual styles throwing in all patterns of creative movements. Home as last I thought.

An hour passed so quickly bringing it up to twelve o’clock. At twelve the music went off and Big Ben came ringing through the sound system in all three rooms. Then at the stroke of midnight, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture started playing. Totally exhilarating, everyone started jumping to it, I’ve never seen such an awesome sight. 5,000 people bouncing, hugging, screaming, whistling to classical music. Unreal.

So anyway, Sarge was the next to grace the ones and twos. Another brilliant set from the owner of Manchester’s finest Hardcore record shop, The Spin Inn. With an influence of Drum ‘n’ Bass it all added to the flowing magical beats that purred through the speakers.

We were about to go into the last hour of Hardcore in the main room so we knew we had to take it for everything we had. So when I looked behind the stage and saw the one and only Ultrasonic preparing to board, I knew we were in for one hell of an interesting Hardcore finale.

‘Manchester Bowlers, will you welcome the one and only U-L-T-R-A-S-O-N-I-C’. A roar from the crowd. They know and love this totally live act from past visits and their presence just fills the room. Anyone who has seen this band will know that they thrive under this kind of atmosphere. Just watching them makes you feel exhausted. So much energy exploding in front of us. This full length stage show is one NOT to be missed. An hour of that and we were only too happy to crash out on one of the many bouncy castles erected for our pleasure, not much bouncing going on mind you. To the right of us we could see a long queue had formed and the curiosity of the journalist is about as famous as the cats so we went over to see what all of the fuss was about. It was the face painters and tattoo artists who had come down to paint everyone’s favourite designs. The most popular were the Life and Asylum tattoo’s, followed by the names of boyfriend’s and girlfriend’s. Thank god they weren’t permanent!

Suddenly my mate pulls me through the bar area towards the dancefloor. The Revival Session had just started with John Jay from the former Angels taking to the decks. This meant we were moving into the last two hours of the night so we could hardly give up now could we?

Unfortunately as we danced the night away we missed the likes of E-Logic from Essential Platinum and Slipmatt who were spinning away in the back room. I was too caught up in the Sweet Sensations and the Take Me Always or yesteryear, that I just could not leave. Piano classics spewed upwards through the pounding speakers bringing everyone’s arms up to an ultimate finale of what I can only say as the best New Years Eve party I have ever had the pleasure to attend. The music, the atmosphere, the people, the dodgems, everything 100% professional finish. Life really puts the fun back into clubbing. Unfortunately I’m sure there was a lot that I missed out on due to too much going on for the average mortal to comprehend. That middle room, I’m sure it was absolutely rockin’ all night but there just wasn’t enough time. Sorry. Anyway the next adventure to tell the grandchildren will be how to I managed to get out of that car park before the January sales had ended.