Sankeys - Kerri Chandler (21st January 2012)

After a quiet (not so quiet) Christmas break, last weekend saw my return to the club with a visit to Sankeys for the legendary Kerri Chandler. After being a huge fan of Kerri's for years now, it's quite unbelievable that I've never seen him live, however watching him play a 7 hour set at my favourite club in the world was probably the perfect setting for my first time.

KC is one of the original Deep House innovators and has been injecting his unique style of soul into the music scene since the early nineties, and this was evident from just looking at the age of the people in the queue - Sankeys is renowned for having a diverse crowd, but there were people here in their 50's just to see this guy! There were a few admin issues with my guestlist/press pass, but I didn't mind paying £12 to enter, and also didn't fancy spending another 30 minutes in the freezing cold. After getting a drink in the first room, I moved into the main room to be greeted by the sound of a groovy bassline and a horn section, which was reminiscent to that of a Soul night at King George's Hall, Blackburn. I set up camp next to a few of my mates at the front for the first couple of hours, with the big man keeping it strictly Soul-based, playing pieces such as Henrik Schwarz's remix of 'Feeling You', Peas' simply mind-blowing remix of Gregory Porter's anthem '1960 What?' and even pulling out the Deetron remix of 'Falling' by Ben Westbeech, which is one of my favourite tracks from last year.

At 2am it was time to venture upstairs to check out Continue, Lone, Dasha Rush & Jozef K's home for the night - the main room was at its busiest by now, so I was surprised to see how many people had made their way upstairs for a much more upbeat and Techy affair - it wasn't really my vibe, so it wasn't long before I moved back downstairs. From there on in King Kerri made sure he kept switching it up, taking the whole room on a musical journey throughout the past 20 years of House, and beyond. Although it has been overplayed by every DJ on the planet in the past 12 months, it was incredible to see 'Forward Motion' send the whole club wild, and to be shortly followed by Armand Van Helden's 'U Don't Know Me', which is for me one of the greatest House tracks of all-time. Along with the New Jersey-born producer playing a few of his own classics and 'Smile' by the Jasper Street Company; the main highlight of the night for me and everyone else was when Kerri stopped the music at 5.50am, took to his piano, grabbed the microphone and finished his set with a beautiful live performance of 'Love Will Find A Way'. I've seen a countless number DJs over the past 5/6 years, but Saturday night was my favourite set to date, by quite a long way - for one man to keep a whole room up for 7 hours straight and have them in awe at 6 in the morning is truly special and something that not many people could do. Thanks Kerri, it was emotional.

Check out Sankeys listings for Feb/March HERE!