Thankfully, our Manchester New Year celebrations are shaping up to be a damn sight better than last year’s locked-down version.
Now that more and more New Year events are getting announced, it’s looking like we’re going to be stuck for choice – and we would not have it any other way right now.
As always, The Warehouse Project comes through strong with their New Year agenda – and they’ve just dropped another cracking set of shows to celebrate the end of another tough year getting back to ‘normal’.
In a first for the city, four of Manchester’s biggest music brands will come together to round off what has been an unforgettable return to live music and events this year on New Year’s Day, whilst the New Year’s Eve event also has some big tricks up its sleeve.
Here’s what to expect.
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New Year’s Eve
The biggest party night of the year, New Year’s Eve is always one for making memories with some huge music lineups. Whilst we weren’t able to see in the new year at Depot Mayfield last year, WHP has pulled off one to remember for the big night on Friday, 31 December 2021.
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Fat Boy Slim and Radio and DJ legend Annie Mac will headline the night, bringing in the new year with another prime NYE slot, alongside Yousef.
Over on the Concourse, Hannah Wants, Redlight, Low Steppa, My Nu Leng plus loads more will be responsible for a house, tech, and bassline driven soundtrack. Then in the Archive, it’ll be over to Emerald, Big Miz, and Joe Motion to spin some funky beats.
With an early start from 8 pm, there’ll be plenty of time to get the drinks in before midnight strikes, too, before rounding things up by 4 am – if you can make it that far.
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New Year’s Day
On New Year’s Day, an extra special party is set for the Depot.
In a first for the city, four of Manchester’s biggest music brands will come together to round off what has been an unforgettable return to live music and events this year.
In a collaboration named ‘The Riot’, Homoelectric, Electric Chair, Repercussion, and The Warehouse Project will join forces to produce the biggest NYD lineup the Depot has ever seen.
Credit: WHP 21
If your New Year’s Eve hangover allows it, from 3 pm until 2 am, you can enjoy five stages of music, each with a different takeover all day and into the night.
The Depot’s usual three rooms will be open for business, with music from the likes of The Blessed Madonna, Todd Terje, Jayda G, and Krystal Klear in the Depot’s main room, with Louie Vega, Hunee B2B Palms Trax headlining the Concourse.
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Over in the Archive, a Homoelectric takeover will see Horse Meat Disco, Leon Vynehall, Shanti Celeste, Sherelle and more.
What’s more – one of Manchester’s most famed pubs, The Star & Garter, will play host to a WHP lineup again.
The venue was recently taken over as part of the inaugural Repercussion Festival back in September, where Sassy J, Greg Wilson, Krysko and Space Afrika took to the decks at The Star & Garter for a special day of music.
Repercussion Festival took over a number of venues in and around the Depot, including the Star and Garter and Temperance Street pictured here / Credit: Zed Bias
For The Riot, though, the pub will have two stages.
Upstairs in ‘The Loft’ you can expect to see Erol Alkan B2B Ivan Smagghe, alongside Nancy Noise and Maurice Fulton. Meanwhile the ‘Downstairs’ stage will feature the likes of Manc legend DJ Paulette, Abigail Ward, and Aficionado.
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And with that extra bank holiday on Monday, 3 January, you might just get away with the hangover for your return to work.
Micheal Bibi Presents Isolate
A third night has also been revealed today.
The brand-new show, Michael Bibi & WHP presents Isolate, has been added to the calendar on 18 December. Although we know there are some very special guests in the pipeline, the lineup announcement and full details will follow soon.
Credit: WHP 21
How to get tickets
Getting hold of tickets for the closing parties is simple.
For previous WHP21 ticket holders, limited pre-sale tickets will go on sale at 6 pm tonight (Wednesday, 27 October).
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The remaining tickets will go on general sale to everyone else from 10 am tomorrow (Thursday, 28 October).
For links and more info, head over to the Warehouse Project website. Here, you’ll also find tickets for the final 20 events that are still to come, featuring Bicep – Live, The Chemical Brothers, Honey Dijon, Jamie xx, Solomun, Avalon Emerson, and hundreds more.
To read more like this, head to our music tab. And don’t forget to stay up to date with music and events in Manchester over on Instagram with The Manc Audio.
Featured Image – The Warehouse Project
Audio
Florence and the Machine at Co-op Live Manchester – tickets, setlist, and more for UK tour
Thomas Melia
Florence and the Machine have visited Manchester before… but this UK tour marks their Co-op Live debut.
The ‘Dog Days Are Over’ because London-based band Florence and the Machine are returning to the music capital of the North – Manchester.
The band has played in our city many times over the years, including staple venues like Manchester Academy and AO Arena, but now they’re taking to the stage of the 23,500 capacity Co-op Live for the first time in their career this month.
With this current run of shows titled Everybody Scream Tour, you can expect this arena gig to be a spectacle or… ‘Spectrum’ (there’s more puns coming).
So, grab the ‘Girl With One Eye’, ‘Jenny of Oldstones’, and the ‘Queen of Peace’, and get ready to ‘Howl’ out all of Florence and the Machine’s bangers.
Florence and the Machine are coming to Co-op Live, Manchester on 20 February / Credit: Autumn de Wilde (Supplied)
Florence and the Machine UK tour dates
Fri 13 Feb – Liverpool, UK – M&S Bank Arena
Sat 14 Feb – Sheffield, UK – Utilita Arena
Mon 16 Feb – London, UK – The O2
Tue 17 Feb – London, UK – The O2
Fri 20 Feb – Manchester, UK – Co-op Live
Mon 24 Aug – Edinburgh, UK – Royal Highland Showgrounds
Fri 28 Aug – Leeds, UK – Bramham Park
Sun 30 Aug – Reading, UK – Richfield Avenue
Tickets
Anyone wanting to see this stellar act in all their glory when they play their latest arena show in Manchester can find some seats left HERE.
There’s even a handful of premium seating options on offer, where you can ‘Shake It Out’ in style feeling like a ‘King’ HERE.
Setlist
Everybody Scream
Witch Dance
Shake It Out
Seven Devils
Big God
Daffodil
Which Witch
Cosmic Love
Spectrum
Never Let Me Go
Music By Men
buckle
King
The Old Religion
Howl
Heaven Is Here
Sympathy Magic
One of the Greats
Dog Days Are Over
Free
And Love
What are the stage times for Florence and the Machine in Manchester?
UK act Florence and the Machine are playing various arena and festival shows this year / Credit: Autumn de Wilde (Supplied)
Co-op Live has a strict curfew of 11pm, meaning as much as we want to sing until there’s ‘No Light, No Light’, at least we’ll be tucked up in bed before the early hours.
Anyone attending can expect the doors to open at 6:30pm, with a kick-off time expected to be 7:30pm, and support from self-proclaimed alternative-indie ‘Good Girl’ Paris Paloma.
How to get to Co-op Live
Tram
For those of you heading to Co-op Live, you’ll be glad to know it’s right next door to a rather famous big blue stadium and its integrated Metrolink stop.
Head along the light blue or orange lines directly to the Etihad Campus or Ashton-under-Lyne, and you can get off the tram literally spitting distance from the arena. You can find the full map HERE.
Trams run frequently on the Ashton-Eccles line to the Etihad stop, with services leaving every six minutes from the city centre and until 1:00am on Fridays and Saturdays.
Bus
You can find the full list of bus routes HERE, with the one in closest proximity to the venue being the 53 bus, which runs from Cheetham Hill through to Higher Crumpsall, Old Trafford and Pendleton, leaving just a two-minute walk to Co-op Live. You also get free Bee Network travel with any valid event ticket.
If you’re driving, there is limited parking available at the venue, but this must be pre-booked ahead of time, and there are designated drop-off areas.
The postcode is M11 3DU, and you can follow the signs towards the wider Etihad Campus as you get closer; directions to the adjacent drop-off points will also be signposted.
Keep in mind that congestion on the roads close to the stadium is expected to gather around two hours prior to any event, so if you are travelling on the road, these are the suggested times they provide on event day, though estimates will obviously vary:
Alan Turing Way (both directions): plan an additional 20 minutes into any journey by road.
Hyde Road (eastbound): expect an additional 15 minutes to be added to your journey.
Mancunian Way (westbound): plan for an extra 10 minutes of travel time.
There are also three park-and-ride facilities near Co-op Live, but be advised that the Velopark and Holt Town stops will be closed post-event to help safely manage crowds:
Ashton West (Ashton line) – 184 spaces and 11 disabled spaces
Ladywell (Ashton-Eccles line) – 332 spaces and 22 disabled spaces
Walk/cycle
Lastly, Co-op Live is only a half-hour stroll from Manchester Piccadilly, and you could even walk along the canal all the way to the front door if you fancy taking the scenic route.
Greater Manchester now also offers the option to hire bikes on the Beryl app, with riders able to locate, unlock, get to their destination and then safely lock up the bike all through an easy-to-use app. There are hire points just near the south-west corner of the Etihad Stadium on Ashton New Road.
For more information on all travel options, you can check out the enhanced journey planner.
Featured Images – Press shots (supplied via Autumn de Wilde)
Audio
Gig review | DMA’s have Manc in their DNA, whether they know it or not
Danny Jones
Yes, we saw the crowds in Brixton, Leeds and so on, and they were also box office, no doubt – and we’re sure there’s plenty of bias coming in here – but DMA’s final night in Manchester was just magnificent on every level.
Still managing to bring a real Friday feeling even though it was a Sunday night following the protracted Valentine’s celebrations, when most were already dreading the inevitable Monday blues (morning, all), it felt like the perfect way to close out a weekend with everyone’s first love: music.
During a period when we’re all encouraged to be a little bit more sincere and spread pure positivity, seeing the sea of happy, smiling faces watching DMA’s on night two at the O2 Victoria Warehouse was just the injection we needed.
For starters, you can’t ask for much more than getting to hear not only Hills End from start to finish but ‘Lay Down’ live twice in one night. The limbs were just as mad the second time around, if not even more.
To quote a fan speaking in the comments under this video, for some, it was beyond good: “The best gig I’ve been to in my 45 years on this planet”, apparently.
Quite the bold statement, and while we’re not sure we’re quite ready to be so superlative just yet, hearing them play their debut album from cover to cover on its 10th anniversary did make for a perfect set and an “unreal night” as we’ve heard and seen so many remark in the hours since the gig.
One person wrote, “If the next album is good, these will be absolutely huge”, while another declared that they’re “the greatest on Earth” already.
Whatever point on the scale you land on, pretty much everyone almost universally agrees that their first record is still their best, even with all the bangers they’ve put out since.
One of the best moments of the entire nostalgia trip was when they bookended the show with ‘Timeless’ and played their usual extended outro with multiple repetitions of the chorus and a proper breakout, letting their instruments do the talking in a fast, frenetic flurry as the crowd thrashed around.
DMAs never let you down when it comes to a performance, and neither do Manc crowds.
One of those where you saw way more arms in the air than phones. (Credit: Audio North)
And maybe that’s just it, as far as bands that come to this region and do well, the Sydney trio are one of the VERY best, vouched for by pretty much every mate and regular gig-goer whose opinion you trust implicitly; you can certainly add us onto that list.
Maybe it’s somehow to do with some of those Melbourne roots, too, as we’ve often heard the parallels drawn between the two cities, and they even asked if there was anyone in from ‘Melbs’ between songs – there was a notable cheer – or maybe it’s just some kind of uncalculable magic we can’t understand.
Either way, besides the ongoing rise of Aussie rock and Anzac bands doing very well around the UK in general, there is something very special about this particular indie outfit’s connection with the North West and Manchester, specifically.
Johnny, Tommy and Matt have all themselves cited it as a ‘second home’ throughout their career, having hit the ground running and finding a cult following here right from the off.
In fact, they admitted that the full touring band still regularly flies into Manchester first whenever they’re heading to the UK. Love that.
‘Olympia’ and ‘Silver’ were also big standouts beyond the Hills End part of the setlist. (Credit: The Manc)
Perhaps labelling them part of the ‘Britpop revival’ is a bit reductive, but it certainly hasn’t done them any harm thus far, and conversely, it’s definitely done them plenty of favours here in Greater Manchester.
They’re not just adopted Brits who understand our history as a nation of audiophiles; they get our crowds and this city’s culture down to a tee.
Put simply, either through blind luck or divine intervention from the music gods, DMA’s are Mancs by proxy, and whether or not that means anything to them, it sure as sh*t means a whole lot to us.
Here’s to HE10, and we can’t wait for the next celebration in whatever form it comes.
Hannah Starkie -
27th October 2021 
