As Manchester continues through its growth spurt and the menace of gentrification looms large, more and more does the independent spirit and progression of the underground scene feel like it’s hanging on by a thread.
But club night and record label Bakk Heia is celebrating ten years of staying in the mud, uninterested in polishing its edges. A decade, especially in this climate, is a true milestone for an independent collective like BH which is, in my eyes, the essential, sludge-covered counterweight to the city’s glossy facade of glass and steel.
Bakk Heia is a creative sinkhole that pulls in all the weird and wonderful of Manchester’s electronic scene and beyond. The releases on the Bakk Heia label are characterised by introspective angles and an experimentative set of values, putting a real spin on what psychedelic dance music can be. The discography showcases contributions from hardware heads Steevio, Jorg Kuning and Schuttle, the latter two making up half of BH’s collective.
The parties, which land only a handful of times a year at BH’s spiritual home of The White Hotel, are marked in my calendar without fail. Sonically, the nights tend to get you from these slow burning, dubbed-out and squelchy chuggers to pulsating, acidic techno before a euphoric, often playful zenith come 6.30am (or thereabouts). Sometimes, we also get a wonky live set thrown in the mix. For its community of ravers, the parties are almost a ritual that thrives on the weird, the dingy and on the ecstasy-laced sounds dripping out of the four corners of the club.
The whole thing usually leaves me looking for my head when the shutters come up. Friday 12th June was no different, a special anniversary celebration for the party-throwers and the partygoers alike. Frond slow-cooked the opening hours with her deep, proggy digs before Italian legend Miki the Dolphin invited us into his pod, taking us on a voyage of driving trance and breaky trippers.
Seeing us through the early hours was Jack Tomson (aka Bitzer Maloney), who spearheads the Bakk Heia gatherings. Coming out of his uni’s class of 2014, Jack never really imagined what the next ten years would bring.
“The intention was always just to play records for each other in our small group of friends.
“I wasn’t completely sure what I was doing with my life. And it all coincided with what I would describe as quite a dry period in Manchester’s club history […] There was nothing around, but there was a lot of creative people, and a lot of people interested in the culture. So there was an appetite for it.”
The birth of Bakk Heia came almost out of a series of small coincidences. Jack and the rest of the BH crew, George, Johnny and Sam, essentially knew some guys, who knew some other guys that had just put together a small space called The Bunker (next door to the now beloved White Hotel).
“I used to put on really quite challenging experimental music at the start. Obscure, quite abrasive, and people would arrive and be like, what the fuck is going on? And then a few hours later, we’d be listening to New York house records, that ravey breakbeat stuff, a bit of EBM. And then at the end of the night, it would be this euphoric thing, and it would make sense as this whole journey for want of a better word.
In days of yore: The Bakk Heia family at TWH in 2018.
“Over time, especially after COVID, it’s shifted a bit in its intention. During the pandemic we were all starved of dance music, and I was just buying records like crazy, digging for dance music all the time. So at the end of the lockdown period, all I really wanted to do was just put on a straight up party. […] A good-old fashioned party is where it’s at for me now.
“But I’m still always trying to do something that’s slightly different to what is expected.”
The Bakk Heia crew couldn’t give a toss about getting in the big hype DJ’s (maybe with the exception of Jane Fitz among some others). What matters is booking storytellers, the deep diggers like Miki and Jane with decade spanning collections that give Shazam no chance. Alongside that, Jack loves a good live set to break up the night.
Enter George Cunning (aka Jorg Kuning). As mentioned, George is another quarter of the Bakk Heia collective and has released a healthy set of joyous modular wigglers on the BH label. He’s gone from playing around on his computer at 16 to bookings at Gottwood, Fabric and beyond. But things would’ve looked very different if it weren’t for Bakk Heia.
“The first time we did Bakk Heia ten years ago, Jack just turned to me and said – ‘You need to do a live set for this…’
“I’d been playing round with modular gear and some synths, and I had maybe a couple of months to prepare for it, then that was it!”
A ‘resident amphibian’ of Bakk Heia’s festivities, George is well acquainted with the experience of playing The White Hotel. When he’s on that stage, the room is colourful, always packed to the rafters and, in the spirit of real-time music making, radiantly erratic.
“When you’re playing live, you’re always trying to get an idea of what’s resonating the most with the dancers. You can elongate certain parts and really dig into a certain sound if you can tell it’s working really well.
“The way [The White Hotel] sounds just encourages you to go a bit wild. There is just this spirit of going off the rails, which is missing in places where it’s a bit more clean cut.
“I’m going to clubs more than ever now […] They’re almost like places of work in a way that they weren’t before and you become a bit sick of hearing the same kind of vibe all the time. It’s made me feel like I wanna hear more of the weirder, more introspective and interesting sounds, more unusual things.
“It can feel just a bit boring when a space is purpose-built and it doesn’t have anything else to it. [The White Hotel] obviously puts on lots of stuff that’s not just a club night, and that encourages more than just the standard club music to be played.
“I imagine we could all go back to the first party and every party we’ve done there since and have a great time, love the music, have our minds blown by someone who’s played.”
The party is deeply tied in with the club and so Jack noted how timely the nature of our conversation was. For those living under a rock, The White Hotel is set to close its doors in January 2027. Flooding concerns and the wider redevelopment plans around Strangeways threaten to transform the site into an actual swamp.
So, while committed to chugging away at the record label, the group are now very much in the dark about the future of the club night itself. There is only a couple more gatherings penned in before their spiritual home returns to the elements, but Jack still holds another form of hope.
“There are loads of really switched on young heads here who are dancing hard, not talking shit on the dance floor, not just pissing around.
“It doesn’t make sense to be upon young people because that’s who populate the clubs. If they’re not coming, they’re not getting inspired. And then if they’re not getting inspired, they’re not going to reinterpret what they’re hearing and feeling and make something interesting and new. I feel that’s how culture is proliferated.
“So, in terms of Manchester, I think there’s a lot of young folks doing their thing, and that’s great. That’s all we can hope for!”
It’s likely that everyone has ‘a moment’ to take away from Bakk Heia. Miki dropping Jorg Kuning’s Robotomy in June to be met with a sea of sweaty limbs and collective joy among the people that love this ritual was probably mine. It felt like culture had manifested itself in that old garage, a worthy product of the past ten years.
But with the future of the Bakk Heia parties and these moments now hanging in the balance, we must pray that the rave prevails in a new form – may the Eternal Cup of Bacchus provide forevermore!
Part 2 of Bakk Heia’s anniversary celebration lands at The White Hotel on 11 September. Sold out ages ago though, sorry!