The original warehouse scene of the late eighties and early nineties provided the sort of raw, unadulterated energy that has made dance music the youth culture phenomena it remains today.

Back then, thousands would congregate at motorway service stations eagerly awaiting directions to the latest illegal 'acid house party', all keen to sweat in unison to an underground beat. Acid house was king, smiley faces were everywhere and warehouses from Blackburn to Battersea were rammed with ravers.

Names such as Energy, Sunrise, World Dance and Back to the Future were synonymous with a scene which has gone down in dance music history.

Today, following the inception of the Criminal Justice Bill which eventually served to outlaw such events, only a legacy remains - a legacy which events such as Tribal Gathering took firmly by the hand, adopting the ethos and philosophy of those heady, halcyon days and offering them to a new generation of clubbers.

This year marks Tribal Gathering's tenth anniversary and as part of their celebrations the ultimate homage to the warehouse era was paid in full on August 23rd when the Tribal Warehouse Party took place at a 'secret' Manchester location. A couple of condemned warehouses in the city's Ancoats area (which last year provided the setting for a mock up of the interior of the Hacienda for scenes in Factory Records' film biog 'Twenty Four Hour Party People') proved the ideal home to an ambitious event which attracted in excess of 10,000 people.

Three interconnecting rooms, each fully themed (Starship Universe, Are You Tribal? And The Soap Bar) and featuring an impressive roster of DJ and live talent which spanned the musical eras (Laurent Garnier, Jeff Mills, A Guy Called Gerald and LFO combined with the likes of Deep Dish, Groove Armada and Greg Vickers) provided the perfect mixture of nostalgia and cutting edge.

With original Tribal co-ordinator Paul Shurey lending this expertise to the event as well as most of the original production teams to have worked on the illegal events of the past, current Tribal incumbent Dave Vincent took his belief in the Tribal philosophy that one stage further. By the time you read this the warehouses in question will be little more than rubble - however the party most definitely goes on with the Tribal Weekender set to take place in Southport on November 7-9 and plans already afoot for another Warehouse Party at a 'secret northern location' next year.

TRIBAL WAREHOUSE SOUND SYSTEM

In order to maintain that authentic warehouse party feel, the enormous Funktion One sound system which was used so effectively at the event, was driven into the warehouse on the back of six forty foot articulated lorries. With 120k of power, Funktion One's pioneering Ambisonic surround sound system has been specifically created for large scale events and has already been used by a myriad of artists and events including the likes of the Chemical Brothers US Tour, Glastonbury Festival and London's Millennium Dome central show. The system also features as part of sound systems at Space in Ibiza, Heaven in London and Maze in Miami. While the concept of the Tribal Warehouse Party was to replicate the feeling of being 'back in the day', audio for the event was very firmly rooted in the present, with Tribal turning to regular collaborators Audile to provide state-of-the-art Funktion-One Resolution systems for all three rooms. Audile in turn called on Funktion-One themselves for assistance, drafting in the system previously housed in the Millennium Dome to supplement their own hire stock.

Audile's Rob Ashworth explains: "The brief for the 'Are You Tribal?' room was a bit of a headache, requiring the system to be mounted on two curtain-side trucks to give the impression that it had just been driven in, like at the old illegal raves. In addition, the stage was located halfway down a very long room, facing across its short dimension, requiring not just very high output, but very wide dispersion also."

"Fortunately Funktion-One were able to supply us with the Resolution-9 system that formerly served the Central Show at the Millennium Dome, and by using a combination of wide and narrow dispersion units we were able to achieve a spread of 170 degrees per stack using only six boxes per side. And since they were designed to throw across huge spaces like the Dome, we achieved levels that would have required at least thirty boxes if a smaller-format system."

"Of course dispersing high-level sound over a large angle in a massive, hard-surfaced room did cause some problems with reflections off the walls, and I wouldn't have chosen to lay the room out that way if I'd had the choice. But the conceptual brief for the room was very specific, and we managed to adhere to it and still provide 80% of the dancefloor with acceptably high-quality sound, which wasn't a bad result."

The second of the main rooms gave a slightly more forgiving acoustic environment for Audile to work in, with the stage located at the end of an equally long room, facing down its length. Here a concert-style system of twenty stacks of Resolution-5 and F-218 speakers was utilized, concentrating a huge amount of sound in a tightly-controlled dispersion.

Says Rob: "The 'Starship Universe' room was a lot easier to deal with - the layout made it viable to build simple left/right stacked system with a much narrower dispersion. This allowed us to keep the sound concentrated on the dancefloor with no significant spill onto the side walls, hence minimizing reflections and maximizing quality."

"There was some concern that a delay system would be necessary in such a long room, but having used a similarly-sized system at the Ministry event at the Dome last New Year we had no worries that the level at the back of the room wouldn't be sufficient. It's really quite amazing what can be achieved with a relatively-small Funktion-One system - at 100m from the stacks the bottom ends still kicking, the top ends still sparkling, and everything in between is still in perfect balance. And you still have to shout to be heard over it." Rob continues: "It just goes to show that there's still life in point source arrays, despite the current belief that only line arrays can provide such long-throw capabilities. What the Resolution system allowed us to do in this instance was tailor the horizontal dispersion of the system to match the dimension of the room - wide dispersion at the front, narrow at the back. Using a line array with a fixed dispersion of 90 degrees, we would have been throwing a whole lot of sound onto the side walls of the room, and quality would have suffered greatly as a result." Asked to sum up the particular benefits of Funktion-One, Rob has this to say: "What's particularly impressive about the Resolution series is its scale-ability - with a modest stock of boxes we can cover any scale of venue from a 300 capacity club to a 5000 capacity warehouse and beyond. From a promoters point of view we can offer them consistency at their events - they'll get the same amazing quality of sound regardless of the scale."

Technical Spec

Are you Tribal? Room. Main system: 8 x Funktion One Resolution-9NP narrow-dispersion self-powered mid/hi speaker; 4 x Funtion-One Resolution-9WP wide-dispersion self-powered mid/hi speakers; 16 x Funktion One F-218P self-powered bass speaker; 1 x driv rack c/w 2 x XTA DP-224, 1 x XTA DP-324; 1 x Midas Venice-160; 1 x BSS FCS-960; 1 x BSS DPR-402; 1 x Lexicon PCM-80, DJ monitor system: 2 x Funktion-One Resolution-2; 1 x Funktion-One Infrabass-218 sub; 1 x XTA DP-224, 1 x MC2 MC-1250; 1 x MC2 MC-750: 1 x QSC PL4.0. DJ equipment: 6 a Technics S:-1210 turntable; 6 x Audile Wobbly turntable isolator; 4 x Pioneer CDJ-1000 CD player; 1 x Allen & Heath Xone:62 mixer; 1 x Rane MP-2016/XP-2016 mixer; Performance equipment: 1 x Roland TB-303 bass synthersiser; 1 x Roland TR-808 drum machine; 2 x Roland SH-101 synthersiser; 1 x Mackie 1604 mixer; 2 x Sennheiser EW-345 radio mic; 2 x BSS DI box.

'Starship Universe' room. Main system: 12 x Funktion-One Resolution-5P self-powered mid/hi speaker; 8 x Funktion-One Resolution-5 mid/hi; 20 x Funktion-One F-218P self-powered bass speaker 1 x drive rack c/w 4 x XTA DP-224, 1 x XTA DP-324; 1 x Midas Venice-240 24-channel console; 1 x fx/insert rack c/w 1 x BSS FCS-960, 1 x BSS DPR-402, 1 x TC-Electronics, DJ monitor system: 2 x Funktion-One Resolution-2 full-range speaker; 1 x Funktion-One Infrabass-218 sub; 1 x amp/drive rack c/w 1 x XTA DP-224, 1 x MC2 MC-1250, 1 x MC2 MC-750, 1 x QSC PL4.0. DJ equipment: 2 x Technics SL-1210 turntable; 6 x Audile Wobbly turntable isolator.
4 x Pioneer CDJ-1000 CD player; 1 x Allen & Heath Xone:62; 1 x Rane MP-2016/XP-2016.
Performance equipment: 1 x Roland TR-909 drum machine; 2 x Sennheiser EW-345 radio mic 2 x Audio-Technica AT-4051 condenser mic; 2 x Shure Beta-57A mic; 2 x BSS DI box

Soap Bar: Main system: 6 x Funktion-One Resolution-4s; 4 x Funktion-One F-218s; 4 x Funktion-One Infrabass-218; 2 x XTA DP-224; 1 x XTA DP-226; 1 x XTA DP-324; 1 x amp rack c/w 2 x QSC PL4.0, 2 x QSC PL2.OHV; 2 x QSC PL4.0; 1 x Midas Legend-3000 console; 1 x BSS FCS0960; 2 x BSS DPR-402, 1 x Yamaha SPX-990, Monitor system: 6 x Turbosound TFM-350; 3 x BSS Minidrive; 3 x BSS FCS-960; 2 x amp rack c/w 2 x Crown MA-2401; 2 x Crown MA-2401; 2 x Crown MA-1201, DJ equipment: 6 x Technics SL-1210 turntable 2 x Pioneer CDJ-1000; 1 x Allen & Heath Xone:62; 1 x Vestax PMC-06 mixer
Performance equipment: 1 x Midas Venice-320; 1 x XTA GW-600 graphic eq; 5 x Yamaha/TC-Electronics/Roland fx; 24 x Shure/AKG/Sennheiser mic; 4 x BSS DI box; 1 x 32-channel stagebox/multicore system.

rob@audile.co.uk