05/03/2024
Fantastic review of Back to House on Saturday night… ❤️
Leeds AfterDark Attended: Always keen to be there for a new promotion, and to check out a venue for the first time, we made the trip to Pontefract for Back To House at The Northern Social.
Time to confess. We've never been to Pontefract before. And we aren't new to this. We've decades of nightlife experience and knowledge to draw from.
With one party, that sold out months in advance, the launch of Back To House has suggested that it will be a catalyst for putting Pontefract on the house music clubland map, in a similar vein to how Out In The Sticks made the world aware of Todmorden.
Booking Hacienda resident and all-round-legend Graeme Park was always going to be a smart move. He can guarantee ticket sales right across the North (and beyond) without any need for another big name guest DJ, such is his status and reputation.
We arrived around 9:40 and caught Curtis Zack's set, with both he and Mark flanking Graeme's set with complimenting funky/classic/90s house sets of their own.
Tracks that raised the roof for the next 2.5 hours included the reliable likes of Ministers De La Funk, Nicole, Soul Central, the G*t Decor v Degrees of Motion mashup, Layo & Bushwacka, plus remixes of A Guy Called Gerald and The Shapeshifters.
But it was when Mark Holliday began his set at midnight that a few surprises dropped. Mark opened with the fabulous Roger Sanchez mix of Basia 'Drunk On Love', and it's a track that we last heard 30 years ago, being played by Parky, in the Hacienda. Clubland needs more spinners that remember and appreciate the sterling mid-90s production work of Roger S.
Mark also played the Foundation mix of Sounds of Blackness 'Everything's Gonna Be Alright', their strong gospel house track, and another record from 1994, that often gets overlooked in favour of 'The Pressure' or 'I Believe'.
In fact throughout his too-brief one hour set, if you had closed your eyes, you could have been forgiven for thinking that you were listening to Parky and Allister Whitehead playing B2B back in '94.
Thanks to the confidence granted by selling out the launch so quickly, the promoters secured second and third dates at The Northern Social for later in the year, before Saturday's launch party even took place. Those dates are July 13th and November 9th, with the aforementioned Allister Whitehead announced for the July date, and a live PA vocalist hopefully announced soon. The rumour is that it's Kym Sims, who charted with 'Too Blind To See It'.
Parking outside the venue was easy enough, but be aware that even at the end of winter, it's warm inside a packed out Northern Social and we ditched our jackets straight away.
Tickets for the July date of Back To House are available now: https://www.skiddle.com/e/37265548
