Featured image and gallery: Kaitlyn Brockley

The rumble of trains passing through Piccadilly station, the hollers of touts (“tickets, buy or sell?”) and security (“have your IDs ready”), and the excitable chatter of gig-goers all audibly backdrop the outskirts of Manchester’s Mayfield Depot this dark, damp evening. 

Leaving the outside chill and travelling along the interior main artery of the former train station, the sound briefly becomes that of a velvety big band number overhead in the neighbouring Freight Island. 

Down the concrete tunnel and over the threshold into the belly of the Depot, the atmosphere is immediately thicker. Every inch of space is bathed in deep red hues and fog, frenetic stage lights pulsing in time to drum and bass, courtesy of Jaguar Skills. This follows the servings of Rich Reason, who spins jungle and garage to those devoted enough to arrive at the evening’s genesis. 

There’s a liminal feeling to the Depot tonight, a debaucherous in-between untouched by a world outside which is physically close yet mentally, and momentarily, in the distant past. The substantial concrete walls serve as a barrier, making an abstract memory of anyone’s anxieties and worries, at least for tonight. 

A man with a shock of toxic-green hair, meticulously shaped and gelled in the style of the late Keith Flint, walks by. A group of lads mill about during Jack Saunders’ ‘bat out of hell’-BPM set, one of them inexplicably producing a rubber pigeon mask for his mate to don before sincerely declaring, “we are all the pigeon”. Vape smoke, glow sticks and sunglasses indiscreetly obscure wide eyes. 

Post 23:00, and for the first time all night, the lights switch to a rich blue, a visual cue marking the ever-nearing arrival of headliners, The Prodigy. Thirty-four years strong now, the band are undisputed cultural pioneers of the rave subculture, the fruits of their creative labour manifested in the eclectic culmination of those here. 

It’s only been five years since enigmatic frontman, Keith Flint, passed away and, following a hiatus, MC Maxim now takes on the live vocals of his former bandmate and close friend. 

From bold blue back to rich crimson, OGs Maxim and Liam Howlett, alongside touring members (Leo) Crabtree and (Rob) Holiday, take their first determined steps onto the Depot’s raised expanse. The jilted electronic staccato of ‘Voodoo People’ is a resounding war cry of a catalyst, thrusting thousands of bodies into immediate combat: “Where are my warriors at?!”, Maxim appropriately asserts. 

The Depot is a felicitous space for The Prodigy’s Manchester headline; Howlett’s cacophonous cyber-synths are at the heart of the band’s sound, a distinct retro-futuristic industrialism suited to the venue’s steel and concrete innards. From ‘Omen’ to ‘Breathe’, the frenetic movement of the crowd creates one large, indiscernible pit. 

A hedonistic mammoth of a machine, where bodies are cogs in motion stoked by the sonic steam of twisted firestarters (“I’m the trouble starter, punkin’ instigator”) and warrior dances (“Come with me to the dancefloor, you and me, ‘cause that’s what it’s for”).

Too soon, an encore arrives, a feral chorus of “change my pitch up, smack my bitch up” resounding over heady bass and crunchy keys, and beneath a blanket of Matrix-green lasers. From their 1992 debut album Experience, it’s only right the evening culminates in ‘Out of Space’, though its live ending is notably, and criminally, cut short. 

Unexpended adrenaline is met with the raising of the lights, as The Specials’ ‘Ghost Town’ plays. Like spectres, thousands float in a daze of high arousal and ringing ears towards the exit, out of space and back down to Earth.