Manhattan Heights and the heart of the scene

Manhattan Heights was, by the standards of a Lancashire mill town in 1988, a marvel: a purpose-built nightclub with a serious sound system, strobes, and room for fifteen hundred people on a Saturday night. It sat in the middle of Blackburn, and for three years it was the beating heart of the town's acid house scene.

The club's importance wasn't just size — it was the records. The residents and the guests — Sasha above all, then barely known beyond Stoke — played proper, relentless house: Italian piano records, New York garage, the Chicago things arriving on import from Manchester. A tape from 6 June 1990, transcribed from the original recording, runs thirty-five tracks deep and never lets up: Emerson, Lake and Palmer's 'Fanfare' turned into a floor-packing intro, Bassomatic, Pierre Feroldi, Brothers In Rhythm, Musto and Bones. This was the sound that kept the town's clubs going through the crackdown years.

Manhattan Heights closed at the end of 1991, a victim of the same police pressure that closed so many of the Lancashire venues. But the recordings — sold on tape stalls, passed hand to hand — carried the sound on, and the town never forgot the room it had.