Manchester Must Dance

GIOGOI was born out of the Manchester rave explosion, and Mike Pickering was there. In his best-selling book Manchester Must Dance, the Haçienda DJ credits brothers Anthony and Christopher Donnelly as the spark plugs who accelerated the UK rave explosion and shifted Manchester's culture forever.

In October 1988 Anthony threw the now legendary Sweat It Out party, an illegal night under a railway arch on Temperance Street that pulled the city's entire creative underground into one room: Factory Records heads, football casuals, members of New Order and the Happy Mondays, with Pickering on the decks playing acid house.

With JOY at Stand Lees Farm in Rochdale, widely considered the first authentic large-scale house rave in the North, the brothers gave the movement its early blueprint: raw, fearless and completely DIY.

The energy of those nights laid the foundation for Gio-Goi, the label the brothers built in the 1990s, bridging the gap between Manchester's music and its fashion.