REMEMBER episode 272 of The Simpsons? Yes? Good. The one where Moe turns the stinky old Moe's Tavern into M's - a 'po-mo' (post-modern) nightclub for smug hipsters and blokes with ponytails sipping martinis while looped footage of a blinking eye projects across the walls.
It's almost limitless, we can completely change the look of our interior with this kit
"Weird for the sake of weird," Moe calls it.
Well, that's what you might expect of Texture - Northern Quarter's latest venue and perhaps the North West's first ever 'multi-media bar'.
The reality, however, is much more impressive.
On first inspection the space may look typically Northern Quarter; with its polished concrete floor, high ceilings and bare brick walls, however, Texture packs more state-of-the-art and unintelligible kit than your average particle accelerator.
Texture, 67 Lever Street
Texture visualsSo much so, Texture's boss, Londoner and former-DJ Kirk Paten, has employed two lighting and tech engineers to keep it all firing. One of whom has mapped every single angle and dimension of the building's interior (even every single bloody brick) to create sound and visuals that'll spin your ears and melt your looking-balls.
"This has been created to blow people's minds," Paten tells me. "Nobody else has this kind of tech or software - we're very proud of that.
"It's almost limitless, we can completely change the look of our interior with this kit... it's a technological blank canvas."
Texture will be the first bricks'n'mortar place for Paten and his business partner, Nicola Hoskin. It's been a long time coming too.
"We've been working on this place for the best part of eighteen months," says Paten. "We wanted to open before Christmas but were held back by all the usual planning, licence and build stuff.
"We could have rushed an opening," he continues, "but with an ambitious project like this what'd be the point in cutting corners?"
Texture boss Kirk PatenHaving explored a dozen properties in Manchester, it was only ever going to be Northern Quarter for the pair.
"We don't want to talk too much about Londoners trying to bring London to Manchester," Paten explains, "but myself and Nicky have spent a whole lot of time in Shoreditch, and quite simply, the Northern Quarter is the only place with the same feel and outlook.
"There's still so many cool and undiscovered spaces in the Northern Quarter, and we feel we can be as creative as we want to be here and the clientele will embrace that."
And who's the clientele? "Young professionals and creative-types," says Paten, "hopefully they'll appreciate what we're doing here.
"But this isn't just a late-night space, we want it to be an inspirational place for corporates, a state-of-the-art venue for fashion shows and product launches, we can turn this space into whatever you need it to be."
Texture launches tonight at 67 Lever Street in the Northern Quarter.
