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Surkin

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Location: Paris, France

Bio: 20 year-old Surkin moved to Paris from Southern France last year. He dropped out of art school two years ago and never looked back.

A ... (more) former four-to-the-floor hater (rap was all the cared for until 2003), Surkin got into dance music through Detroit ghettotech and—thanks God for P2P—started to dig deeper into club music history, focusing on Miami Bass, Chicago ghetto-(and non) house music. Add a thick layer of glammed up filtered house courtesy of French dons Daft Punk and local originators Jess & Crabbe and you've got the full Surkin mille-feuilles.

In May 2006, Parisian label Institubes released not one but two Surkin records at once: GHETTO OBSESSION EP and RADIO FIREWORKS. The response was tremendous. Played and playlisted by everybody, from the Ed Banger/Erol Alkan cabal to Boys Noize and Tiga, those tracks even managed to break the indie dance glass ceiling by smashing main rooms all over. Radio Fireworks emerged as a genuine club hit, topping both Justice's AND Mylo's "Best tracks of 2006" list.

Surkin went on to play all over the place, from small clubs and warehouses to huge festivals (Fuji Rock, Good Vibrations, and Primavera and Coachella soon) and toured Australia, North America, England and Japan several times. His fast-paced, cut-up mixing of old and new electro and house bangers has become a style, a template.

Remix offers came in droves, from Boys Noize, DJ Mehdi, Justine Electra, Klaxons, Paul Johnson, Para One, Chromeo, Foals, VHS or Beta, Justice... After a Japan-only mini-album—ACTION REPLAY—, Institubes dropped FIREWORKS REFIRED, featuring refixes by our own Tacteel, Aussie heavy-hitters Riot In Belgium and ghetto house legend DJ Slugo.

Now Surkin is back with NEXT OF KIN, a third EP that showcases a tremendous growth as a producer. On this record, we have one BIG nineties-influenced dance track, a hard druggy warehouse banger and a song that is somewhat a departure from what Surkin is known for. PLUS: Todd Edwards, one of Surkin's heroes, remixed Next of Kin into pure, streamlined, cut-up house.

Next up: NEXT OF KIN, MARK II, wherein Surkin and friends—Baltimore superstar DJ Blaqstarr, excellent Canadian smoothies Chromeo and high-powered boy Bobmo— mess around with the original tracks.

Next next up: the ALBUM. (less)