Tagged: DJ

PREVIEW: SebastiAn, Surkin, Unicorn Kid @ Koko, Camden

Once upon a time, long before I wrote a fashion blog, I used to be a music reviewer-cum-DJ-cum-club promoter. My coup de grace was convincing a then semi-popular minimal techno producer called Kanio to play at a house party I was helping to throw. Not that throwing a house party on Manor House Road required much ‘help’ – it was more of a case of ‘play music, and they will come’. My career as a DJ was fairly shortlived – I played a few parties and opened for a few friends with names much bigger than my own. Most of the clubs I performed in (and I’m hoping this is a coincidence rather than a direct result…) have since been shut down. The truth is, I was more a fixture on ‘the scene’ than anything else. Like a 21st century Bez.

However, one thing I (usually) managed to do pretty successfully was predict where music was heading – I was listening to French electro and minimal techno, albeit most of it culled from the collections of DJ friends, long before Urban Outfitters played it instore and I’d already seen Deadmau5 twice before his oversized head ever popped up on Radio 1′s Essential Mix. Two artists I maintain never really got the credit they deserved are SebastiAn and Surkin. While labelmates like Justice and Uffie soared to the top of the charts, it took a long time for SebastiAn and Surkin to become much more than ‘cult favourites’. I’m massively excited to see them bring their ‘weird but it works’ blend of dirty, bass heavy electro and DIY punk/metal aesthetics to London next weekend.

I’m also hugely excited to see my homeboy Unicorn Kid, who I’ve previously written extensively about bring some homegrown talent to what is otherwise a very French stage. This gig will be one of the first at which Sabin is playing ‘live’ rather than just mixing, though whether this means he’ll be bringing out the modded Game Boys remains to be seen. Judging from his latest single, Feel So Real, a mash-up of his own Chrome Lion with Love Decade’s So Real, the Kid clearly knows how to make something fresh and exciting out of tracks both old and new.

Tickets are now on sale here – http://bit.ly/PWOhyl. In case I haven’t convinced you yet, you can find some choice cuts by some of the acts performing below. Oh, and if you do end up buying a ticket, let me know – I’m currently going stag. That’s how much I love these guys.

Disclaimer: Because I’ve previously written about Unicorn Kid, the guys putting on this night invited me down to check it out for free. Don’t be crazy enough to think that that compromises any of what I’ve written above.

After Hours Athletes


I hate the word ‘athlete’, not as much as I hate people who pronounce it ‘atherleet’, but still quite a bit.  It conjures up two images in my head – the first is one of those anorexic looking Kenyan runners pronouncing words wrongly (which in turns carries its own connotations of trying not to laugh at the breakfast table because your stepdad is a politically correct wanker and he’ll call you a racist) and the second is some ginger twat from public school who looks like an over inflated Prince Harry, wears deck shoes even when it’s snowing and starts most of his sentences with a laugh that sounds like a frog coughing up blood.

Enter VICE and Puma to  shatter these stereotypes and bring sports back to quote unquote normal people like me, who only go to the gym to pick up women and even then would rather sit around writing articles for zines about how much of a dickhead Russell Brand is.  The dynamic duo are throwing two parties, one in London and one in Manchester, featuring a host of events like beer pong, cardioke (trying to do karaoke while on a cross trainer…maybe some steroid fuelled chavs will gatecrash and cross train themselves into oblivion while MCing to new monkey) and something to do with eating pizza without using your hands.  Obviously that’s the one I’m most excited about.  Of course, there’ll be so much hip facial hair that everyone in attendance’s faces will smell of pizza for days.


Puma and VICE are doing a bunch of other things with bands and stuff, one of them being Is Tropical, who are currently opening for Mystery Jets. Kind of a shame that means most of the punters will be queueing for £3.95 pints of Carling while Is Tropical are playing, since they’re better than Mystery Jets.  Expect to hear them on like…series 9 of Skins, since that’s how long it takes good music to filter through over there.  I guess this where I should talk about how Is Tropical fuse the artcore aesthetic of bands like The Antlers with the raw energy and ‘foot tappability’ (vom.) of The Drums, with an edge of the Klaxons but not new Klaxons stuff, their old stuff.  Just got a phonecall from NME, I start next month.

What was I saying? Oh yeah, parties. DJs. Fun. The possibility of free pizza. Booze. Girls.  You’d be a fool to miss it, a damn fool.  The London party goes down on 10th Nov and the Manchester party is on the 30th November.  More details on how to get tickets (free…) at http://viceland.com/afterhours/index.php