26 year-old Surkin comes from Southern France and lives in Paris. He dropped out of art school two years ago and never looked back.
A former four-to-the-floor hater (rap was all he 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” lists.
Surkin went on to play all over the place, from small clubs and warehouses to huge festivals (Fuji Rock, Good Vibrations, Primavera, Coachella…) 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.
Surkin’s third EP, NEXT OF KIN, featured a huge fuck-the-zeitgeist hit, White Knight Two, that just made Mixmag’s top 100 tracks list of 2008. (Note to all those trying to jump on the 90s bandwagon now: without the love it’s just gimmicks…) Now, White Knight Two and rave banger Kid Gloves are getting the remix treatment, courtesy of Baltimore superstar DJ Blaqstarr, excellent Canadian smoothies Chro- meo, high-powered boy Bobmo and big room royalty Laidback Luke.
His first album USA was released in November 2011.
