Bad Sneakers 07/01/09

“Every time I look into your eyes I see the future”

The world of science is usually pretty dull. However, in the last few weeks a couple of things happened which are nothing short of fucking awesome.

First up, they found an animal that lives forever.

It’s a type of jellyfish called a Turritopsis Nutricula, and after it reaches sexual maturity it just turns back into a little jellyfish foetus. Basically, it does reincarnation without bothering to die. Pretty cool.

As if that wasn’t good enough, Jurassic Park is going to be very real, very soon. Sort of.

Basically some sciencey chaps cloned an extinct animal from frozen cells. It was a Triceratops and it’s currently roaming the streets of Antananarivo, Madagascar. Not true. Actually it was a Pyrenean Ibex and it died. But still! It’s a good start! It sort of worked! Once they perfect the technology we will all be able to have our very own pet sabre-toothed Tigers.

If dinosaurs went clubbing they would probably go to Bad Sneakers. It’s held every Saturday at the lovely Faversham and it’s put on ‘before they were massive’ gigs by acts including Klaxons, Hot Chip, Lily Allen, The Gossip and the Arctic Monkeys.

Every now and then they take a break from all the guitar-based shenanigans and put on DJs. Last Saturday was one of those nights.

Opening the show were the seemingly ubiquitous house party hell raisers the Heads Up DJs. These three very busy guys seem to be getting booked for everything these days, and very good they are too, playing a very tasteful blend of techy electro.

Our headliner for the night was Surkin, a young whippersnapper from Paris.

A few years ago he released ‘Radio Fireworks’ in the epicentre of the whole ravey sounding French house craze, and the track was as popular as Pokemon. Guys like Erol Alkan, Mylo, Boys Noize and Justice could not get enough of it.

Since then he’s been playing gigs, putting out new tracks and remixing the likes of DJ Mehdi, Chromeo, Foals and more.

So Surkin rocked the packed room with some crunchy electro, dropping a couple of cheeky crowd-pleasers every now and then - stuff like Rikkalicious, the Soulwax mix of Tiga’s Mind Dimension 2 and his own remix of Klaxons.

Youth Attack tidied things up nicely after Surkin had done his thing, playing some quality fidget house and general banging shit. Bit of Fake Blood, bit of Dada Life, bit of Herve - spot on.

So far all very good, but Bad Sneakers had an ace up its sleeve. If the relentless duf-duf-duf of the main room got a bit overpowering, there was room 2, where Jonny Strangeways offered a delightful change of pace.

He played all those songs you love, forget about for a while, then randomly hear and remember why you loved them in the first place. There was some Iggy and the Stooges, a bit of the 5, 6, 7, 8s and my personal highlight of the night, ‘Raspberry Beret’ by Prince. Classic.

Bad Sneakers have some sizably stonking events lined up for the next couple of months. Highlights include Sway on March 5th, Filthy Dukes on March 21st, and the queen of (totally deserved) hype, Little Boots, on March 14th. Get on down to these and you’ll enjoy yourself, promise.