Upbeat update

France’s Surkin revitalizes
some old flavours

BACK TO THE FUTURISTIC: Surkin

by JACK OATMON

Remember the serotonin-releasing frenzy and vamping majesty of MuchMusic Dance Mix ’95? Across the country, tweens quarrelled at recess time about who could choose the next track on the class CD player, single moms vacuumed light-footedly across the carpets of a million households and basketball halftimes rocked to the sound of bizarre Euro-pop/techno crossover tracks. Enter Benoit Heitz, aka Surkin, a 23-year-old revivalist from southern France with a penchant for resurrecting and revitalizing those saccharine sounds, though in a somewhat more tasteful package.

“Yeah, obviously, early-’90s dance music is one of my biggest influences,” says Heitz, a member of the Parisian Institubes clique. “There is an instinctive feeling in the production of it. A lot of things are over-produced, but they knew how to keep things simple and efficient without making it too stupid. It’s really interesting and they had a lot of good ideas.”

Heitz by no means cages himself in that era, however. He spoke to the Mirror over the phone from L.A., where he went to track down one of his favourite, classic ’80s house vocalists to do a track.

“Kevin Irving sang on a lot of huge house classics back in the ’80s, Marshall Jefferson tracks and that kind of house music, which I’m really into. He moved to L.A. to be a keyboard musician for R&B acts. But my manager found him and he accepted an offer to sing on some house tracks with me—just for fun, actually.”

Heitz and Irving are retaining some of the classic vibe in their upcoming tracks, but also adding something contemporary to the mix. “I’m gonna try to make it like 2012, you know? It won’t be straight, old-school house. I’m going to put a futuristic touch to it.”

The prospect of Irving’s urgent, funky calling and howling threaded into Heitz’s uptempo, sample-chopping party techno promises a mad, intoxicating end product. While waiting for that to come along, see what Surkin’s already done with such vocal collaborations, as in his most recent outing with Chromeo. Do yourself a favour and look for “Chrome Knight” on YouTube or Hype Machine, and think Livin’ Joy’s “Dreamer” updated for the Internet generation. Though, as is the case with many currently known club producers, Heitz didn’t really like that music at the time.

“I was really into rap music most of my life, and I was really against dance music,” explains Heitz. “I love it now, but it took me a lot of time to get used to a kick drum on every beat. I was used to the hip hop structures. But a lot of hip hop producers were beginning to use synthesizers. The Neptunes and even independent artists like Company Flow and Antipop Consortium. And at the same time, I discovered ghettotech and also grime in the U.K., Dizzee Rascal and those kind of tracks, and so a lot of things at the same time made me really love it.”

He says his upcoming, and as yet unnamed, album will be an eclectic representation of all his influences and will display a wide variety of beats and styles in the vein of what he’s been doing so far. It’s planned for release in spring 2009.