For some reason, going out on a Thursday night always feels great. I think it’s because it makes you feel like the weekend is arriving early. (That is, of course, until Friday morning comes around, when it feels worse than Monday morning.) Funktrust is a great place to kick start the early weekend, especially when special guests for the evening include Katalyst, Two Dogs and DJ Soup.

The launch of ‘Agent Manipulated’, an entire album of remixes for Katalyst brought young and old (though mostly young) to the Hunter Bar on Thursday. 2 Dogs (Katch and Dave Atkins) were up first and had stepped up to the plate early, preparing the crowd for what was to come. I was surprised to see that the Hunter Bar was pretty packed this early and that the majority of punters were already on the dance floor. Lovers of hip hop had come to the right place. Booties were shaken all over the floor and even around the outskirts, people couldn’t help but bounce along. Even the B-Boys could find no room to bust their break-dancing moves out the front and were searching for some floor space elsewhere.

Luckily, in the back room, DJ Soup was playing every style imaginable, with shifts from booty to funk, hip hop to electro. A ‘souped up’ version of The Doors’ Peace Frog was very special, but alas there were too few people in the room to enjoy it. The B-Boys had soon found a happy home downstairs, with enough room for one person to stretch while the other whipped up a storm. The extreme funk of Bette Davis and insane cut-up turntable music by Finga Thing had the breakers rocking out. Some Ultramagnetic MCs and Up Bustle and Out were also dropped in for special measure. I think DJ Soup might have a “thing” for DJ Godfather as ‘Ass and Titties’ got a double play in his set, but a song like that can go down well twice.

Meanwhile, it was Katalyst and Leeroy Brown’s turn upstairs and another conglomerate of styles was being thrown around my headspace. From old skool breaks to David Bowie’s ‘Let’s Dance,’ Katalyst had brought a bag of party favourites that went down superbly. The crowd went wild for Stevie Wonder’s Superstitious and stayed that way for quite some time. Katalyst threw in a few tracks from the remix album for good measure and the crowd was certainly appreciative of Leeroy Brown’s scratching displays. There is no doubt about it – he can scratch.

Funny faces abounded by those on the dance floor and those slumped in a chair at the back of the room. Will Styles and Learned Hand were now going back to back on the four decks, but by this stage I was a bit tired of the back-to-back-to-back-to-back flavour of the evening. People had definitely come with intentions for a big night, random conversations were filled with questions like, “What was I talking abut again?” Many had seemed to successfully block out the prospect of work in the morning, but my eyes were beginning to droop and so I headed home. Though I thought FunkTrust would contain much much funk and dirty breaks, it’s certainly a place to part-ee. Bring your disco boots if you do head to Funktrust.