21 year old Institubes producer Surkin chatted to Skrufff this week about both his meteoric rise to top of the dirty electro-pop hierarchy and being a reformed ‘four-to-the-floor hater’: and revealed he remains blissfully unaware of house music’s ageing elite.

Quizzed about Daft Punk manager Pedro Winter’s recent revelation that he set up Ed Banger Records because he was ‘fed up with big name DJs spinning shit music’ the baby faced French star admitted he pays minimal attention to celebrity DJs such as Tiesto, Paul van Dyk and Carl Cox. “Who are those guys?” Surkin queried. “I’ve never heard of them before.”

The precocious producer also agreed with Winter’s assertion that ‘every single French artist is influenced by Daft Punk’, declaring ‘Daft Punk are obviously part of my DNA; their albums are classics.’ “But then; if you play the influence game, you have to realize that everybody is different, coming from different backgrounds, with different inspirations, and most of us started out in rap crews, rock bands or at ballet classes (just ask Bobmo),” he laughed.

Despite his outspokenness, he remained surprising ambivalent, however, when quizzed about the famed rudeness of natives in his adopted home of Paris, refusing to confirm or deny whether Parisians are genuinely more arrogant than anyone else. “Coming from ‘La Province’, if I say yes, Parisians will say I’m biased because of where I’m from,” he explained. “And if I say no, they’ll think I’m such a wannabe Parisian that I wouldn’t dare criticize them. It’s a lose-lose situation, you see,” he mused.

Defining his musical style as simply ‘dance music’ (‘I just make some tracks, I’m too young to have a trademark style to respect and protect’) Surkin said his journey into club music was via ghetto house and was equally enthused about the pop sound of his latest single Next Of Kin. “I’m really glad the new single got good feedback from home-listeners (can you say that?) as well as clubbers and DJs. I was worried it wouldn’t get played because it wasn’t all distorto-tech but it turned out OK on that front,” he admitted.

“I’m happy with what’s happening but it’s still on a small scale, you know, I still can’t afford that pony I’ve been wanting since I’m eight,” he concluded.