- To celebrate their sixth anniversary, Night Slugs threw a series of parties around the world. The New York City edition seemed especially fitting, taking place at 88 Palace, a Chinese restaurant stowed away in a closed mall underneath the Manhattan bridge.
The long-ish wait in line before the doors opened left early arrivals stuck in a glossy courtyard surrounded by colorful stores filled with everything from Pokémon cards to formal clothing to kitchen supplies. Meanwhile, in the club upstairs, Bladerunner-esque synth jams were woven into new jack swing choruses. This mixing of futurism and soul became a sort of overarching theme for the night.
The first hour or so saw label bosses L-Vis 1990 and Bok Bok cycling through bass-heavy banger after banger. The tumultuous, machine gun kicks—a Night Slugs staple—were relentless, and the duo knew well to pair their percussive assaults with soaring and tactile synthscapes. As this grew more immense, the partygoers became more enraptured. For a solid 20 minutes, only songs from the Night Slugs catalog were played, tying together the recognizable and affecting tunes with brilliantly mechanistic Club Construction tracks.
Next, ghetto house legend Mike Dunn ripped through a series of classic house and techno records, eventually dropping a beautiful edit of the Derrick May classic "Strings Of Life." RP Boo tossed out a scattered batch of percussive tracks, which supported hilarious samples like the theme from Adam West's Batman. Helix closed out the night aggressively with an uncompromising onslaught of blast beats.