Weekend warriors

SPHERE FACTOR Harkin, left, and Carter present their bubbly new party.

Photo: Andrew Defrancesco

Eamon Harkin, one of the forces behind Studio B’s Fun shindig, and Justin Carter, a former musical director at APT, are working their way through the week in reverse fashion. The pair’s last joint venture, a summertime series held along the Gowanus Canal, was called Sunday Best; on Saturday 17, they’re kicking off a new affair at Santos Party House dubbed Mister Saturday Night. Which, thankfully, is not a reference to the similarly titled Billy Crystal opus.

“As with most things Justin and I do, the name is the result of much back-and-forth and second guessing,” Harkin admits. “We did come up with a bunch of names with smart musical references, but Mister Saturday Night has a bit of showbiz pizzazz to it. And by happy coincidence, we’re actually doing the party on Saturday nights.” The goofy energy the name connotes isn’t an accident; the pair aims to impart the affair with a serious minded music policy, without attracting the legions of non-dancing dudes often loitering at such events.

“We want to get as broad a crowd as possible, but do so in a smart way,” Carter says. “Not in the way that bottle-service clubs do it, where the music doesn’t really matter at all. We want to appeal beyond the music nerds, the hipsters, and the house and techno heads. We wanted a bigger demographic, the kind that goes to P.S.1’s Warm Up parties every Saturday of the summer without even necessarily knowing who’s playing there.”

Nonetheless, the party seems to be securing the services of some very cool guest artists. The debut edition features JD Twitch from Glasgow’s aurally anarchic Optimo duo, who’ll be spinning in the Santos basement; the main floor, meanwhile, sees a rare Gotham appearance from the venerable New Jersey house honcho Kerri Chandler, playing live. (Future guests include house trio Tortured Soul, Germany’s Tiefschwarz brothers and UNKLE’s James Lavelle.) “I look at the way clubs like Fabric in London do things, which is to put together an interesting, multiroom lineup on a weekly basis,” Harkin says. “There’s an art to putting together artists who are different, yet fit together cohesively on a bill. For instance, you want people to say, ‘Okay, I might not need to see Carl Craig again right now, but if Andy Butler from Hercules and Love Affair is playing in the other room, maybe I will go.’ It’s like putting together a jigsaw puzzle.” Time will tell whether Harkin and Carter have that puzzle solved; in the meantime, we have a new place to spend our Saturday nights.

Mister Saturday Night debuts at Santos Party House Sat 17.