At Kindred, we love Bok Bok, and it’s clear that this love expands beyond our small shop space. We teamed up with Salomon via Footpatrol on the release of the new Salomon XT-Evo.

Taking what is a functional shoe and repurposing it parallels the way Bok Bok approaches music. All material is a form for retrograding and sampling – reworking what already exists and finding new ways to make it relevant. As Bok Bok says, “It’s like just bringing through history into the modern day, but finding ways to make it so just refresh that and just recontextualise it again and again.”

In Bok Bok’s music, you feel a sense of reference and an appreciation for cultural relevance. Beyond the kick drums and moving snares, there is a respect for the reshaping of pre-existing sounds. Bok Bok says, “It’s a slow evolution. I think that’s the way to stay around really, to, you know, stay, keep yourself around. Hopefully I’ll be here in 20 years time still evolving.”

London is rich with whatever you want to find, and we feel that at Kindred, where all genres are welcomed and often shared. Having been around for six years at our spot in Farringdon, we have an appreciation for the labels and events that came before us.

Night Slugs, founded by Bok Bok and L-Vis 1990 in London, is one of those labels. Emerging from the club night of the same name, the label became a home for music that pulled freely between grime, house, UK funky, techno and sounds that were harder to place. Rather than treating these references as fixed genres, Night Slugs took them apart and rearranged them – an approach that feels closely connected to Bok Bok’s ideas around recontextualising musical history.

Night Slugs hosted a day of music at Kindred, where we also sold the label’s back catalogue. It was an opportunity to look back, but also forward – considering how these records might be played today, in new environments and by a new generation.

As Bok Bok puts it, “I think that this is what London’s great at is like taking different influences and then making it our own, you know. So I feel like that’s it’s carrying on, that’s like that great tradition is being carried on by this new generation.”

Shop Salomon XT-Evo at Footpatrol.