Carry on the party after Victorious Festival with Punchfunk's clubnight at Southsea Village

Punchfunk club nights originally ran for a decade until 2014, but now they’re back.

Chris Vaux created the nights in 2004, as he recalls: ‘I was 24 years old, I had just won a DJ competition and when I had come through that I wanted a platform to do the sort of music I wanted to, which wasn't really around at the time. So I came up with Punchfunk – rather than just play one genre or style of music, it was an opportunity to bring a few different energies and styles together.

‘I had a good network of people who were very talented DJs, but there wasn't anywhere for them to play locally. For the first Punchfunk I managed to get a great headliner to come over from Belfast called Phil Kieran who was really breaking through at the time. That was at the old Po Na Na (in Guildhall Walk).

‘It was a small event, but it really took off from there. The crowd was really high-energy, lots of fun, really knew their music. It crossed the boundary from a house crowd to the old-style techno crowd and it brought everyone together. The vibe grew and we did our first anniversary of the night at the Opera House in Bournemouth, as it was then, and from there it didn't stop. We had nights in London, we took it to Ibiza, had some nights in Europe, it was pretty crazy. We had a record label, which had a number one on the Beatport downloads site Feelin’ Electro, which got hammered by all the big name DJs – Carl Cox, Digweed, and crossed over into the trance crowd.’

Chris soon got his friends and fellow DJs Simon Blann and Matt Berry involved.

Tragically Matt took his own life in 2014.

‘Matt was a big part of our lives, a big part of the night – a really positive driving force behind everything we did. Sadly, when he passed away, the wheels came off. Mentally, for me and Simon, and the rest of the community in Portsmouth, it was a real shockwave, and we decided that we'd call it a day, and that maybe the energy had gone with him.’

It was a recent trip by Chris and Simon to see The Prodigy at Brixton Academy in London which convinced them the time was right to bring Punchfunk back.

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‘It's funny how things come full circle. In my old age, I've become a bit of a universal hippy, about how the universe leads you.

‘Back in 2004, me, Matt and Simon went up to see The Prodigy in London. Since then, Keith (Flint, Prodigy vocalist and dancer) died in similar circumstances to Matt – and Keith was a hero of Matt's. Liam from the band did a really classy, emotional homage to Keith. We were chatting on the train home and reminiscing like you do, and it felt like something clicked, and that this would be something really positive to do right now, rather than finish on such a low note – not just do a reunion, but to create a new energy.

‘The scene in Portsmouth, there's some great nights, but nothing’s playing the same kind of music and with the ethos we're looking to put on.’

Chris is now the landlord of The Southsea Village pub in Palmerston Road, and he says: ‘Having a venue that doesn’t really do music, but is on the doorstep of Victorious, I thought: “You know what, this could work...”

‘There's an exciting energy around what we're doing, and there will be a real soul to the night rather then just pounding out some music – having a real synergy with the crowd and trying to create some really positive emotional moments.’

And Chris hopes he and Simon have learned from the past.

‘One of the things I will admit is that we did make some mistakes with Punchfunk, we did too much, we kind of exhausted it. But 18 years on and being a bit more sage about these things and looking back, it's got to be something now that we enjoy. It has to be something that you believe in.’

And they are aiming to put on more Punchfunk nights in the future.

’This is a one-off here – the pub is a pub, it's never going to be a club as such and I'd never want it to be.

‘We don't want to say we're going to be sticking to something regimented, we want to find a suitable place for it – there definitely will be more, but we don't want to do more than three or four times a year, and time it so there will be good interest in it, and get the right crowd involved.’

Punchfunk, with Chris Vaux, Simon Blann and Traitors is at Southsea Village in Palmerston Road from 10pm-2am on Sunday. Tickets from £5. Go to designmynight.com/uk/bars/the-southsea-village.