The Freaks Come Out At Night

It can be quite dispiriting DJ’ing sometimes. You troop up to a venue with an edgy name, get yourself settled in by the booth and start flicking through your Stooges 7″s when you realise there’s a queue of girls forming behind you all with the same utterly predictable and dull request for RnB, Garage or Funky House. Now don’t get me wrong I’ve spent many a happy hour hoovering the house to Alexander O’Neil records but still it’d be nice if just once they gave you a couple of songs before twisting their orange faces into a disbelieving scowl as they try and comprehend that anyone could leave the house without the collected works of Usher upon their person.

Sadly for them, last Friday I was all out of Usher, Lil Wayne, Ne-Yo or even ‘that Rolex song’ and they had to make do with some old Crookers edits I found lying at the bottom of my bag. Still it seemed to keep them happy for an hour or so and best of all gave me a chance to drop the new 7″ from Camden Town’s finest Man Like Me. Now this might not have been exactly what the assembled scrapebacks were expecting but in my not particularly humble opinion you’ll be hard pressed to find a better pop act than MLM in the UK today and judging by the enthusiastic knees up on the dancefloor the crowd were in agreement.

I first caught them literally bringing the roof down at the Amersham Arms in its pre-buff hype days and have been a bit obsessed ever since. The only thing about them I’ve yet to make up my mind about yet is whether they’re this generation’s Madness or Specials, but either way I think there’s a hell of lot more going on there than many people have cottoned onto yet, though hopefully that should change very soon.

Anyway the new single Carny has been one of my favourites in their live shows ever since and is out now with a whole load of remixes available exclusively at Beatport. And as a reward for wading through all that you get to leech the Punks Jump Up mix, where the boys have housed it up and added a soundsytem shredding bassline and a mix from the MLM’s own Pesk which throws some carnival-esque drums into the mix to jaunty effect.

Man Like Me – Carny (Punks Jump Up Go Bass Mix)
Man Like Me – Carny (Pesk Mix)

Now if Man Like Me have a slight hint of bawdy 70’s softcore hero Robin Askwith about them (actually Confessions of… would make a great debut album title) then the next act who have been filling our inbox is a little more reminiscent of something like Salò. Heidi Kilpelainen aka HK-119 is a Finnish artist whose been living in London the past few years scaring the shit out of young men in dark clubs with an act that is one part Factory-esque performance art, one part Grace Jones and one part ball crushing dominatrix.

Her debut LP is about to drop on One Little Indian and we can heartily recommend it, and not just because we’d like our nuts to stay in the shape they are. Check out a couple of tracks from the album ‘Fast, Cheap and Out of Control’ below.

HK-119 – Divine
HK-119 – Tropikalia

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