Try 'House Of Jealous Lovers' by NYC dance-punks The Rapture. The two most influential dance tunes of the past 25 years, played back to backf You can't possibly go wrong. The room goes crazy, and there's a fair-to-decent chance that, for the majority of the gammed-up hipster cognoscenti losing its collective mind on the dance floor, the year is set to peak a tad early. Calling the shots from behind the decks is a bearded bundle of energy from Derry city . . . his name is Mister Eamon Harkin, and he's a superstar. Well, a local superstar, anyhow. And, in a city where everybody, and we mean everybody, is busy hustling for their 15 minutes of fame . . . or infamy, either/or . . . this is his town.

Play it cool and you just might make it on the guest list. No plus ones.

If you want to make a splash in NYC, you've simply got to be ahead of the crowd.

And Eamon Harkin knows how to work a dancefloor "Being here forces you to be something different, " he says, "either as a promoter or a DJ, you've got to be exceptionally good, and execute whatever it is you're promoting exceptionally well. There's no shortage of other events happening on any given evening, so you've got to be very creative about what you're offering, with what you're playing, and how you put it all together. And you've got to keep your name out there." Harkin cemented his reputation with his eclectic midweek bash, Calling All Kids, a regular haven for discerning Lower East Side denizens in search of where it happens to be at; now he's holding court on a Friday night in Brooklyn's smartest new venue, Studio B, where he's spinning discs and playing host to eclectic star turns from hot European imports like Patrick Wolf and DJ Diplo. As for a typical Eamon Harkin DJ set, wellf There isn't one. "I get bored if I hear any one type of music all night long, " he says, "but I like most types of music. So I always take enough records with me to keep my options covered, say indie and rock and techno and disco and all the modern contemporary equivalents of those . . . and I take it from there. Anything goes."

The general consensus, let's call it the word on the street, suggests that NYC is in a bit of a rut creatively. Right now, New York's changing at a frantic pace; with the post 9/11 rebirth in full swing, and the local economy in rude health, cool and cuttingedge has taken a back seat to co-opting creativity in the name of wanton commercialism. Seminal venue CBGBs may have shut its doors last October, but still there's a CBGBs Store on St Mark's Place that sells official merchandise . . . that pretty much sums up where the city is at these days.

Property is at an absolute premium, and venues are closing left, right and centre. Couple that with the ongoing police crackdown on dance venues . . . that's another story in itself . . . and, well, you really do have to fight for your right to party. Which is where Eamon Harkin comes in. "This town still has the cache it always did, " he says, "but people who come here now are shocked at how hard it is to make a club night a success these days.

What keeps me here is that when it does come together in New York, there's no better place . . . because you really have to work for it, and then when you get it you really appreciate it. When it finally comes together, it comes together in a way that's sort of indescribable."

Harkin landed in New York three years ago; a graphic designer by trade, he came to NYC after a decade spent building a career in London. "First and foremost, I fancied a change, " he says, "I was pretty much burned out on London and, much as I still love Derry, I fancied a challenge. Somewhere bigger. I think for every Irish person New York still has a certain mystique. Sof I didn't really know any people here, I just went for it." Before his move stateside, DJing had always been a hobby . . . now, having landed a plum graphic design gig in NYC, he was determined to raise his game. "Not knowing anybody meant that I could focus and just get on with it, which was incredibly rewarding.

I spent my first year learning the ropes, finding my feet, and becoming a better DJ.

It's always trial and error . . . you just have to put in the hours. Then I found friends that shared a lot of the same interests as I had, which hadn't always been the case in London . . . my social circles now revolve around music, and I love that."

Musically, the spiritual home of punk, disco and hip-hop is still trying to find a new groove. "When I came here, three years ago, " says Harkin, "the scene then was still very rock based, off the back of the whole Strokes explosion . . . seriously, every single band sounded like The Strokes, and every nightclub was playing guitar music. It's been interesting to see it evolve and mutate. It's still got that vibe, that search for an indie credibility, but it's all beat-driven again."

He's quick to cite the influence of local heroes DFA (Death From Above), the NYbased production team/record label cofounded by James Murphy, the driving force behind current critics darlings LCD Soundsystem, and the architects of the whole dance-punk thing you're hearing from bands like The Klaxons, CSS and Hot Chipf They're the people behind the aforementioned 'House Of Jealous Lovers', by The Rapture. And if you've never heard 'House Of Jealous Lovers' by The Rapture, well, you should possibly get out more. It does the job every time.

So, a decade after DJ culture was set to rule the earth (before being usurped by skinny boys with angular hair and guitars), the fine art of disc jockeying has gone back underground, where it always truly belonged, back to small, sweaty, stuffed clubs packed with kids freaking out to their favourite tunes. It's where you'll find Derry lad turned Honorary New Yorker Harkin doing what he loves most, spinning vinyl . . .

always vinyl, none of this lame-o DJing with an iPod nonsense . . . in searching of that next killer track. Later this year, he's planning to return to the Lower East Side and open a record shop. If you're in town anytime soon, make sure to look him up. "I never really felt comfortable with the whole 'DJ name' thing, " he says. "I'm in New York, I have a distinctive enough name to be out there; I'm Eamon Harkin, which nobody can pronounce. That's a conversation starter if nothing else. In its own little way, I suppose that's a statement in itself. Irish, big beard, knows his music, jumps about a bit, looks like he's enjoying himself. That's me."