Tonight
Windows down
We try to find a way
Got to hide away
Jae Matthews (Boy Harsher) gets hold of Buzz Kull’s Man on the Beat like somebody slipping out a switchblade hidden in a garterbelt; cool hands, bad intent, and perfect timing. A cult track to begin with, the song already carries its own hard stare, but Matthews reimagines it as a dark, hypnotic late-night anthem, and suddenly that stare turns cinematic. Her unmistakable voice hangs over a cold synth pulse with the kind of poise that suggests she has seen the room, sized up every soul in it, and chosen exactly how much danger to bring.
Matthews inhabits the material: there is glamour and a sly kind of severity in her delivery, a little poison slipped into the lipstick. She sings with the cool confidence of somebody who understands that desire and dread often share the same address. The track moves with nightclub discipline, each beat stepping forward like a polished boot on a sticky floor, while the electronics smear and gleam around her in long, lean lines. It feels sleek, severe, and gloriously indecent.
The song lives in its sense of after-hours inevitability, the feeling that the city has finally emptied enough for its worst ideas to begin to look elegant. Matthews turns restraint into tension, letting every phrase land clean and dangerous.
The B-side sweetens the trouble. Spike Hellis takes the tune and stretches it into a longer, harder, synth-charged club cut, something built less for staring across the room than for surrendering to the floor. Between the two versions, Man on the Beat gets to exist as both cool seduction and dance-floor compulsion.
Listen to Jae Matthews’ cover of “Man On The Beat” below:
Jae Matthews’ cover of Man On The Beat is out digitally everywhere now, with the vinyl due April 17 for the Buzz Kull Deep Hate / Void Vision show in Los Angeles, where Jae will be DJing at Pacific Electric.
Listen to Man On The Beat and the Spike Hellis remix below and order the 12-inch single via Heartworm Press here:
Listen to the original Buzz Kull version here:
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