The Horse Meat Disco residents

Photo: Marius Hansen

“They rool so hard!” the DFA label’s James Murphy virtually bellows via e-mail. “I love those guys. I just think it’s a little shameful that NYC doesn’t seem, off the top of my head, to have a similar thing.” The “guys” in question are DJs James Hillard, Jim Stanton, Filthy Luka and Severino; the “thing” is Horse Meat Disco, the London party where those spinners ply their trade. And Murphy’s noggin has it right: There’s nothing quite like Horse Meat Disco in New York City. That will change, for at least one night, when the Brits gallop into DFA’s Secret Disco Version affair at Santos Party House on Wednesday 10.

Horse Meat Disco bills itself as “the queer party for everyone: homos and heteros, club kids, bears, fashionistas, naturists, guerilla drag queens and ladies who munch.” Of course, that’s not what makes it unique; New York is awash in polysexual clubbing. What makes HMD stand out (at least among queer-leaning events) is the music. Rather than the paint-peeling electro-rock or bludgeoning tribal house that many gay parties feature, HMD specializes—like Murphy and his deejaying posse—in the outer limits of disco. Don’t expect much in the way of “Boogie Oogie Oogie” at Santos, because the focus is on Italo sounds, dub disco in the manner of Idjut Boys, off-balance electrofunk, string-soaked nonhits and pretty much anything with an arpeggiated bassline that isn’t “I Feel Love.” Though, given the Horse Meat residents’ reputation as sweethearts, you might just get lucky if you ask nicely enough.