City scope: decks and the single girl

The biggest DJs don't always live up to their names. Fatboy Slim is neither fat nor particularly slim. Meat Katie is a bloke who prefers broccoli to beef. Pale, weedy Moby is hardly leviathan. And Hong Kong's prodigal DJ daughter and rising global star Janette Slack is anything but.

Slack is a force of nature in corsets; a genuine steel-wheel diva and anti-slacker with killer looks and the skills to back them up. She has become the avatar of Torture Garden, London's premier fetish club, which calls the Ministry of Sound home.

Part Eurasian sex bomb, part self-promoting juggernaut and part Energizer bunny, she has barely paused for breath since leaving Hong Kong and a well-paid teaching job for London on a make-or-break mission to achieve international DJ fame. And now she's on her way back for a triumphal Asian homecoming, with the Bangkok cognoscenti awaiting her return as eagerly as those of Hong Kong. Gigs in the two cities will mark the launch of her first album, .

Slack's sonic boom-boom has substance. No DJ bimbo eruption, she is a professional sound engineer who writes and produces her own tracks, which she describes as "a blend of rock riffs and fills, funk, progressive melodies, sexy vocals and cinematic soundscapes with a relentless, catchy bass and thick, grooving drums".

She's won London's prestigious Denon DJousts competition and Europe's 2010 Pink Armada female DJ battle, all the while expressing a taste for fetish regalia.

"Even before I got into DJing, I always enjoyed any excuse to dress a bit differently to the herd," says Slack. "Not in a rebellious way; I just saw stuff I liked and got inspired by characters I saw in movies or in real life. So, when I discovered that looks good with jeans and a tank top [inspired by Gwen Stefani] I did just that."