Who is Armand Van Helden? To some he is a Superstar: Fatboy Slim's chart topping DJ sparring partner and one of the most recognizable dance music protagonists in the world. To others he is the Witch Doctor, the studio alchemist who can take any (Ace Of) base chart pap and turn it into purest dancefloor gold, or the Sample Slaya, the bad boy of house music, a ghetto fabulous ruffneck flipside to cheeky European upstarts like Basement Jaxx and Daft Punk. Of course, he is all of these and more besides.

In 1999 Armand Van Helden went ballistic. After years of remixes and underground DJ tunes, suddenly he was the micro-bearded wonder behind the mutant disco anthems "U Don’t Know Me" (UK No.1) and "Flowerz" (UK Top20). The New York homeboy responsible for the Ibiza-quaking anthem "The Boogie Monster." His critically hailed album "2Future4U" was swiftly followed by his boxing ring soundclashes (as the Manhattan Mauler) with Fatboy Slim. Before then he’d been a hero to househeads the world over. After that, everybody knew who Armand Van Helden was. When he played Ibiza’s coolest club Space, it was sold out with Armand worshiping clubbers, shouting for his hits. It was the respect the Bostonian B-boy had waited for all his life.

Armand’s name comes from a Dutch-Indonesian father and a French-Lebanese mother. A US Air Force baby, Armand grew up on bases around the world. Moving back to Boston in 1988, this hip hop and house-obsessed teenager quickly fell into a bad boy lifestyle, hustling to pay for a studio engineering course and generally making a nuisance of himself.

Moving to New York, he learned a different kind of hustle: hanging out in full-on rave clubs by night, looking for DJ gigs and record deals by day. Just one of a thousand young hopeful studio bucks. This all changed with "The Witch Doktor," his 1994 single on Strictly Rhythm. Unlike most regular house records coming out of New York, "The Witch Doktor" was evil: a voodoo brew of punishing techno drums and rave sirens. It was massive with discerning DJs on both sides of the Atlantic. Rent paying remixes followed for a succession of cheesy pop acts: everyone from Jimmy Somerville to The Real McCoy and Ace Of Base was put through the Van Helden mangle. Of course, the results were always the same: a heady, hardcore mix of techno noise and house hedonism. And all the time he was putting out a stream of sample hardcore hip hop and house under a dozen aliases: Pirates of the Caribbean, Funky Shelltoes, Hardheads. Some of these deeply underground breakbeat assaults even found their way into the Heavenly Social-bound record boxes of The Chemical Brothers, making Armand an unwitting midwife at the birth of big beat.

In 1996, his unforgettable mix of Tori Amos’ "Professional Widow" went to Number one in the UK and his net worth went through the roof. His influential sub-bass heavy mixes of CJ Bolland’s "Sugar Is Sweeter" and The Sneaker Pimps’ "Spin Spin Sugar" put him at the genesis of UK garage. Never one to play by the rules, his debut artist album for FFrr/London was a hip-hop heavy mash up of rap, funk and reggae samples.

Now with a third shockingly brilliant new album, it’s time for house music's pretenders to take cover and to face the future. "Killing Puritans" is the house album of the new millennium. Every year house music throws up one classic LP, one record that spins the world on it’s head, sets new standards and makes the competition shake their heads.