Electroclash  

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Electroclash (also known as synthcore, retro-electro, tech-pop, nouveau disco, and the new new wave) is a genre of music that fuses 1980s electro, new wave and synth-pop with 1990s techno, retro-style electropop and electronic dance music. It emerged in the later 1990s and is often thought of as reaching its peak circa 2002/2003. It was pioneered by and associated with acts such as I-F, Miss Kittin and The Hacker, and Fischerspooner.

See also

• Frank Sinatra (Miss Kittin & The Hacker song)
• Fuck the Pain Away (2000) by Peaches
• Suis-je normale? (1980)
• Chicks on Speed
• Strut_Records#Disco_Not_Disco
• In the Beginning there Was Rhythm - Soul Jazz records
• Nine O'Clock Drop (2000) by Andy Weatherall
• DJ-Kicks: Playgroup (2002)

Electro Clash CDs This Is Tech Pop 21st Century Electro & New Wave [1 CD, Amazon US] 1. Emerge - Fischerspooner 2. 14 Zero Zero - Console 3. Nobody Knows (Part One) - Zoot Woman 4. Sunglasses At Night - Tiga & Zyntherius 5. Candy Girl - Soviet 6. Destroy She Said - Circ 7. Genedefekt - Green Velvet 8. You're My Disco (New Romantic Mix) - Waldorf 9. Overdose - Tomcraft 10. State Of Grace - Swayzak 11. Naked, Drunk, And Horny - Yellow Note Vs. Pukka 12. Rippin Kittin - Golden Boy with Miss Kittin 13. Happy Hour - Felix Da Housecat 14. Extensive Care - Crossover 15. Machine Says Yes - FC Kahuna 16. Pozition - Selway 17. Playgirl (Zombie Nation Mix) - Ladytron 18. Go! - Toktok Vs. Soffy O 19. Naïve Song (Dave Clarke Remix) - Mirwais 20. Ocean Drive - FPU -- [...] DJ Kicks - Playgroup [1 CD, Amazon US] Playgroup producer Trevor Jackson has compiled the latest in the critically acclaimed DJ Kicks series. "I never went to the Roxy or Danceteria, but I went to the British equivalent of those clubs," producer Trevor Jackson has said, discussing his Playgroup project. Essentially, it's an English kid's grown-up homage to his teenage fantasy of early-'80s New York dance culture, a vision—filtered entirely through records and the music press, but not inaccurate—of downtown Manhattan as a polyrhythmically perverse utopia of sexual/racial border-crossing, rootless cosmopolitanism, and all-night parties tinged with noir sleaze. -- Simon Reynolds The next installment will hit the streets through Studio K7! on July 1, and features tracks from Maurice Fulton, Random Factor, Metro Area and Ralphi Rosario. Previous DJ Kicks releases have been compiled by luminaries such as Nightmares On Wax, Truby Trio, Stereo MCs, Kruder & Dorfmeister, Carl Craig and Stacey Pullen. Maurice Fulton presents Boof - We Ana Rago - You're God (I:Cube Remix) Material - Ciquri (Discomix) Harlequin Fours - Set It Off Impedance - Tainted Love Random Factor - Broken Mirror Cultural Vibe - Ma Foom Bey (Love Chant Version) Metro Area - Caught Up Tiny Trendies - The Sky Is Not Crying Smith 'N Hack - To Our Disco Friends Zongamin - Tunnel Music Charles Schillings - No Communication, No Love (Salt City Orchestra Mix) Nigo - March Of General (Chicken Lips Conquest Dub) Jay Walk - Buggin' Becky (Fully Bearded Mix) KC Flightt - Let's Get Jazzy (Dopy Dub Mix) Human League - Do Or Die (Dub) Parallax Corporation - Anti Social Tendencies Ralphi Rosario - Get Up Get Out Bobby O - Still Hott 4 U Dexter - I Don't Care Wanda Dee - Gonna Make You Sweat (Acapella) The Rapture - House of Jealous Lovers Flying Lizards - Money B Very enjoyable, harks back to early eighties electro music, mixing it up with newer shit, while sustaining the same vibe. 4/5 Kittenz & Thee Glitz (2001) - Felix Da Housecat [Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK] Finally, this album is released in the states! Various singles from Felix da Housecat got heavy rotation time on independent radio stations over the past year, most notably "Silver Screen (Shower Scene)" and "Madame Hollywood". The vocals of these two particular tracks were done in hilarious monotone by Miss Kitten, and along with the robotic beats and 80's synthesizer sounds, you are taken right back to the eighties - but in a good way! Other songs like "Harlot" and "Glitz Rock" are equally fun in a tongue-in-cheek way, while songs like "What Does It Feel Like" shun easy 80's parody and try to recreate a darker sonar world of the time period. This album is a relief from all the mind-sapping mediocre trance and two-step albums out there. "Kittenz & Thee Glitz" hearkens back to the 80's with a sense of both wry cynicism and earnest fascination, and in turn neither glorifies nor trivializes the era. What we listeners get is a great electronica that comes off beautifully on its own right, and it's a tribute to Felix da Housecat's musicianship that what should sound so old and hackneyed sounds so eerily fresh and new. --50cent-haircut for amazon.com Zongamin (2001) - Zongamin [Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK] Zongamin, aka multi-instrumentalist Susumu Mukai, first caused damage on the dance scene with his take-no-prisoners, future-retro punk-funk cut "Serious Trouble". Taking on a raucously infectious disco-clash feel, the tune caught the imaginations of many different luminaries in the electro-retro avant-garde, such as Trevor Jackson and Andy Weatherall. This debut LP shows off a little more of the producer' skills, illustrating that Mukai is at least a four or five trick pony. Zongamin is happily diverse, featuring amongst other things Arrows covers ("Make Love Not War"), a few more excursions into his brand of grainy glitterball phunk ("Painless"), confused, robotic chaos ("Spiral"), a cheerful dash of folk-hop ("Street Surgery 2") and some weirdy-beardy experimentalia ("Tunnel Music"). With influences as disparate as Joy Division, Miles Davis and Prince, Zongamin was always going to be an interesting experiment, but the producer's main feat is to make it sound good as well. --Paul Sullivan for amazon.co.uk

1. 1 (2001) Fischerspooner [Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK]

First released on Munich's fashionable International Deejay Gigolos label back in 2001, Fischerspooner's debut album #1 was an immediate underground sensation. The creation of two New York fashion queens, Warren Fischer and Casey Spooner, it swiftly became the defining example of what clued-up onlookers began to know as electroclash--a brand of synthetic punk music using not guitars and drums, but the traditional tools of the 80s musician: synthesiser, vocoder, sampled handclaps, sequenced bass. Feted in the style press, Fischerspooner became immediate cult superstars--and at the beginning of 2002, signed to Ministry Of Sound for a hefty sum. "Emerge" is the record's defining moment: a seismic explosion of bass-powered synth-flurries accompanied by a nagging bon vivant mantra--"Looks good / Feels good / Sounds good"--it's up there with Donna Summer 's "I Feel Love" and New Order 's "Blue Monday" in the canon of all-time dancefloor classics. And luckily, the rest of the record is almost as good. "F***er" sounds like a fuel-injected Kraftwerk, all high-speed technoid blips and orgasmic vocoder moans, while "Turn On" finds Fischerspooner crafting their answer to a straightforward pop song--albeit, one that vogues more than Madonna, and preens more than Prince. It's a fantastic, accomplished debut. --Louis Pattison for amazon.com First Album - Miss Kittin & the Hacker [1 CD, Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK] Kittin, a former French pole dancer, and Hacker, a one-time hardcore headbanger, combine forces in a decidedly sleazy niche, but it does make for disarmingly catchy music. Its simple New Wave synth beats and Kittin's (a.k.a. Caroline Herve) deadpan delivery make it easy to imagine you're lounging in a Eurotrash strip joint, circa 1977, as scantily clad dominatrixes torture willing customers. The 1997 single "Frank Sinatra" is more shocking for its spot-on electro atmospherics than for its lyrics, proving that Hacker's punk years were a valuable tutorial for success 2002-style. Throughout, Hacker spins weird little theramin squirms, horror halo tones, and chunky beatbox handclaps, while Kittin discourses about trading sex for cash ("Stock Exchange"), ambitious disco queens ("Nurse"), and, of course, the burlesque life ("Stripper"). First Album is really a one-song affair, but its alluring message is so kitschy, kinked, and campy, the song never sounds the same. --Ken Micallef [...] This Is Electroclash (2003) Various Artists [CD, Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK] 1. Discotraxx - Ladytron 2. Detroit Style - A1 People 3. Fashion - Effcee 4. Treat Me Better - Northern Lite 5. We Are Rock (The Faint Mix) - Joy Electric 6. Lady Shave - Fad Gadget 7. Mind Games - Technova 8. Bike Thief (Schnellspanner Remix) - Freezepop 9. Shes A Model - Ambra Red 10. Boys (And Girl Mix) - LTNO 11. Shards Of Glass - Travelogue 12. Beat You Up - Ping Pong Bitches 13. Sex (Rosetta Stone Mix) - Berlin 14. Ring My Bell (Kitty Kat Mix) - Anita Ward 15. Happy Hour - Felix Da Housecat 16. Youre My Disco (New Romantic Mix) - Waldorf 17. Asymmetric - Dirty Sanchez 18. Tainted Love - Soft Cell 19. Let Me Go (Rob Playford Mix) - Heaven 17 20. Dont Let The Rain Come Down - Bis 21. My Dying Machine (Italian 12 Inches) - Gary Numan 22. Whats On Your Mind (Pure Energy (Judson Leach The The Exhibi 23. Star - Effcee 24. Everybody Loves You (Tok Tok Vs Soffy O Mix) - Sigue Sigue S 25. Fade To Gray - Visage 26. Warm Leatherette - The Normal 27. Retroish - Kraftwelt 28. (CD 3 DJ SkOOby Non Stop Mix) Electroclash Mix (2003) - Larry Tee [CD, Amazon US] [FR] [DE] [UK] 1. extreme fashion (tobell von cartier ) 2. seeing is believing (david carretta remix) (scratch massive) 3. racer car (tgv join in the race mix) (fpu) 4. i'm not a sound (2raumwohnung remix) (sieg über die sonne) 5. satisfaction (benny b) 6. vision (vitalic remix) (slam feat. dot allison) 7. supermodel inc. (larry tee) 8. hate f@#k (mount sims) 9. hysterical sculpture (water lilly & st-plomb) 10. boys club (w.i.t.) 11. kissogram (don multisex) 12. true mathematics (ladytron) 13. bitter pill (siobhan fahey) 14. confusion (larry tee's electroclash mix) (new order) 15. sex life (krivoï rog) 16. joe le taxi (hanayo) 17. plastique (crème de menthe) 18. shack up (bis) 19. sexy mind (prance) 20. john starlight (z-trainer) 21. shout out (volsoc) 22. anthem (artist unknown) 23. airplanes (vostok) 24. silver screen (adult. mix) (felix da housecat feat. miss kittin) [...] Green Velvet - Green Velvet [1 CD, Amazon US] Chicago's Curtis Jones (a.k.a. Cajmere and Green Velvet) is, by far, on of the top producers of house music in the world. In the mid-'90s, his self-run record labels, Cajual and Relief, spearheaded the continuing renaissance of the genre with distinctive tracks that delivered a powerful dance-floor rush and gave DJs a deep arsenal of guaranteed crowd pleasers. While his Cajmere tracks are upbeat vocal workouts, it's his work as Green Velvet that continues to fascinate and gain legions of new devotees. Jones sets his GV material on a bed of dark, relentless, dirty beats, while adding his own twisted vocal flourishes that are one part Gary Numan and one part Bauhaus. Each track has a distinct narrative (i.e., a tour of a night club or an imagined reincarnation as a drop of water); the results are both frightening and hilarious. Long out-of-print on vinyl, the new Green Velvet CD combines such "classics" as "Flash," "Leave My Body," and "Answering Machine" with more recent material, including the fantastic Giorgio Moroder-inspired drive of "Coitus." --David Prince for amazon.com Teaches of Peaches (2002) - Peaches [CD, Amazon US] 1. Fuck the Pain Away 2. AA XXX 3. Rock Show - Steve Keeping 4. Set It Off 5. Cum Undun - Steve Keeping 6. Diddle My Skittle 7. Hot Rod 8. Lovertits 9. Suck and Let Go 10. Sucker - Steve Keeping 11. Felix Partz Disc: 2 1. Keine Melodien - Jeans Team perf. By Peaches 2. Cassanova - feat. Mignon 3. Sex - Berlin perf. By Peaches 4. Felix Part II - Kid 606 Remix 5. Set it Off - Tobi Neuman Remix Toronto native Merrill Nisker began her musical quest in a folk duo called Mermaid Hotel, later punking things up in Fancypants Hoodlum. Inserting herself into the Toronto in-crowd, she participated in a Canadian sub-indie supergroup called the Shit -- a side project that lives on in legend with its tales of Albert Ayler noise larded with X-Ray Spex attitude. This is where she found her voice and her new persona as Peaches -- a sex-crazed autonomous woman hurdling through the world seducing all in her path. She teamed up with a fellow Shit named Gonzalez in a memorable duo, Peaches & Gonzalez, renowned for sexy live shows that would still have sent Larry Flynt speeding for the exit elevator. Peaches relocated to Berlin, where her neo-disco sex-raps caught on big. The rest is history -- Elastica tour, "Lovertits" single, press hype at every turn. Taking a Weimar approach to stage performance, she could be either ruthlessly experimental and strange, or bravely solicitous and sexy. The reviews were mixed -- some critics even considered her the worst live performer they'd ever seen. Despite the fact that her songs were unequivocally about het sex, her audience included a healthy contingent of gays, queers, lesbians, transsexuals. She was clearly doing something right. The world awaited her debut album, The Teaches of Peaches. -- Mark Desrosiers for popmatters, accessed Apr 2003