Emerging victorious

The electroclash class of 2002 will have the last laugh, says Tony Naylor

Don't call it a comeback. Mainly because most of them never went away, partly because it would be trite, but mostly because it would imply a desperation absent from the new albums from the one-time queens of the electroclash scene: DJ Hell, Fischerspooner, Peaches, Tiga, Miss Kittin & The Hacker.

Oft-derided, even in its 2002 heyday, no one expected electroclash to last. But, just as sonic heirs such as La Roux or Little Boots capitalise on their groundwork, the old electro guard return with works of real solidity and depth. Hell's Teufelswerk and Fischerspooner's Entertainment are two of the finest electronic records you will hear this year.

For Fischerspooner's Casey Spooner, there is a simple explanation for this late flowering of the duo's potential. What had started in the late-90s as a part-time art project - a reaction to the millennial paranoia gripping New York ("If I was going to die," recalls Casey, "I wanted to go down in a jockstrap and glitter") - was still as sketchy four years later when Ministry Of Sound signed them for £1m. "There was no strategy," he says. "I was doing everything from my bedroom."

Their first album, #1, was hastily cobbled together, while their second, Odyssey, was a major-label funded whirlwind that saw them working with everyone from Susan Sontag to that lamentable hit machine, Linda Perry (Pink, James Blunt etc). Entertainment is their first album recorded in one studio, with one producer. It shows.

Likewise, Tiga's Ciao! is a huge improvement on his last patchy effort, Sexor. "When I did my first album, I had a few big club tracks, like Pleasure From The Bass, and I was like, 'OK, I'm gonna make an album,'" says the Canadian. "What that actually meant I didn't even know."

Electroclash was deemed to have failed because it didn't produce crossover stars, but its influence - what Bugged Out! promoter John Burgess has described as "the most important thing to happen to clubs since acid house" - was profound. It transformed everything from the way Topshop looked to the way mainstream dance music sounded, and paved the way for artists and scenes as diverse as MIA and MGMT, new rave and minimal techno.

Electroclash veterans should be hailed as pioneers, but the whole concept remains a hard, contradictory sell. On the one hand it was a radical scene: feminist, sexually provocative, well-read, left-leaning (there's a political subtext to Entertainment) and DIY. On the other, it was a superficial movement, obsessed with fashion and glamour.

In new tracks, Shoes and Luxury, Tiga hands his critics a loaded gun. "Yes, I obsess over shoes, but, importantly, I don't think that, and being a functional, emotional, thoughtful artist, are mutually exclusive."

It's an opinion. And music needs those. The scene is dead but electroclash's stars still twinkle mischievously.

• Fischerspooner play the Coronet Theatre, SE1, Fri; Entertainment is out on 4 May; Ciao! is out 11 May

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