club culture
8 tracksThe world of nightclubs, DJs, dancers and their rituals in which house, techno and much dance music were made and are judged.
Genre history
electroclash
18 tracks.
What it is
A late-1990s and early-2000s scene that fused 1980s electro, synth-pop and new wave with punk attitude, deadpan vocals and a taste for fashion and performance. It grew around labels such as International DeeJay Gigolo in Munich and clubs in New York, Berlin and Paris.
Read more on WikipediaRelated concepts
post-punk
3 tracksThe music that followed punk from the late 1970s: still tense and stripped-down, but more experimental, with prominent bass, angular guitars, cold synthesizers and detached vocals. Its dark branches, gothic rock and darkwave, have been revived again and again since.
drum machine
10 tracksAn electronic instrument that plays programmed drum patterns. Its machine-steady time and synthetic sounds became the foundation of hip-hop, house, techno and synth-pop.
synthesizer
38 tracksAn electronic instrument that generates sound from oscillators and shapes it with filters and envelopes. Synthesizers define the sound of electronic pop, house and techno.
Hear it in these tracks
Mount Sims
Together Alone
Cold machine rhythm and a detached croon from the American edition of Mount Sims' 2002 debut UltraSex, an electroclash meditation on being close to someone and still completely on your own.
Mount Sims, Toby Dammit
What's the Big Deal
Mount Sims trades the club for a scuffed, shrugging groove, with Toby Dammit of Iggy Pop's and Nick Cave's bands on drums: What's the Big Deal asks its question with a sneer and a beat that will not sit still.
Mount Sims
Restless
Seven minutes of slow-burning tension, Restless loops a nervous synth figure and a stalking beat until the repetition itself becomes the thrill.
Mount Sims
No Yellow Lines
A night drive with the headlights off: grinding analogue bass, clipped drum machines and Mount Sims' cool, menacing croon from the darker side of electroclash.
Mount Sims
New Authority Volunteers
Mount Sims trades his electroclash gloss for the guitar-driven shadows of his post-punk turn, a short, tense blast of darkwave unease.
Mount Sims, Jessie Evans
Andy of Jenny
A short, sharp electroclash track from Mount Sims' 2008 album Happily Ever After, with André Lang's live drums under the synths and the underground punk singer Jessie Evans adding saxophone.
Mount Sims
Hellbent
Mount Sims at his most driven: a tight, menacing electro pulse and a vocal set on walking straight into trouble, one of the songs added to Happily Ever After...Again, the 2010 reworking of his darkwave album.
Mount Sims
Grave
A slow, cold-blooded crawl through synths, live drums and a graveside croon: Grave, from the 2008 album Happily Ever After produced by Thomas Stern, turns Mount Sims' taste for horror into five minutes of nocturnal dread.
Future Forward, Mount Sims
Time for Livin
A long, strutting electro groove released on Kompute Musik, with Mount Sims' deadpan vocal riding a relentless machine pulse that barely changes and never needs to.
Chicks On Speed
Euro Trash Girl
Munich art collective Chicks On Speed turn Cracker's 1990s alt-rock road song into a deadpan electronic cover: an early electroclash single, first pressed on their own Go Records in 1998.
Fischerspooner
Emerge
'Emerge' is Fischerspooner's debut single and one of the defining records of electroclash: a pounding, theatrical electro-pop anthem from a New York duo that began as a performance art piece about entertainment.
Felix Da Housecat
Madame Hollywood (feat. Miss Kittin)
'Madame Hollywood' by Felix Da Housecat featuring Miss Kittin is an electroclash single that plays the glamour of stardom deadpan: a Chicago house producer's taut electro beat and a French voice that sounds bored by fame.
Vitalic
You Prefer Cocaine
A pulsating electro track from Vitalic's 2001 Poney EP on International DeeJay Gigolo: driving machine beats and a snarling synth riff that capture the raw energy of the early-2000s dance floor.
Tubbe
In Berlin
The queer electropunk duo Tubbe, who moved from Munich to Berlin in 2013, set the small-town dream of the big city against its confetti, noise and 1-euro-shop reality, a 2015 synth-pop single from their Audiolith album Keine Arbeit lieber Tanzen.
Felix Da Housecat
Silver Screen (Shower Scene)
Felix Da Housecat's 2001 electroclash single: a melody sampled from The Flirts' 'Passion', Miss Kittin's cool, spoken-sung vocal and a lyric of starlets and cameras, the record that opened Kittenz and Thee Glitz.
Mount Sims
How We Do
A dark, pulsing piece of electroclash from Mount Sims's 2002 debut UltraSex, released on Gigolo in Europe and Emperor Norton in the US: gritty machine beats, minor-key synth melodies and a cool, defiant vocal.
Miss Kittin
Frank Sinatra
'Frank Sinatra' is one of the founding anthems of electroclash: Miss Kittin's deadpan spoken vocal over The Hacker's raw electro, a cool, satirical portrait of fame and excess that still fills dancefloors.
Ladytron
Seventeen
Ladytron's 2002 single: whirring synthesizers, two cool, interlocking voices and a minimal lyric that takes a swipe at an industry obsessed with youth, shiny and throwaway on the surface and dark underneath.