Radio Blackout

The much-maligned electroclash movement deserves most of the attacks it's endured, but it's also given rise to an invaluable style streak in dance music. While bad electroclash preens behind a veil of mawkish affectation, the good stuff siphons some replenishing essentials from the well of '80s electro and new wave: a mind for song structure, vocals that serve as more than ecstasy spikes, cold textures and tight grooves ripe for new-technology redress. Sascha Funke wraps them all into Bravo, a near-perfect consolidation of old ideas and new currents. Funke is a German producer with his feet in woozy techno and intricate microhouse, but, as befits his current stint on Ellen Allien's Bpitch Control label, Bravo casts a future-forward eye on the '80s strains that stirred up techno to begin with. "Now You Know" starts off with a light techno cackle, all floating hi-hat taps and melodic keyboard patches that sound like Boards Of Canada tightened and tidied up for the dance floor. The rest of the album follows similar cues, transposing tracks and songs into interior anthems that work as well in headphones as they would in some peacock-courting lounge. Distant, downturned vocals purr alongside fantastically rubbery electro bounce ("Just Can't Wait To See You"), which sounds no less rich and purposeful in ambient-leaning soundscapes (including one that curls curiously around the acoustic guitar from Cheap Trick's "The Flame"). T. Raumschmiere warms up to electroclash on Radio Blackout, but his re-imagined '80s mostly pulls from the original decade's brash attitude. Cover art of a mean-looking skull with headphones skews toward rock more than techno, but the album sounds in thrall to a time when rock and dance music were more than scornful relatives. "Monstertruckdriver" runs chiseled cymbal patterns over a bristling, creaking industrial frame that favors menace over meandering. "The Game Is Not Over" makes the best-yet use of vocals by electroclash scene-stealer Miss Kittin, who sounds pissed and prickly in an ode to "highway rock 'n' roll disaster." Radio Blackout limps through some lifeless dead spots too sparse and crotchety to keep up the highpoints' momentum, but as a whole, it offers a uniquely wrinkled facsimile of nu-electro's game plan. Synth riffs tear and split amid ominous piano chords, scruffy sine waves summon free-jazz saxophones, and beats scrape through brittle patterns that crack apart with every accent. Call it micro-gabba, or electroclash with teeth chewing through its lip-gloss.