n the UK the anti-hipsters (the people who sneer at style magazines but buy them anyway ... so they can sneer some more) think of Shoreditch, London, as the land of poseur and preening prick - or as is the wont of many, call anyone from there a TWAT. (Or maybe not. Trends move at the speed of light. It's probably somewhere further south now like Streatham. Rumored newly cheap housing in the capital may move the Twat epicenter further south of the Thames - The Datsuns are moving there don't you know.) But really the emptiness and depthless art of their club and magazine culture drains the blood from my face. Hedonism and breech-busting confidence: the factors on which the style capos thrive, may zap me with a short-lived thrill, but musically they only leave me with a sour taste in the mouth, having failed to form any emotional connection with me. What's cool? Are you cool?


Am I this cool? We record reviewers aren't cool. It may take some time to take in this unpalatable truth, but the conclusion is a murmured and despondent yes. Is it cool sitting in front of this monitor on the weekend, trying to conjure words from fleeting emotions and synapses cracking, as you watch the night descend silently and death-like on my smoked and dirty hovel? Not really.


Toktok vs Soffy O were cool. Last year when their single (in residence here) the mighty “Missy Queen's Gonna Die” was released, bodies filled dancefloors and swiveled coquette-ishly to its ruptured beauty and hypnotic charms in many a cramped and uber-cool club. But now they're forgotten by the buzz massive, their summer has come and gone. The Shoreditch Wankers loved them when Sophia Larson - a younger Teutonic Kim Gordon, who sings like an indifferent angel of death with cyborg implants - was allied to the brazen and slanted 80s beats of a German electronic duo, much in the way that the Eurythmics bewitched the world with “Sweet Dreams” (yes, the whole album is like that - but please consider I am a dance philistine). However this fruit of their labors has been all but forgotten, having crawled out a few months shy of summer 2003 to a noticeable lack of trumpets filling the air and column inches. Capitalizing on the buzz is sadly a necessary evil, and they demonstrably failed to do so. What a pity.


In all honesty I looked upon electroclash with horror and a sense of impending doom. It was initially a breath of fresh air, producing such scary but stunning stalwarts as Peaches, but since it had no commercial potential (the only way it was going to ever be a long lasting 'movement' - movement being a word I use with due care and an insurgent carelessness at the last). Instead it is now looked upon like some pretentious journey into 80s kitsch and sex comedy. If Fischerspooner were its greatest hopes, it was always going to fail and die in a bleak, obscure corner: spent before any sign of a firework accompanied climax. But I still imagine some of the charity shop pillaging, Hoxton Finned masses taking horse tranquilizers to this album and slinking into dead oblivion. You should too.


They don't take fools lightly. Thankfully morons piss them off. They're coy about the glamour, but still they exude it. You get the impression they would understand the complexities of Camus and other chin-stroking and ennui-stricken Euro ponces. On songs like "The Lookalikes", there's an abiding distaste for the rituals and emptiness of clubland. Whether discussing door policy, dress choice, soul destroying conformity, or sobbing: 'so bored, so bored,' you'll know the feeling or hear yet again, the lingering voice of disquiet that asks 'why the fuck am I in this high-priced rinky dink shoebox?' But to be honest, what do I know? This is all part of my step away from miserablist t-shirt-wearing guitar-stroking hinterland I dug a foxhole in during my mid-teens. I must listen to different music I say to myself, knowing I am hemmed in by my own prejudices and fear of uncertainty when it comes to music. And yes, isn't it a fascinating part of my hypocritical duality that I too may yearn to fall in with the dance crowd and consider the trends that currently turn them on, after slagging them off?


Sure, it does veer towards dance pastiche. It must if I like it. Certain fibers in my body and mind respond in a way unlike anything since I was a wee lad, bewitched by such completely rubbish, but oddly loveable songs as those featured on the Flashdance soundtrack. And maybe that's because there's a good dose of fun mixed in with the cool and snot, adding up to a formula which I can't tear your ears away from. 'Irresistible dance pop' are words I would normally spit out with a look of sheer disgust on my face as I was waving a tight fist in a manner that might be described as bellicose, but here I write it with a smile on my face. Electroclash, schmelectroclash, who cares - there's still a twitch of life in its bruised, beaten body yet.