Electroclash rejuvenated synth-pop and dance culture at the turn of the century. Yet it’s never been given full credit for its achievements – until now, with the release of a five-CD box set (and a three-LP set of highlights). Robert Plummer gets down to the sound of the underground.

Picture the scene: it’s the early 2000s and dance music is in the doldrums. Club culture has become enormous, world-conquering, and yet the soundtrack to a night out has never been drearier. DJs everywhere pump out faceless techno, making a virtue of blending one anonymous “tune” into the next without playing a memorable note all evening.

Fortunately, what came next was a revelation: a bunch of sonic guerrillas stepped in to liberate the dancefloor. Going back to the roots of electronic pop, they salvaged the music’s original DIY energy and gave the indie disco a much-needed shot in the arm. Electroclash was a calculated affront to the kind of bloodless hipster for whom “too musical” was a legitimate putdown of any track that was too… well, interesting, really.

Now, a couple of decades on, it’s a perfect time to take stock. This all-embracing box set is subtitled Machine Music For A New Millennium, which is ironic, since you’re never in any doubt that human beings created these songs. Despite AI’s growing threat to music, these edgy, dirty, shiny, sugary, perverse, unpredictable tunes remind us that technology is the servant of the people, not the other way round.

The collection charts the development of electroclash in five CDs – Fundamentals, Essentials, Developments, Evolutions and Origins. New joiners should start with the last of these: it includes electronic punk staples such as The Normal’s Warm Leatherette and Cabaret Voltaire’s Nag Nag Nag. Also highlighted as influences are tracks by New Order, Fad Gadget, Kraftwerk and others, as well as the track that spawned Belgian New Beat, Flesh by A Split Second.

A wide-ranging set of inspirations, then, and a hearty rebuff to those who might recall electroclash as another short-lived fad dreamt up by the weekly UK music press. In fact, it erupted just at the point when the traditional “inkies” were dying out. Melody Maker ceased publication in December 2000 and was merged with the NME, which relaunched in magazine format in 2002.

Electroclash found favour with UK dance music monthlies such as Mixmag and the now-defunct Muzik, which devoted one of its most popular covermount CDs to the genre. But it wasn’t just a UK phenomenon. The collection also features artists from the US, France, Germany, Italy and even Brazil, showing how its influence spread far and wide.

The core progenitors of electroclash are present and correct on the first two CDs of this box set. Classics such as Fuck The Pain Away by Peaches, Fischerspooner’s Emerge, Vitalic’s Poney and the ever-sinister Rippin’ Kittin featuring Miss Kittin all sound as great as ever. Other highlights include The Droyds, a band made up of ex-Psychic TV members, who slyly subvert one of Duran Duran’s biggest hits with their trashy remake, Girls On Pills.

Disc three shows what happened when the mainstream started picking up on this burgeoning underground sound. Post-punk artists such as Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party found that its bleep-and-grind ethos suited their abrasive take on dance music and commissioned appropriate remixes. Kylie Minogue’s Slow also seemed to fit right in, once the Chemical Brothers had given it a thorough going over.

Hot Chip, Goldfrapp, M.I.A., LCD Soundsystem, Soulwax – by now, electroclash had opened the floodgates for a new generation whose mix-and-match approach to the dancefloor brought a new playfulness to clubbing. Even rap and hip hop could be remade and remodelled: witness the perky versions of Kid Cudi’s Day ‘N’ Nite and Khia’s eternally filthy My Neck, My Back.

The fourth disc, Evolutions, demonstrates the inevitable fate of every movement that winds up being a little too successful for its own good: it starts to fragment. New Young Pony Club, whose Ice Cream features here, had the right punk-dance credentials to pass for electroclash, but also got caught up in the even more fleeting nu-rave scene. Meanwhile, Brazilians Bonde do Rolê garnered attention with their Solta O Frango, but their sound was really a middle-class interpretation of baile funk from the Rio favelas.

It’s often said that there is no day darker than the day before yesterday, and this compilation is ample evidence of that. It’s astounding to think that this scene dates back no further than the start of this century, yet it seems to hail from a vanished era.

Nowadays, most pop tunes seem to be crafted for the gatekeepers who assemble Spotify playlists – God forbid that they should stand out amid the aural wallpaper. But the big beats and the sweaty synths of these tracks still get the pulse racing. If you want to rediscover a time when dance music still had grit in its oyster, the uncultured pearls of this box set are sure to dazzle your ears.

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All words by Robert Plummer. More writing by Robert can be found at his author’s archive. He is also on X as @robertp926.