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sexy strut may see you in front of a Volvo before you can say “Hell yeah I’m bulletproof, motherf**ker.” Put simply, this is pornographic and should be banned in case anyone looking for a similar feeling of genital voltage is tempted to go down to their local aquarium in the dead of night and try to elicit sexual favours from an electric eel. Listening to this record you just can’t help getting that surge of raw sexuality that everyone needs to remind them that, despite all the sterilisation of the modern world, they’re an actual, 100% real person.
    

And it’s electronica. Yeah, you heard me right… I’m raving about an electronic album or, to use a term that’s just sooo de rigueur darling, electroclash. Let The Poison Spill From Your Throat, for example, is the sound of Peaches f**king the pain away, with a whip adding a dark sado-masochistic twist that served the likes of Death In Vegas so well on The Contino Sessions a record that, to my dismay, I still possess nowhere in my musical arsenal. Now, I admit that I’ve been guilty about lazily labelling anything with a synth as ‘80s’ before, and this probably still won’t be enough to make me chuck my CD collection into the nearest skip, renounce ever having liked guitars, get an even crapper (yet perfectly moulded) haircut, and w**k over pictures of Gary Numan. Danse Macabre has, however, made me re-evaluate my opinions about an entire genre, a genre that I was destined to hate for ever and ever, amen. Yes, it really is that good. And while that should say it all, I sense that you’re still a little cynical about the content of my overly frothy prose. “Ah, poor Rich... the stress of exams really is taking its toll on the wee young scamp... just humour him for a couple of weeks and he’ll be back to sticking kebab skewers in the eyes of his Kraftwerk voodoo dolls before you know it.”
    

But that would be wrong, for each track on this album, clearly one of the best of 2003 it should be noted, is another argument for why I should like a genre I was destined to loathe ad infinitum. Agenda Suicide is as epic as a Casio keyboard will allow (pardon the gross oversimplification but I’m a novice in matters of, how you say, electronic music), The Conductor would be an ideal theme tune if Bravestarr was ever to star in his own full length Western, and bits of Violent and Ballad Of A Paralysed Citizen would be ideal music for the court of Henry VIII if, that is, Henry VIII returns to power 700 years after his death.  Glass Danse is the kind of track that Fischerspooner can only dream of writing as, let’s not forget, they’re still clinging on to a track released last May and a reputation built around their glam stage show. And while Fischerspooner may still get all the electroclash plaudits because of this, The Faint are clearly the genre’s kings, with every track on Danse Macabre being fantastically and so unashamedly 2003 that I needn’t even be worried about spilling all of this enthusiasm on one page. Now excuse me... the nurse is going to sedate me with the horse tranquilisers.
9/10
RH

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