Miss Kittin – former French pole dancer come techno DJ/ German electroclash label hoe. She’s produced some stellar tracks with partner-in-crime The Hacker and Golden Boy, but does her debut solo effort come to anything?

On first impressions I must admit that I Com didn’t really float my boat. The reason why that was the case were initially not so clear. It probably had something to do with the fact that this seems to be an LP that feeds off disillusion. Disillusion with the music industry that feeds a career and the lifestyle that in turn goes along with it. And where earlier hits like Frank Sinatra were all about living the highlife, Miss Kittin’s current offering gives us songs like Professional Distortion. Plenty of the same exhilaration, yes, but lashings of guilt to go along with it. The pathos that’s characterised her previous work is certainly there too, but on many tracks it seems harsher and grittier – more bemused than amused.

Meet Sue Be She skirts the same territory. It’s the kind of track that’s easy to admire, and perhaps be inspired by, but not so easy to love. Like Miss Kittin herself, perhaps? And while her previous work has dealt with the same subject matter it’s always been with a gloriously camp, kitsch aesthetic. I Com does away with much of this, paying lip service to darker beats, hip hop rhymes and basslines and a diverse array of influences.

Where I Com really does seem to really represent its creator is its cosmopolitan scope. On it, Miss Kittin constantly plays musical chameleon. Neukolln 2 sees her experiment with German minimalism, while Dub About Me floats into the land of airy trip hop. The ‘80s pop pastiche she’s become famous for is still there in Kiss Factory while Requiem For A Hit is a somewhat disturbing answer to the Prodigy’s Smack My Bitch Up. The track kicks off with a booty bassline and a male vocal “I beat that bitch with a hit” before kicking into a refrain that ends with Miss Kittin’s reply: “and beat this bitch with a hit”, Ironic and tongue-in-cheek it may be – but easy listening it is not.

I Com is an album that hits more than it misses, but I can’t help thinking it covers a lot of the same ground that artists like the inimitable Peaches and Chicks on Speed have already explored. It’s an album that it becomes easier to appreciate with more listens, but I can’t help thinking that it’s when she’s playing around with another cat that this little Kitten really shines.