(Hope Recordings/FMR)

And the electro invasion continues. Dominating the sets of everyone from Sasha to Ferry Corsten, creeping up on commercial radio playlists and transforming house music in the process, the 80s sound has busted through the barriers to become a pervasive force in popular culture. While its popularity has soared, the real test for producers has been to take the sound in new and innovative directions, instead of merely digging up the corpse of a musical style that’s been dead for 15 years.

Now comes German uber-producer Timo Maas to throw his hat into the ring and deliver his own take on the electro-rock movement. And given his history as a dance music icon, it’s not surprising the man hasn’t done a half bad job of it. Never one to regurgitate trends, Maas’ new album Pictures isn’t just about sticking a generic electro bassline over a dull house beat. Instead, guitars, new-wave vocals and relaxed breakbeats are all out in force, the accessible elements fusing effortlessly with Maas’s trademark creepily atmospheric soundscapes and electronic quirkiness. It’s a combination that makes for a startlingly refreshing change to the throng of NPE currently in mass circulation. 

Content to keep his clubbier material for his mix CDs and 12” releases, Maas has delivered a captivating album of songs with Pictures, something evident to anyone who has heard its initial single The First Time, with Placebo frontman Brian Molko on vocals. A snappy little tune, it spells out Maas’s musical direction for the album: it’s a classic little nugget of pop brilliance, with mid-speed breakbeats, electro bleeps, tasty guitar stabs and a catchy pop chorus from Molko that just refuses to leave your head.

As the album progresses, Maas keeps it coming with a jumpin’ and groovin’ combination of guitar-fused electro pop. Molko’s vocals are omnipresent from start to finish, giving the title track with his typically edgy homoerotic slant, while Like Siamese might as well be a heavily electro-fied Placebo song. And the crackin’ guest vocalists just keep on coming: Neheh Cherry adds her seasoned skills to the breaks-heavy quirkiness of High Drama, Kelis returns to the fray to collaborate on the percussive pop perfection of 4 Ur Ears, while the funky Manchester grooves brought by Marc James and Anthony Tombling on Devil Feel captures a chorus that stays in your head all day.

Crammed full of tight hooks, catchy vocals and heavily funked-up beats, Pictures is frighteningly accessible, without ever crossing over the line into crass commercialism. Dance pop with a more than a dash of style and substance, the tight song structures reveals Maas to be a consummate musician, rather than some robotic HAL-style dancefloor machine spitting out the club hits. Most refreshingly, it’s light in tone and doesn’t take itself too seriously, and is basically just a lot of fun. It’ll be a tragedy if Maas doesn’t snag some crossover success.

Sometimes Pictures just makes you stop and scratch your chin at how clever and creative it is. There’s little here that sounds like anything else currently in the cultural consciousness, but Maas somehow injects the proceedings with a familiarity that keeps it so catchy and accessible. As he is drawing from a sound derived from a musical style that emerged 20 years ago, Pictures manages to sound original and that’s saying something. Dance music heads that feel like ditching the glitch for an hour or so owe it to themselves to check it out. World domination ahoy.