I have no idea when the term "electroclash" was coined, and when it became mandatory for it to be the only acceptable designation allowed to describe any cat making the retro-electro music. But the violence implied in the genre-signifier is entirely absent in the cute, analogous, pop-song nostalgia of the performance-art-styled electro-clashers. Gold Chains could be called part of such a movement — his contribution's nominated as source of inspiration on the new Ersatz Audio compile Misery Loves Company — if you're stretching the style-mag parameters, but at least he's got the "clash" part right. Following up his s/t GC turn for Orthlorng Musork, here Bay Area playboy Topher Lafata destroys any quaint notion that he's the Tigerbeat6 hip-hop pin-up by bringing his elements of acid-house, electro-thunk, punk, disco-punk, and ragga-funk further to the freaked-out fore. The clash comes across like a violent splatter, with Gold Chains razing any notions of romantic reminiscence or self-conscious celebrations of kitsch with typical, blustering, maniacal energy.
On his second mid-length outing, Lafata doesn't dish up some audio-tonal throwback, or even some quaint hard-drive-collated genre hybrid, but instead takes an earnest stab at siring a new hard-partying strain of what the kids usedta call Intelligent Dance Music. And by the time this five-song mid-length set touches down in a beat-pounding cut called "Mountains of Coke," the underground dance-'til-dawn sessions of Lafata's youth are coming through in the music like 'nam flashbacks — with drug-hazed recollections rearing as terrifying tones in a nightmarish now, and Gold Chains keeping his hip-hop-hero status on hold here as he purges his old dancefloor demons with an almost barbarous glee.
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