In 1959, Danny and the Juniors marched to the top of the charts with the prophetic hit "Rock & Roll Is Here to Stay". Jump forward 40 years, past countless retro-revival acts and numerous proclamations of the genre's death and rebirth, and -- to quote the 1976 Led Zeppelin album and documentary title -- "The Song Remains the Same". Before things become bogged down in '70s clichés, I'd like to make my point: rock music is obviously here for the long haul. If rock is the still relevant child of past generations, then by all accounts electronica is a contemporary invention that will enjoy increased relevance as the years pass. However, with acts like Drexciya, Underground Resistance and now Mr. Velcro Fastener, the emergence of the first wave of electronic-revivalists has begun.

Playing a style of techno tagged nu-electro, Mr. Velcro Fastener fashion themselves after the simplistic efforts of Kraftwerk, albeit with a modern twist. While the retro approach doesn't score the duo any points on the conceptual scale, the increased emphasis on hooks and structured beats clearly plays to their advantage. Songs like "Phlegmatic" suffuse early analog beats with vocoder driven vox, anchoring the album in an emergent '80s sound. The Kraftwerkian theme is furthered as the band veers toward the futuristic, with track titles like "Real Robots", "Blue Screens" and "Vector Graphics". The illusion is completed by artwork straight out of a decade-old infomercial.

Unfortunately, bigger is sometimes better -— particularly with electronic music, in which technological advances emerge fast and furious, and the sounds of yore become dated almost as quickly as my year-old Dell PC. Subsequently, much of the album’s conscious attempts at minimalism will leave some insatiable IDM listeners disappointed. Nonetheless, if you can withstand the album’s dearth of technological theatrics, the overall effect is pure enjoyment, and will satisfy even the most hard-line electronica purist.