The last time we heard from Ladytron was during the last days of disco—err, electroclash—and it wasn’t a pretty sight. Having explored the depths of sterility and taken teutonic deadpan posturing to the logical extreme, electroclash suddenly found itself with no place to go but down. Much like drum’n'bass devolved into an arms race of faster tempos and more complex breakbeats, electroclash bands attempted to outdo each other by cleansing their sound of anything resembling emotion, leaving nothing but sped-up Kraftwerk songs bathed in noise and feigned shrieks from passionless female singers. And where was Ladytron during all this? Light and Magic was 604 version 2.0: slicker, more seductive, and at times more confrontational, it was the sound of Ladytron reaching an apex just as electroclash tipped into the abyss.

Two years later and Ladytron is back with another album, only to find that the once legion armies of electroclash followers have abandoned base camp and fled to other trends. Guitars are back in vogue, and the glacial, monolithic towers of unrefined electronic music are no longer a major force. The only bands associated with the movement to release anticipated albums have arguably moved away from the template somewhat; Adult. have always looked down upon the label “electroclash,” and Fischerspooner were never very interesting in the first place. Even the mainstream manifestations of electroclash arguably reached their peak with stuff like “Toxic.” So what does Ladytron have to offer us today?

Amazingly, an even more refined version of 604. The recent album sampler doesn’t sound any glossier than Light and Magic, but songs like “Sugar” and “Destroy Everything You Touch” are certainly friendlier to the dancefloor. Ladytron have also stepped back from the cathartic purity of the synthesizer, seeing fit to include what sound suspiciously like guitars and distortion into their arrangements. Whether these changes to the Ladytron template will suffice is hard to say (though initial assessments point to no), but the band is thankfully not as far behind the curve as I had once suspected.