Client

As the first signings to Andy Fletcher's Toast Hawaii label, Client's arrival on the music scene couldn't have been more timely. Their eponymous debut album, released in August 2003, has been hailed by many as the answer to their prayers, a sleazy pop gem that was just at home on your bedroom stereo as it was in a club. Poppy without being sanitized, danceable without being identikit, Client take the contemporary trend for all things electro to the next level by combining pulsing, machine-funk, analogue sounds with classic song writing. It's electro-pop, but with a human heart; imagine a sound-jam between Kraftwerk, Joy Division, and Dusty Springfield (with a northern accent), and you're halfway there. The sounds may seem sleek and robotic, but the songs -- heartbreaking, euphoric, angry and confused, dealing with everything from love and sex, prostitution and the loss of innocence, to sleeping pill addiction and Mrs Robinson-esque fantasies -- seal the album's reputation as the most confident, assured electro debut in years.