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A trend connecting Bangkok, London and Tokyo is worth a closer look. We send Brendan Jai to find out more about electroclash.  Electroclash is a fad simultaneously labeled, built up and categorically crushed by the media. With our lust to quickly compartmentalize and commercialize human tendencies, have we glanced over a seminal moment in international unity by offhandedly berating this fab fad as a simple moment of rehashed trash culture? And, how does our beloved Bangkok fit into this current under-current soon to be a non-current? This is a story of three tribes. One crawling the dank vomitous alleys of So-Ho London, the next dragging itself on bloody stumps through the spunk sprayed streets of Bangkok and the third de-fibrillating on a gurney rolling out of control in the pre-dawning of a Tokyo sunrise.
 Sound like the setting painted by Bowie and his androgynous Diamond Dogs? Well your not far off. Flash forward further to early 80s and think Kraftwerk, New Order, Human League and Gary Numan. Now focus again and see Peaches, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Chicks on Speed, Fischerspooner, Cobra Killer, Scissor Sisters, Miss Kittin, The Faint and Princess Superstar. So is it about the music?
Well yes. But no. This is about art school drop-outs glam-trash-sexplussed-dance-floor-brethen-asexual-sluts in spandex. Cut-up-fishnets, paper shirts-bold-DIY-graffiti-sprayed-shaved-heads-fluorescent make-up-smeared-on-your-tits. Take the scissors to your suit, paint rings around your eyes, dip your tie in paint and wear your knickers on your head. You see, as far as I can figure, this is about The Look.
At that’s what leaders of this end to an end have shown as well. Fashion in inextricably linked to the music, so much so that in many cases the music has taken form of lip-synching over badly looped tracks stolen from terribly recognizable vaults of electro history. This is a music movement that denies the godliness of guitar wanker virtuosos of the rock and roll halls of fame. This is lo-fi, lo-budget, guttural expressions of glee, pent sex-rage and anti-consumerism all in one.
 Yeah Yeah Yeahs shows focus more on Karen O’s outrageous Christian Joy designer outfits. Chicks on Speed wrote the “Fashion Rules”, calling for an end to fashion victims and exhorting their fans to “break the rules” and tear down the fashion industry. Frontman Gene Futon is edified in the Bangkok Post because he takes fat black markers to customize his wardrobe rather than buy into the exploitive dollar game big fashion houses play. In London Nag Nag Nag fashion freaks suffocate in the basement So-Ho famed gay club Ghetto. JoJo De Freq and Jonny Slut take turns blasting to Tokyo to Vanity flesh feasts hosted by Paul James of Romance for Cash where models limp up and down the dance floor cum runway. Meanwhile DJ Bee Futon is spilling blood on the platters of Faith and Bed clubs in Bangkok. Futon play Tokyo, and Ghetto. Tokyo comes to Bangkok and finally when, when, when will the triangle close with Nag Nag Nag party monsters in Bangkok?
Flavour of the month? Maybe. But then who cares because that’s just what it’s supposed to be.
Jeep da Freek
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