REVIEWSThe Juan Maclean, ‘Less Than Human’

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• SPIN Rating:7 of 10

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Label: DFA/Astralwerks

Don't tell the rock kids, but the newest DFA Records offering isn't punk funk or even revivalist new wave -- it's a techno album, straight up. Which is a pretty terrific what-next move for a label that embraces retro futurism: If the Rapture's Echoes evoked Primal Scream's Screamadelica, with postmillennium hypertension replacing E'd-up bonhomie, why shouldn't ex–Six Finger Satellite member Maclean and his crew throw an 808 State sheen over everything from party-down chants ("Give Me Every Little Thing," "Tito's Way") to sunny, beaty drift ("My Time Is Running Out")? Especially when, both in their machine-tooled music and their album title, they one-up Daft Punk by letting the robots win.

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