Dancing in neat pairs, the clump of gyrating girls at the (now closed) Somerville club 608 on a Monday evening early last month wore their ’80s fetish proudly: sporting spiky asymmetrical haircuts, shiny pumps with little-girl socks, and very short shorts, they looked straight out of a John Hughes teen flick. On stage, the Michigan trio Midwest Product were re-creating the mood, if not the exact sound, of early-’80s electro — the starkly synthetic dance style that combined elements of hip-hop, Euro synth-pop, and Italo-disco into a genre defined by stiff drum-machine beats, twisted vocoder vocals, futuristic synth sounds, and lots of lyrics about outer space and/or robots.

In 1982, Afrika Bambaataa imagined a pan-African intergalactic block party with the genre’s defining single, "Planet Rock," a massive shock wave of neck-snapping 808 beats and slithering synth riffs. In 2002, dance music is going back to the future, as clubgoers from Boston to Berlin vibrate to a whole new wave of electro produced and performed by contemporary DJs and bands. More than a strict electro revival, however, these 21st-century acts are pulling from other strands of the early-’80s synthesizer revolution, including the fey synth-pop of groups like Human League, the interstellar disco of the Jonzun Crew, and the post-punk electro-rock of groups like New Order. This time, though, hip-hop is absent from the mix, and the irony meter is cranked up to 11, which has some wondering whether it all amounts to anything more than frivolous retro kitsch and fanboy pastiche.

There may be some truth in that view. But after so many faceless trance DJs, the outsize personalities, the sleazy sway, and the punkish look of the colorful neo-electro revival represent a welcome change on the electronic dance-music scene. "In the past three years I’ve gotten tired of straight-ahead dance music," laments Montreal’s DJ Tiga, a neo-electro acolyte. "Electro brings in a bit more funk, vocals, and melodies to the techno scene. It keeps a lot intact, but it’s a lot more fun, plus it has a sense of humor."

Although it’s bubbled into mass-media outlets over the past six months — that’s electro act Ladytron providing the soundtrack to those ubiquitous Mitsubishi TV commercials — the neo-electro scene has been buzzing about the dance-music underground for a few years now, through artists like DJ Tiga, Berlin’s DJ Hell, Detroit’s Ectomorph, and Dutch producer I-F. But it wasn’t until New York scenester Larry Tee, author of RuPaul’s one-hit-wonder "Supermodel," initiated a series of parties in Brooklyn, that the media hype began. A Malcolm McLaren figure in thick black glasses, Tee fashioned the genre phrase "electroclash" out of thin air and then produced an Electroclash music festival and accompanying CD last year.

More recently, Tee put his stamp of approval on the new British compilation This Is Tech-Pop: 21st-Century Electro and New Wave (Ministry of Sound). In the liner notes to the 20-track disc, he explains, "Present is a strong lyrical content and more than a touch of irony that has been missing in action in most contemporary dance music of late. . . . These are good-looking acts that have a strong fashion sense and are really fuckable. AND they sing." He may not be the most eloquent scribe, but Tee’s explanation nails the general frustration of mainstream clubbing, a frustration stemming from the flood of slick and glossy trance that has overspread the world’s dance floors. Stocked with ear-twisting Pro-Tools effects and designed to stoke Ecstasy’s pre-orgasmic plateaus, trance is occasionally thrilling but more often an excuse for bland and banal dance music that tries too hard not to offend. It’s rave’s own version of middle-of-the-road. No surprise, then, that it hasn’t created many superstars. Although Paul Oakenfold has an outsized ego to match his five-figure fees, most trance DJs are as interchangeable as the sleek instrumental cuts they spin.

In this climate, the verse-chorus-verse structures, rough-edged punk sonics, and sleazy lyrics on the colorful Tech-Pop disc amounts to an æsthetic revolution — especially for kids who didn’t experience the first electro revolution of the late ’70s and early ’80s. Highlights include Brooklyn band Soviet, who contribute the slinky synth-pop number "Candy Girl," a track that sounds like A Flock of Seagulls making Orchestral Manœuvres in the Dark; Tiga & Zyntherius’s deadpan cover of Corey Hart’s ’80s hit "Sunglasses at Night"; and Felix da Housecat’s party-starting anthem "Happy Hour." The synth slithers slap you on the ass; the drum machines snap at your ankles; the melodramatic hooks weasel their way into your brain. In short, it’s fun and funny, silly and sleazy, camp and catchy. It’s not, however, very good dance music. The trendy British label Ministry of Sound might have picked all the right tracks for Tech-Pop, but they didn’t put much thought into the mixing. Credited to DJ Piss, the disc meanders all over the BPM spectrum, with little care for flow or beat matching or continuity, so it just doesn’t pass the dance-floor test.

That’s also true of performance-artists/electronic-act/dance-troupe Fischerspooner’s debut, #1 (FS Studios), which was scheduled for release this summer but has been pushed back to the fall. They’re more of a live group — "Siegfried & Roy meets a drunken Cirque du Soleil," says British mag NME — but that doesn’t mean much since only a few thousand people have seen their heralded stage show, an exclusive art-world affair that’s been put on in New York and Los Angeles. #1 sounds glossy and frosty in all the right places but hasn’t much in the way of cool melodies, throttling beats, or sly humor. Fischerspooner are, however, very well dressed, and they’re worshipped in England, so you can think of them as electro’s own version of the Strokes.

There’s no such problem on DJ Tiga’s recent American Gigolo (Turbo) mix CD, which compiles a fistful of singles from Germany’s International DeeJay Gigolos label. Montreal-based DJ Tiga is a techno veteran, and he’s got the turntable chops to prove it. American Gigolo leaves the kitsch behind by slowly building into a hailstorm of machine-tooled clanks and pounding 808 drum kicks. It recognizes the connection between electro and Detroit techno, the evolution of the man-machine interface from "Planet Rock" through Berlin’s Love Parade. And like the original electro space travelers, Tiga’s mix highlights the emotional tension at the core of neo-electro’s appeal — the ping-ponging between space-age idealism and futurist dread. If Steven Spielberg’s next sci-fi flick needs a soundtrack, DJ Tiga should get first call.

Equally thrilling is Tangent 2002: Disco Nouveau, a compilation released by the Ann Arbor label Ghostly International. Imagining a world where Midwestern techno and electro exist without the middling influence of UK rave culture, Disco Nouveau nails the strange retro-futurist feel of the neo-electro revival — it’s music that looks back at music that was looking forward to begin with. Yet it feels like more than a rote rehash of Afrika Bambaataa’s beats. Outside of the vintage keyboard twiddles and 808 drum-machine clicks, the disc blooms with ornate details and intricate flourishes that could come only from a modern, computer-boosted studio. Tensile digital clicks dance around the 4/4 pulse; subatomic bass lines ripple into your lower intestines; choppy beat fluctuations turn and swerve like the Mass Pike at rush hour.

BOSTONIANS WANTING to get a taste of electro in a club environment don’t have many choices. The one weekly electro event is "Start!" at Bill’s Bar, an evening hosted by the folks who run Makeoutclub.com, a chat room and dating site for emo and indie-rock kids. Which highlights an odd turn of events: the neo-electro revival is bringing bangin’ 808 beats and ass-wiggling synth riffs to the typically stiff indie-rock scene. The result is a strange symbiosis between the two disparate worlds of indie rock and electronica. Except that whereas the club kids are sticking to ’80s electro styles, indie-rockers are digging into the groovier side of post-punk through recent compilations like Disco Not Disco (Strut) and In the Beginning There Was Rhythm (Soul Jazz), which document the early-’80s collision of post-punk, funk, and disco with tracks from acts like Throbbing Gristle and A Certain Ratio. And the British DJ/producer known as Playgroup (a/k/a Trevor Jackson) suavely blends original punk funk (Material) with contemporary mutant disco acts (the Rapture) on his upcoming entry into the DJ-Kicks (Studio !K7) mix-CD series; it imagines a black-and-white utopia where disco beats coexist with searing guitar solos and drum-machine baubles support Afro-soul chants.

All this positions the latest album by the Scottish trio Bis to capitalize on both audiences. This indie-pop group were probably ahead of the curve on their Andy (Gang of Four) Gill–produced 1999 album Social Dancing (Capitol), but their latest, Plastique Nouveau (spinART), feels right on time. Slightly tweaking their concept, Bis team up with Michigan electro warriors Ectomorph and Adult. and come up with a set of tunes that range from fey synth-pop ("Don’t Let the Rain Come Down") to corpulent electro-punk ("Robotic").

But even the Bis album leaves a nagging aftertaste that this has all not only been done before but been done better by New Order, Afrika Bambaataa, Human League, the Jonzun Crew, and many others. So though the electro-revival has brought pop songcraft and irreverent fun back to the dance floor, I’ll be hard-pressed to take the music too seriously until it breaks out and finds a voice and calling of its own. I want my neo-electro to burst with hip-hop roll calls and slashing guitar riffs, soul-mama divas and disaffected white yelps, outrageous cyborg fantasies and geeky laptop freakouts. Is that too much to ask?