Who the hell is?

The Juan MacLean

He, robot: Everyone loves robots, those cuddly, chrome-plated characters who talk in funny voices and are programmed to destroy mankind and take over the world. Even rock musicians have a soft spot for the metallic monsters. Remember Kraftwerk's The Robot? Styx's Mr Roboto? Radiohead's Paranoid Android? Daft Punk have gone one step further and actually become robots, but no one is more tuned in to all things robotic than John MacLean, ex-guitarist and synth player with Six Finger Satellite. His debut solo album, Less Than Human, features a kinky tune called Shining Skinned Friend, and its lurid lyrics concern a mechanical menage a trois featuring a man, a woman and a gay robot. "I have serious robot credentials that go back years and years," says MacLean, "but Daft Punk beat me to the punch."

Robot wars: John MacLean's android odyssey began with electro punk terminators Six Finger Satellite, who tricked Sub Pop into signing them in 1990 by pretending to be a grunge band. Their ripped-up mix of zippy synths, zappy guitars and synthetic, staccato beats were just too far out for the average teen spirit, and the band lumbered along in obscurity until 1998. "I was just so sick of it," says MacLean, "I was burned out from going on tour, plus it had just stopped being interesting, so I sold all my equipment. I thought I'd never have anything to do with music again." MacLean fell back into some bad old habits he'd picked up when he was just a young 'droid. He had his first line of coke aged 12, and quickly graduated to heroin, beginning a long battle with drug addiction that brought him into regular contact with the law, and nearly brought him to the end of his tether. An overhaul was badly needed.

Rise of the machines: In 2000, MacLean was contacted by James Murphy, formerly the soundman for Six Finger Satellite, now the leader of LCD Soundsystem and one half of the DFA production team with Tim Goldsworthy. Murphy urged MacLean to start making his own music, and he and Goldsworthy sent him tapes of vintage house and techno tunes. MacLean had by this time left New York for the druggy environs of New Hampshire, got off the drugs, got a degree and started teaching at a local correctional facility for young offenders. Armed with a new computer and sampler, MacLean started fiddling about with Herbie Hancock's Rockit, and came up with the acclaimed debut single, By the Time I Get to Venus. MacLean recorded the tracks for Less than Human, including the Kraftwerkian AD2003, the Talking Heads-ish Give Me Every Little Thing and the acid house-tinged Tito's Way, with Murphy and Goldsworthy in the production booth. "There was never a question of doing it with anyone else," he says. "If I weren't going to be working with James and Tim, I just wouldn't be doing this at all."

Kevin Courtney