Transhuman Revolution was a conspicuously nostalgic bubble of big new wave semi-satire and old-tech FX, but
Barcelona was stuck. Virtually identical to 1999's
Simon Basic and 2000's
Zero One Infinity, their first album for PulCec featured the same
Buggles robot romance and deadpan emo girl/boy arrangements, with a growingly unsuccessful lyrical resentment attacking everything from teenage pop stars to sex. The fundamental problem with
Barcelona was that their kitsch had suddenly become too common, perhaps too reliant on the same era-mining as
the Rentals,
Zoot Woman, and
Ladytron.