Underground-rock fans will recall John Maclean from his days in Six Finger Satellite, a '90s-era quartet whose fierce rock 'n' rave style presaged this decade's disco-punk craze. Citing an addiction to heroin, the Rhode Island native dissolved the group and retreated to New Hampshire in 1998, spending the next five years kicking his habit and teaching English to juvenile delinquents.

Lured back into making music by DFA Records head James Murphy-who produced SFS's Law of Ruins (1998)-Maclean quickly recorded a string of remarkable 12-inch singles as The Juan Maclean, cramming as many riffs and grooves onto those records as the vinyl would allow. Praised by dance and rock fans on both sides of the Atlantic, those tracks thrust him back into the limelight, where the chemical temptations are many and powerful.

"I've come up with some pretty reliable ways of surviving on the road," offers Maclean, reached on a train halfway between Portland, Maine, and New York City. "One of the big ways is that I don't really hang around at venues after I'm done playing. I just played some festivals in Spain and Portugal and it gets to be 3 in the morning and everywhere you look, someone has their face in a pile of cocaine. In those cases, I flee back to my motel room as fast as I can."

None of those memories seems to be bothering the New Englander on this particular afternoon; having just run into some of his old students at the train station in Portland (where he now lives), the producer talks animatedly about returning to teaching just as soon as music starts boring him. That seems unlikely to happen anytime soon, for Maclean-who plays the Media Club on Tuesday (August 30)-is almost immoderately in love with music these days, eagerly discussing his recent rediscovery of the Chemical Brothers' Surrender (1999). In interviews, the producer usually points to classic technoists like Derrick May and Juan Atkins as his chief influences, but the Chems reference is just as interesting, suitably aligning Maclean with that famously riff-centric duo.

"I've always considered Kraftwerk a rock band," he says. "With groups like them and the Chemical Brothers, you always hear a lot of sounds on their records that you just know weren't calculated and deliberated over; they were just discovered in the moment. Coming from a rock lineage, I never want to lose the live performance aspect, even if I'm making something that seems like it's more studio-based."

Though he's long been into dance music, the producer openly admits he never went raving in the 1990s; that goes some way toward explaining why his tracks are so restless and ever-changing. Early Maclean solo singles like "You Can't Have It Both Ways" (2002) and "Give Me Every Little Thing" (2004) don't sit still, scampering to new heights (and depths) of the dynamic range with each passing measure.

That lively spirit carries through to this year's Less Than Human, which concludes with a dazzling 14-minute epic called "Dance With Me". Documenting a live jam session performed by Maclean and collaborator Tim Goldsworthy, that tune bubbles along blissfully, its starburst synths and plaintive keys pointing the way to an infinite horizon. When you hear the producer describe how the song came together ("I love that it captures this very real experience we had in the studio") and when you hear those results on the record, it is hard not to feel happy for him, and for yourself.