Reprogramming Glitch Disco: HEALTH, Disco 2.

Whilst yesteryear’s Get Color may have provided an ingenuously suffocating aural onslaught to match even the most metallic of Lou Reed’s industrialised deviations, a remixed, rehashed and reworked spin-off, particularly of a HEALTH opus, may not pertain to the same level of intoxication, at least superficially. For the remix record inherently breeds a mental blockade consisting of a vehement scepticism, nigh on impossible to bash down. Take Lady Gaga; an incalculable number of millions of records down the line and not only has she remade/ remodelled her one and only long player to date but she’s segued any such commercial cash cows with The Remix, a release to which even the most hardened little monster must harbour a touch of hesitation. How essential a listen can a fruity electropop Pet Shop Boys takedown of The Fame’s über schmaltz fest Eh Eh be to one’s pleasure, wellbeing and integrity? Not entirely, the universal repost ought to be.

Disco 2 doesn’t withstand more parallels to said superfluous Gaga reruns than a quadrilateral, opening its guts to new cut USA Boys, an organ-led, melancholy-fused Fuck Buttons folly that’s equal parts psychotic and Sarah McLachlan. And on that unnervingly subdued note, the firmest of lines is scratched defining original and originally remixed, as eardrums are bashed headlong into the tropical tones of CFCF’s take on the once-razor blade glimmers of Before Tigers. Reverberating treble and added 80s keys, a rusty staple in the diet of Disco 2, prevail before Javelin transform In Heat into early Tellier slap bass sensuality that’d have Delorean clawing for the serotonin, then analogue synths. A grungey Stone Roses-splattered Die Slow ensues, scuffed up good’n’proper by Tobacco, before the thumping heart of the collection, a typically evolutionary meander through tribal vibrations and swelling euphoria courtesy of Gold Panda shatters Before Tigers (again) into microscopic particles of firework flavoured ecstasy. Crystal Castles are no strangers to copyright control and infamously acquired the cacophonous dementia of Crimewave originally stuffed onto the Californian quartet’s eponymous debut. Evidently a tad infatuated with HEALTH, they return to maul Eat Flesh, marinating its previously indiscernible confusion in ethereal vox and brooding synths, before tearing it limb from limb in a fury of disorientating bleeps, battered drums and white noise. Salem regenerate In Violet with a heightened degree of musicality, Pictureplane install a throbbing pacemaker in Die Slow, and Little Loud tinge Nice Girls with Delphic’s NME indie sensibilities. It’s been a while since a remix LP hasn’t eclipsed nor shrunk into the shadows of its maker and whilst several tracks from Get Color are too scrambled to reprogram, few could oppose the rewiring that powers Disco 2.