If you’ve heard one HEALTH’s studio albums, or ever seen one of their live shows, you know that the band isn’t afraid of noise. This noise generally comes in the form of walls of effected guitar sounds and fast, almost aggressive, drumming, but the quartet also has an affinity for electronic music — specifically in the form of the remix. Hence, their 2008 album, Disco, which featured curated remixes of songs off their 2007 self-titled debut, and now Disco2 – the same take on the 2009 full-length Get Color, and out on June 22. URB recently talked to guitarist Jupiter Keyes about the ideas behind the album, and why these remixes work so damn well.
URB: Many people might not associate the kind of experimental noise/rock, for lack of a better term, you guys play as the perfect material for remixing, but it really works. Why do you think that’s the case?
JUPITER KEYES: I think there’s a lot of reasons for that. One is the character of Jake’s voice. His singing is mostly unaffected, almost pure-tone. It really lends itself well being cut-up, re-pitched, or even just re-framed in a new musical environment. And his dark, monotone-heavy melodies are great to build around. Instrumentally, we draw from a very unconventional sound-palette. We create a lot of sounds that are unfamiliar, not a part of the traditional vernacular. You can’t quite pin down exactly where they came from. But it’s not atonal noise, it’s musical noise. So this, I would hope, provides creative fuel for remixers too.
Another reason we caught on with remixers is because the first remix that was ever done for us, the Crystal Castles remix, is incredible. You’d hear that song everywhere: at parties, clubs, in clothing stores, as a truck drives by, even on your favorite TV teen drama. The bar was set high early and it legitimized us as a band you can remix even though we might not have been the obvious choice. This helped create the environment for HEALTH to become a band that exists in that world. And we were participants in that by actively soliciting remixes from all our favorite artists. We love good remixes so it just made sense to us. Now, after compiling two of what I believe to be really good remix albums, it just makes sense. It’s a part of our identity as a band. An “if you build it they will come” kind of thing.
URB: Do you think fans who may be more familiar with your remixed songs will be a little surprised at your live show? Has anyone ever said anything to you about that?
JK: Surprised? I hope so. HEALTH live and HEALTH remixed are two very different things. You could sneak a couple of the tracks off Disco2 onto your mom’s or your younger niece’s iPod and they might not even notice we’re in there. Bring them to our show and they’re gonna be a little (or a lot) put off. In a good way. Like the first time you saw a grown man naked. It’s weird.
And yeah, there’s a lot of confusion from people who are more familiar with HEALTH as a band remixed. Specifically when all they know of us is the CC remix. We’ve had people hollering at us to play “Crimewave” literally seconds after we just finished playing it. On multiple occasions. It’s laughable, but goddam…
URB: Do you ever try to incorporate any of the remixed elements into your live shows?
JK: We’re finding our way onto that path more and more now. At first we were very resistant to it because of all the logistical issues that come up. More gear is needed, and more gear means more problems. But we’re none to shy away from technology. Our live shows are increasingly becoming a more sonically diverse event. That’s been the path we’ve been on for a while now. Our earliest shows were a 10-minute assault on the eyes and ears. Sometimes on a dirt floor basement or a living room with no PA. Now we’re playing on real stages with state of the art sound systems. So we’ve become very excited about all the new possibilities. And yes, we might even find ways to incorporate remixed elements or even performances of remixes into the live show within the near future. We just need to find ways of doing it tastefully.
URB: There are a couple of repeat remixers from Disco on Disco2, but you also have some brand-new participation. How did these collaborations come about?
JK: Rumor has it that for the first Disco album John sat around in his boxers for a sleepless 24-hours straight, fed on nothing but beer and Trader Joe’s Indian food while searching out and emailing people for the remix album roster. He wears briefs now, but the story hasn’t changed too much. An intimate relationship with our computers, recommendations from friends, beer, and lots of emails are how most of these collaborations come about. And props to our boy Randal Baxtar who hooked us up real last minute for Disco2. Without his recommendation, Little Loud, one of our favs on this new album, wouldn’t have happened. That really is how it works. You hear something you like or your hear about something you might like, then you just ask, “hey, wanna remix us?” Sometimes we get no reply, sometimes the results are really surprising, like the “Crimewave” or the Little Loud remix. But we try to work mostly with up-and-coming artists because it’s less complicated and they’re hungry, they always give the best remixes because they still really care.
URB: What are some of your favorite results? Anything that completely took you by surprise?
JK: Well, the above-mentioned Little Loud was a very welcome surprise. He’s a relatively unheard of artist from the UK who’s really fucking talented. His remix was an 11th hour Hail Mary that totally caught us off-guard by how good it was. On the + portion of the Disco album is a remix by one of the guys from Knyfe Hyts, formerly Ex-Models. That one’s super weird and awesome. CFCF killed it again. Oh and the last track by Blindoldfreak, aka Allesandro Cortini (NIN keyboardist), is gorgeous. I could go on… they’re all great remixes.
URB: Do you have a wishlist of remixers/producers you’d like to work with?
JK: Yo Dre. If you’re listening, let’s do this.
URB: Most of the remixes, with maybe the exception of the Crystal Castles remix of “Eat Flesh,” take a pretty mellow approach, cutting out the original drums tracks and using more keyboards instead of guitars, etc etc. Is this something you want in a remixed HEALTH song, or is it just coincidental?
JK: No, that’s completely intentional. We wanted to create a “vibe” for the album. It really is an album, not just a collection of remixes. We want it to feel like something happens over the course of your listening experience. We spend a lot of time thinking about sequencing and track selection. There are a lot of great remixes that didn’t make the album cut for that very reason, the Soft Encounter remix being a prime example, or the Parallels remix. We love those tracks but they didn’t quite fit the trajectory of the album. There are even tracks that involved extensive back and forth between us and the remixer in efforts to bring the song closer to our vision. We’re not passive consumers in the remix game. Sometimes that pisses people off. But, more often than not, when everybody puts their heads together it can lead to better music.
URB: Is there a reason why some of the songs from Get Color aren’t remixed for, or perhaps didn’t make the cut, on Disco2?
JK: We would have loved to have had every song from Get Color represented on Disco2. But again, for the purposes of album continuity it just didn’t work that way. Not every track was remixed in a way that fit the album. On the opposite end of the spectrum, some songs had a disproportionate number of remixes that were great, i.e. “Die Slow.”
URB: Even though your music is more rock-oriented, you obviously all must like dance and electronica a lot. What are your top 3 favorite remixes of all time?
JK: Questions like this are difficult because the answer changes with the weather. For one of these I’m just going to throw an album at you. Ratatat Remixes Vol 1 is killer. I’m really surprised they didn’t get more work producing hip-hop after that album. Maybe it just didn’t get the attention it deserves. But that album had better beats than a lot of the hip-hop going around at the time. Among more recent remixes, the Washed Out remix of Small Black’s “Despicable Dogs” is really fucking good. Just makes me want to grab my girl and a case of Corona and go sailing or something. I love it. I’ve been listening to that one a lot this year. And, surprising or not, the Hot Chip remixes were pretty inspirational for us back in the day. DFA’s “Just Like We” and Erol Alkan’s “Boy From School” have beautiful synth work in them. The synth drop at 1:20 in “Just Like We “and the synth solo at 3:30 in “Boy From School” were actually instructive to us as a band. The remixes are better than the originals, and that’s when light bulbs started going off and we were like, “fuckit, let’s make a remix album too.”
Listen to “USA Boys” off Disco2 here.
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