In a recent URB interview, HEALTH guitarist and noise maker Jupiter Keys sums up what to expect of this latest release:

“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… 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 (Crystal Castles) remix (of “Crimewave”, found on //Disco). We’ve had people hollering at us to play “Crimewave” literally seconds after we just finished playing it.”

In other words ::Disco2 is to HEALTH’s Get Color (the original source material for the former) as DFA1979 is to MSTRKRFT, the raucous (!!) mélange of Ragnarök level, acrimonious noise reduced to something the DJ can sandwich between Boys Noize and Bloc Party.

Come on, give the band a little credit.

Balancing the dance floor with the off-center and the odd, HEALTH culled the indie electronica gamut for this twelve-track pastiche (the deluxe version features twelve additional mixes from Rainbow Arabia, Clipd Breaks, 8-bit warriors Yip-Yip, etc.) For every compression-pumping, string pad-laden club banger such as Little Loud’s take on “Nice Girls” or Blondes’ long, soaring Underworld-esque makeover of “Nice Girls” you have a counterpoint of Blindfoldfreak’s sans percussion, heavy on the drone, mix of “Before Tigers”; Salem’s subtle gabber-crunk on “In Violet” versus Javelin’s screwy meld of “In Heat” with “Let’s Hear it For The Boy” style ‘80s radio R&B. Tobacco provides an instrumental of his “Creepy Phone Calls” (from the recent Maniac Meat) under “Die Slow” for the one real hip-hop moment of the disc. And yes Crystal Castles returns to float “Eat Flesh” into a hanging garden of synth blobs, then drown it in spastic drum rolls.

However, the album wears one global tag: polite. Does HEALTH allow these remix albums to sucker people with the nicey nice only to musically smash them in the mouth and laugh at the confusion thirty seconds into Get Color? Doubtful (it is always fun to get light revenge on your family, though). When discussing his musical intent behind goals for this and //Disco, Keys thoughts are concise: “Fuckit, let’s make a remix album too”.

Certainly not the original (boys, get back to the studio); but what part of “remix” do you not understand?

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