HEALTH
DISCO2
Rating: 3.0/5.0
Label: Lovepump United
Where their comrades from the Smell, No Age, have always gravitated toward the power of the 7″, HEALTH have more or less made their name based on their willingness to hand over their work to any number of electronic artists. For better or for worse, most listeners became aware of HEALTH not because of their own post-hardcore work but from the way that work was altered by Crystal Castles on their debut’s standout track “Crimewave.”
Which brings us to DISCO2, a sequel of sorts to the first DISCO release, home of the aforementioned reworking of “Crimewave.” At the time of the original DISCO, HEALTH were still skirting the world between electronic music and artful hardcore, worlds that are not quite as dissimilar as one might think- both are home to often punishing, repetitive rhythms after all. But 2009 found HEALTH embracing electronic music fully, if not always in instrumentation so much as in theory, their songs taking on the structures and ideas of the culture.
All this adds up to some odd questions about DISCO2- if HEALTH have become more forward-thinking in their shift towards the electronic, which they have, then shouldn’t the remixes that they garner be more forward-thinking as well? This would seem to be a realistic expectation but DISCO2 is littered with tracks that feel barely thought out, as though the artists were on autopilot. The reasons for this are more than likely two-fold: the originals on which these remixes are based left less room for embellishment than the originals on which the first DISCO was based and the work itself set the bar so high that a sequel could only naturally disappoint.
Luckily, it’s not all a loss; for every sleepy, New Romantic revival moment a la Gold Panda’s take on “Before Tigers,” there’s something electric and alive, like Tobacco’s interpretation of “Die Slow,” which revels in the simplicity of its hip-swaying bass and chunky beat. Where “Before Tigers” fails to live up to an initially promising concept, that of HEALTH re-imagined as a 21st Century, fatalist ABC, “Die Slow” confidently rides its stark minimalism to the bank. Tobacco seemingly worked around the two issues cited above, that of HEALTH’s newly matured electronic sensibilities and the shadow of what came before, by ignoring them altogether and stripping things down. Tobacco’s remix is like “Before Tigers” equally rooted in the past but in their case, it’s a past that can be said to be timeless rather than outright nostalgic.
Small Black utilizes a similar tactic on “Severin,” which confusingly recalls both RZA’s production on Kill Bill and the newly world-consuming chillwave movement. Chintzy ’70s synths egg on a sample that could have come from the soundtrack of an ’80s after school special, resulting in something weirdly comforting, like a dinosaur blanket rediscovered while rooting through the attic. Crystal Castles’ return to HEALTH yields similar results, grafting an ’80s fantasy film score intro on top of HEALTH’s rambunctious drums and dying hospital equipment effects, with vocals that sound like their “Crimewave” counterpart just before bed (or death). Pictureplane may win top honors with their take on “Die Slow,” though, which sounds like nothing else on the album, finding some never explored ground that places HEALTH in Animal Collective territory, with all the chants and instrumental madness that brings with it, but with a disco-tinged beat to make the digestion of it all that much easier.
In the end, DISCO2 is truer to the origins of the remix album than its predecessor was- more scattershot, less concise. There are moments of bliss and plenty of surprises but as a whole the work fails to really invent its source material. This could be read as a glass half full situation, if one is inclined- HEALTH just may have moved past the point of being open to interpretation.
by Morgan Davis
