HEALTH‘s edgy, discordant music seems tailor-made to receive the remix treatment, and on Disco, the rough edges of the band’s self-titled debut were smoothed out quite a bit while the hypnotic, beat-driven melodies were creatively reimagined by other artists. It was a highly enjoyable listen that only served to add depth and atmosphere to the roiling originals, while also clearly influencing HEALTH’s recording process on their follow-up, the toned-down but no less dynamic Get Color. Now those highly inventive songs get the remix treatment on Disco2, to similar favorable effect, with heavy-hitters like Tobacco, Gold Panda and Crystal Castles all taking stabs at reinventing these spirited numbers. The album is remarkably cohesive considering how varied both the source material and the remixes are, playing out more like a fluid, polished mix-tape than a collection of mixes, which is a testament to both HEALTH and the talented producers behind these reconstructions.

The album opens with ‘USA Boys,’ a brilliant unreleased original from HEALTH, which forms a perfect spellbinding entry point for this collection, easing the listener into the moody ambience that the rest of the album only builds on. HEALTH’s sound is as much about temper as it is about tone, and these songs do a great job of recapturing or building on that essence, with CFCF giving ‘Before Tigers’ (remixed three times on this collection) a wistful, nostalgic sense of longing, while Javelin turns ‘In Heat’ into a South Beach-style club anthem. But the real banger on this album was always going to be the remix of ‘Die Slow,’ the original of which just kills on Get Color, and remains the best song the group has produced. The track gets two disparate mixes on Disco2, with Tobacco’s stellar version building on the propulsive swagger and underlying funk of the original, while Pictureplane goes for a more ethereal, glassy approach. It’s a perfect illustration of how layered the music of HEALTH is, as both mixes grasp at different threads woven within their sound, fashioning remarkably different takes on the same track.

The same can also be said for ‘Nice Girls,’ and ‘Before Tigers,’ each given multiple remixes on Disco2. Blondes and Little Loud rework ‘Nice Girls,’ which originally is a hyperactive, drum-driven freak-out, but here it’s reimagined as tranquil, entrancing dance numbers that soothe rather than sear. The fact that these two mixes hardly resemble the original doesn’t matter a bit, as the tracks effortlessly transport you to places just hinted at in the authentic version. In addition to CFCF’s version, ‘Before Tigers’ also gets reworked by both Gold Panda and Blindoldfreak, with the former providing a shimmering instrumental take, while the latter turns in an evocative, minimalist version that adds tension and space to the captivating vocals. Again, there are hints of the spirit of the prototypes present in the work, but ultimately these are new, unique works in their own right, which makes this project far more appealing than your standard cash-grab remix experiments.

You’d figure that Crystal Castles remixing a HEALTH song called ‘Eat Flesh’ would produce something dissonant and downright unnerving, but the Canadian duo reign in their somewhat sinister instincts and deliver a relatively tame mix that doesn’t unleash any real fury until the agitated drums kick in halfway through. Salem’s mix of ‘In Violet’ is far more memorable, turning the song into a haunting, stirring number reminiscent of both jj and the xx. Ultimately, the beauty of this whole project is that HEALTH are unselfishly offering up their songs to be reinterpreted and reworked by other artists, who in turn take how they hear this music and what it means to them in fresh, unconventional directions, while crafting new sonic experiments in the process. In order for something like this to truly work, the songs themselves must be solid and resonant enough to both inspire the artists and carry their new versions to another dimension entirely, and HEALTH clearly have created songs that have depth and energy to spare. Where they take their sound in the future is anyone’s guess, but given the wild new directions the artists on Disco2 took the band’s sound, we best be listening, because it’s bound to be compulsively innovative and always open to further interpretation.