Health: Disco2

Assembling danceable remixes out of Health’s self-titled 2007 album of asymmetrical beats and tribal war whoops for Disco was an impressive bit of engineering. The follow-up, Disco2, has an easier task in front of it, working as it does from the more legible blueprint of 2009’s Get Color, which kept the jagged edges even as it bumped the needle a little closer to the “rock” end of the noise-rock spectrum. Swapping out crystalline shards of sound for tracks that swaddle instead of stab is no mean feat, but a roster of remixers that once again includes Crystal Castles and Pictureplane is up to the task. In the hands of Cfcf, “Before Tigers” goes from a shimmering soundtrack for a space-age ritualistic human sacrifice to a loping paean to Genesis’ “Man On The Corner” before building to a downbeat denouement of comforting guitar plinks and wind chimes. “Nice Girls” mutates and adapts a sturdy double helix of progressive house DNA reminiscent of Manuel Göttsching’s E2-E4 over the course of eight minutes without lapsing into tedium. Both Disco albums feel like the perfect fit for the group’s Day-Glo aesthetic sensibility, and tracks like “Severin” and the second “Nice Girls” remix (this time by Little Loud), are the aural equivalent of a Duplo block—wholly artificial, yet as welcoming as anything the natural world has on offer.