1) Sad Eyed Disco Dancers; 2) Violentia (Boys of Scandinavia Remix); 3) City Silhouette (Roger® Remix); 4) Nostalgia Amnesia; 5) Deepspeed (Kris Kylven Reconstruction & Remix); 6) Three Minutes Later (Iconcrash Remix); 7) Strange Delights; 8) Kiss and Break Up (Verneri Lumi Remix); 9) Halo Goodbye (Alien Mindbenders Rework); 10) Dim Challenger
An EP inside a remix album. There's a clear winner between the two sides but you have to give some props for doing a convincing job marrying them together.
Key tracks: "Sad Eyed Disco Dancers", "City Silhouette (Roger Remix)", "Strange Delights"
Melancholydisco started out as an EP, with two members of the then-quartet Viola playing around with moving into a more synthesized sound. Then someone came up with the idea of inviting the band’s friends to play with the back catalogue and the project expanded into a remix album, released as a breather between albums.
I mention this because the original EP is still buried inside Melancholydisco. Four songs of hearts being broken by the mirror ball, bittersweet synthpop for the sad eyed disco dancers. They’re exactly what the title says: melodramatic, danceable and utterly enthralled by their own cool. “Sad Eyed Disco Dancers” is nearly iconic in this regard, its pulsating bassline driving the hopelessly romantic yet stylishly nonchalant miserabilia onwards. “Nostalgia Amnesia” is hyperspeed heartache and its mad percussion section is borders between dancefloor filler and too hectic with its own energy. “Strange Delights” is a carefully optimistic sing-along anthem where the band’s pop heart explodes into full bloom. The last slow jam “Dim Challenger” finally calms the wild night down with its instrumental, near-ambient mood scape. They’re four great songs where Viola stretch their own borders and open new doors they’d walk through in their future, and they could have made an excellent EP on their own.
The six accompanying remixes are almost a sideshow, not by virtue of being weak but because in comparison with the original tracks, they’re a much more incohesive bunch. That’s just the nature of remix albums obviously, but the internal consistency between the original tracks leaves the remixes to feel like added-on bonus tracks. But, it’s still a grab bag of quite successful reworks. Roger®’s version of “City Silhouette” and Alien Mindbenders’ “Halo Goodbye” are particularly excellent: Roger® turn “City Silhouette” into an atmospheric, high-speed night drive soundtrack that’s closest in spirit to the new tracks, while Alien Mindbenders ingeniously reverse the usual remix treatment by turning the keyboard/programming-heavy “Halo Goodbye” into a rock ballad, and it’s actually all kinds of brilliant. Meanwhile The Boys of Scandinavia’s funked up take on “Violentia” isn’t necessarily the most exciting one out of the lot but it’s the largest earworm and the most instantly irresistible. Iconcrash merely flesh out the formerly stripped down “Three Minutes Later” and the Verneri Lumi remix of “Kiss and Break Up” is a neat atmospheric, glitched-out treat that has its charms as it progresses and builds up on its atmosphere. It’s only really Kris Kylven’s version of “Deepspeed” that feels lacklustre, carrying the vibe of countless rock song remixes I’ve heard scattered across CD singles over the years which awkwardly remove the key points of the original version’s strength while failing to establish a real identity of its own either.
But despite the remix selection having an arguably higher hitting ratio than most remix albums, they’ll always end up playing second fiddle to the original cuts. “Sad Eyed Disco Dancers” and “Strange Delights” are iconic Viola classics in my eyes, and none of the remixes can really compete with the inspiration and excellence of the new songs, no matter how good. You can practically hear how excited the half of Viola who worked on these were over the new possibilities provided by letting go of the strict band format. Admittedly, it would shortly mean radical shake-ups in the band’s line-up, but man – what a way to make a case for switching the course. They’re worth the price (or the free download these days, rather) alone: the remixes are bonus.
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