NEUROACTIVE - Dances Remixes (Alfa Matrix)

English:CD-preview
  Van Muylem    17 juli 2020

While the comeback album Minor Side-Effects keeps receiving highly enthusiastic feedback and is on heavy rotation in the synth pop scene, Finnish electronica act NEUROACTIVE already unleashes a second single (8 mixes of the same track).


Very catchy and dancefloor friendly, Dances was the most obvious option for NEUROACTIVE’s new single with its synth-pop style driven melody mixed with danceable beats and Kimmo Karjalainen’s (strongly reminds me of London After Midnight whilst the first remix has something of a VNV Nation Remix) melancholic and highly expressive vocals. Lyrically Dances reveals a kind of bitter sweet philosophy of life, telling a story we all somehow face when we grow older and more cynical, evoking some co-existential pessimistic reality we all suffer from. “…We dance our dances while the rot sets in, in the mouth of the madness, on a brink of a dream, despite the pain inside we go on…”

In addition to the 2 self-made “club” and “bitter fruit” remixes, Jarkko Tuohimaa gathered scene friends from various synth pop, EBM, future pop and electro dance formations who each brought a different flavour of the song while always keeping its melodic and cruelly addictive chorus in the spotlight. The list of special remixing guests speaks for itself: ASSEMBLAGE 23 (not bad at all, pumps up the beats and the tempo), AESTHETISCHE (goes for a more techno minded version, but looses too much of the melancholia to make it really worth it), 808 DOT POP (changes the vocals and the song: the result is good enough to get a poistive review, let's also not forget that they prolongated the lenght of the track to over 8 minutes), AIBOFORCEN (goes more into a synth driven version and more electronical drums), WAVE IN HEAD (sounds a bit too soft and too much into bleeps and bits rather than making it really interesting and usuable) and AERONAUT V (goes too much for a slow tempo, whilst there is more then enough possible to speed it up, but at least they kept most of the melancholic feel).

Sadly I’m not sure if any clubs are open, so I feel it will be mostly fans playing these fine tunes at home! The label will have to use the social media as max as possible to spread the nice flavour of this new single and all the remixes!

TRACK-LISTING

01. Dances (club mix)
02. Dances (bitter fruit mix)
03. Dances (Assemblage 23 remix)
04. Dances (Wave In Head remix)
05. Dances (808 Dot mix)
06. Dances (Aeronaut V remix)
07. Dances (Aesthetische reworx)
08. Dances (Aiboforcen remix)