This summer, Dua Lipa should have celebrated the success of her hit-packed, UK Number One album ‘Future Nostalgia’ on the road. Arendata in Europe were locked up, with the final victory round being a handful of festival shows, including a trip to Worthy Farm for Glastonbury. But we all know what happened next.
With this summer’s music calendar discontinued, how do you fill your time after releasing your critically acclaimed (five full stars of NME) second album? Inspired by the Zoom dance festivities of one of the record’s soundtracked, Lipa chose, “she said,” to take the party a step further “and secretly work on this remix project. She enlisted the help of the American House – and techno-DJ The Blessed Madonna, and together they set out to make every song from the record (and a few extras) for the club.
‘Club Future Nostalgia’ is less of a remix album, and more of a lovingly edited mixtape. Among the remakes of songs from ‘Future Nostalgia’ are snippets and examples of pop classics (including ‘Buffalo Stance’ by Neneh Cherry and ‘Hollaback Girl’ by Gwen Stefani) and records on home and soul.
The remixers and collaborators are genre-spanning and varied. On the one hand, you have a glittering call of mega-stars that includes Madonna, Gwen Stefani, Missy Elliott and Mark Ronson; and on the other, there’s exciting new talent in the form of Yaeji and Jayda G. And they’re all rubbing with cult legends like Detroit House hero Moodymann and Joe Goddard of Hot Chip.
‘Club Future Nostalgia’ is a pick-and-mix bag that flashes between modern pop, ’80s soul and house-floor filling. There are moments of total euphoria – the jubilant opener of Joe Goddard, who adds his own twist to title track with Hot Chip-style synths and Daft Punk-inspired whirrs, is the sound of a secret Glastonbury DJ set at 3 p.m. . The recording of Horse Meat Disco on ‘Love Again’ is just as exciting, full of striking beats and instruments with funk-side. There are also moments of icy cold, such as when Yaeji re-introduces ‘Do not Start Now’, the bombastic doll fuses with stink trap and house, and it changes into the sound of running at a rave in the early hours of the morning.
There are also outings for various unreleased songs. ‘That Kind Of Woman’, which was once early funky disco à la Kylie, gets the remix treatment by Jacques Lu Cont (the name of English artist and DJ Stuart Price); and The Blessed Madonna’s version of ‘Love Is Religion’ is a pop-house belter with a solitary chorus.
High-profile team-ups add some stellar power to the mix, but sometimes feel like a shoehorn for this purpose. While the recent The Blessed Madonna remix of ‘Levitating’, featuring Madonna and Missy Elliott, is a fist-pumping call to the dance floor, the scurrilous version of Mark Ronson’s ‘Physical’, featuring Gwen Stefani’s guest song, is missing,
Large, however, it is an exciting and eclectic adaptation. It was a cunning decision to recruit The Blessed Madonna: the result is a collection of exciting, genre-splicing remixes that you could really imagine imagining in the club. It may not have been the album party that Lipa planned, but ‘Club Future Nostalgia’ feels like a party at the same time.
Details
Release date: August 28th
Record label: Warner
