Pet Shop Boys - Disco | 1-4 -1986-2007- 4-cd Set
You can’t overstate how perfect Disco was for its moment. 1986. The Pet Shop Boys had just conquered the world with Please , but they knew their music lived in clubs as much as on the radio. So they gave us Disco : five tracks, all remixes, no filler.
Most of all, “Somebody Else’s Business” is savage. Tennant sneers over a relentless electro beat: “Why don’t you just shut your mouth? / It’s really nothing to do with you.” A forgotten classic of PSB’s political edge.
Disco set the template: take the album, tear it apart, rebuild it for 4 a.m.
The centerpiece? The nine-minute “West End Girls” (Sasha Mix) – though here it’s actually the famous “Shep Pettibone Mastermix,” turning an already iconic track into a nocturnal journey through paranoia and ambition. But the real gem is “Opportunities (Let’s Make Lots of Money)” (Version Latina). Suddenly the cynical yuppie anthem gets congas, piano stabs, and a sweaty, carnivalesque desperation. It’s brilliant. Pet Shop Boys - Disco 1-4 -1986-2007- 4-CD Set
Let’s walk through each disc.
Why? Because it’s not just remixes. Half the tracks are brand new or B-sides, including “Time on My Hands” and “Positive Role Model,” which deserved album placement. But the highlights are the reworkings.
Critics called it faceless. I call it a time capsule of mid-90s superclub culture – Ministry of Sound, Trade, sunrise sets. Put it on now, and you’re immediately in a warehouse with a strobe light and a water bottle. It’s not for casual listening. But for a specific mood? Essential. You can’t overstate how perfect Disco was for its moment
“Tonight is forever…” Have you danced to any of the Disco albums? Which one’s your favorite – the classic first, the controversial second, the secret-weapon third, or the eclectic fourth? Drop a comment below.
Owning Disco 1–4 as a 4-CD set is a pleasure of curation. The cardboard mini-sleeves replicate the original artwork – from the stark black-and-white of Disco to the geometric blue of Disco 3 . There’s no new material, no bonus tracks. But that’s fine. This is a historical document.
After the experimental Release (guitars! acoustic ballads!), Disco 3 felt like a return to the shadows. And it’s magnificent – possibly the best of the series. So they gave us Disco : five tracks, all remixes, no filler
For four decades, Pet Shop Boys have been that second kind of band.
Disco 3 feels like a secret handshake. If you know, you know.
You get their remix of Madonna’s “Sorry” (which turns the original into something darker, more paranoid). You get their production for David Bowie (“Hallo Spaceboy”) – wait, that’s 1996. Revisiting the tracklist: Actually, Disco 4 features the Pet Shop Boys’ remix of “Integral” (a Fundamental track) and their collaboration with Sam Taylor-Wood (“I’m in Love with a German Film Star”), plus remixes they did for The Killers (“Read My Mind”) and Yoko Ono (“Walking on Thin Ice”).
And the closing track, the PSB original “The Resurrectionist,” is a pounding, eerie masterpiece about 19th-century body snatchers. Only Pet Shop Boys.
Put the discs in chronological order, and you hear synth-pop turn into house, house turn into electroclash, electroclash turn into 2000s prog-house. But more than that, you hear two constants: Neil Tennant’s voice, always a little detached, always observing; and Chris Lowe’s iron-fisted commitment to the beat.
