Darkstar – Young Hearts (Remix)

EVER SINCE THE release of their downbeat 2010 debut album, the decidedly chilly North, Darkstar have been brightening up. Former dour employees with Kode9's Hyperdub label the London-based duo of James Young and Aiden Whalley initially specialised in downtempo dubstep sadness before enlisting singer James Buttery for North, composing the kind of melancholy post-Burial urban laments that lonesome young clubbers might well serenade themselves with on some 4am nightbus back from Shoreditch to Walthamstow.

Released in February of this year, their second album, News From Nowhere, was like winter sunlight through those grey-smudged top-deck windows, warming their bones and blood and stimulating a collective sleep-deprived hypothalmus.

Blissful, immersive, romantic and slightly stoned, News From Nowhere gave passing nods to the psychedelic serenades and communal bedroom psych of Grizzly Bear and Animal Collective, as well as the sunrise pop psych swap-meets of late 60s Beach Boys and Harpers Bizarre.

And here the evolution continues, with their own reworking of album track Young Hearts.

They've stripped out the 80s synth pop introspection of the original, replacing it with such dancefloor-friendly details as dirty deep bass throb, an hypnotic vocal loop and some piano breakdown decay. It's available for free download prior to its release on October 14 as first of two forthcoming remix 12"s, '01484'. There'll be a second remix 12, 'HD7' in November, followed by a show at London's Corsica Studios on December 4.