The third volume moved away from simple remixes, offering a mix of new songs, covers, and remixes from the Release era.
The series concluded its first major chapter in 2007 with , an album that flipped the script entirely. Instead of featuring remixes of their songs by others, Disco 4 is a compilation of Pet Shop Boys’ own remixes for other artists —a first for their career.
This is deeply Pet Shop Boys. Their music has always been about the tension between the human and the mechanical—the robotic precision of a Fairlight CMI sampler versus Neil Tennant’s dry, world-weary tenor. A 4CD set top is the ultimate PSB metaphor: a device that imposes order (four discs, chronological span) only to invite chaos (“top”—meaning “shuffle,” “random,” “top of the pile”). It is the sound of Chris Lowe’s stoic synthesizer presets colliding with Tennant’s lyrics about lost love and Soviet cinema.
Launched in the mid-80s, the Disco series was a relatively sporadic affair, appearing roughly once per decade. The concept was simple but powerful: to explore the dancefloor potential of their catalog. The earlier volumes were compilations of extended mixes of their own songs, crafted by a who's who of dance producers, including Arthur Baker and Shep Pettibone.