27 years later is a rather odd time to be releasing a remix album but, after years of speculation as to whether this reworking of one of her most respected albums actually existed at all, we’ll take whatever we can get.
Entitled Veronica Electronica, it’s a collection of alternative versions and remixes of some of her best-known work – all originally released (in original form) as part of 1998’s Ray of Light.
There are eight tracks on the new album, seven of which were on Ray of Light, while the eighth – Gone Gone Gone – is a new, previously unreleased demo from the same sessions produced by Madonna and Rick Nowels.
The seven remixes appear in the same order as they did on the (full) 13-track version of the album, effectively giving Veronica Electronica a familiar nostalgic feel for fans of the original album, while injecting a fair measure of new interest into the experience.
Blast from the past…
And given the late ’90s nature of the source material (and the remix project), it’s interesting to see more than a few famous (albeit ‘blast from the past’) names handling the controls…
On board, we have remixes by BT, Sasha, Peter Rauhofer, Victor Calderone and, of course, Ray of Light’s main producer and Madonna collaborator, William Orbit.
The story goes that the album was originally intended to be released after the album but after some tracks were used as remixes for CD single releases and the album’s on-going success (and both Madonna, label and music in general moving on) the window for such a potentially confusing side-project from one of the world’s biggest artists narrowed, closed and got lost in time.
However, in this digital age – and with less and less emphasis on an audience needing to ‘understand’ an artist’s ongoing journey through the medium of albums – it’s clear that someone somewhere simply decided that this stuff was too good to waste.
Indeed, Madonna’s last album was a career-spanning remix project, Finally Enough Love, released alongside her return to Warners in 2022, following her last ‘proper’ album, Madame X (her last album for Interscope) in 2019.
So it’s safe to say that Madonna and ‘new’ label Warners are on a bit of a retro tip at the moment.
Veronica Electronica is on streaming platforms nowwith a full release marked for 13 June.
The album will also be released on 25 July on ‘silver nugget’ coloured vinyl.
For now, though, you can stream the rather tougher and still-valid-and-credible-sounding-in-2025 track three, Skin (The Collaboration Remix Edit).
Full tracklist as follows:
01 Drowned World / Substitute for Love (BT & Sasha’s Bucklodge Ashram New Edit)
02 Ray of Light (Sasha Twilo Mix Edit)
03 Skin (The Collaboration Remix Edit)
04 Nothing Really Matters (Club 69 Speed Mix Meets the Dub)
05 Sky Fits Heaven (Victor Calderone Future New Edit)
06 Frozen (Widescreen Mix and Drums)
07 The Power of Good-Bye (Fabien’s Good God Mix Edit)
08 Gone Gone Gone (Original Demo Version)
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