Platronic rewrite their own fable with the new EP “The emperor’s new clothes”
Platronic release “The emperor’s new clothes” on 16 October, an EP of three reworks of “Fortress of Fools” plus the song’s official video. The duo, Sami and Kay, have been together since 2020. “Fortress of Fools” is a poem by Kay on Andersen’s tale of the naked emperor, written to cope with the everyday madness of the world. She had a storytelling ballad in mind. Sami showed her a danceable instrumental and the song went another way.
The idea behind the EP suits the fable. If the emperor was naked, here he gets three different outfits. The metaphor could have stayed a clever title, but each version has an identity that justifies its existence.
The original: dependable, with room to grow
It helps to start with what was there. “Fortress of Fools” (you can listen to it in our app) is a synthpop track leaning towards futurepop, very dependable, well built and hooky. But it lacked some depth, and that is the key to reading this EP: the reworks work because they find things in the song that the original left unexplored.
Dark Electro Country Dress: the version that leads
My favourite on the EP is the one Platronic make with On Moral Ends, the project of Sweden’s Andreas Svensson. Here the song becomes a two-voice piece, and that changes what the song means.
The tone darkens completely. The arrangements move into more darkwave territory (or Electro Country) and give the track a density it never had. This version of “Fortress of Fools” travels away from the dependable futurepop of the starting point without losing the melody that carried it. If the EP has a reason to exist, it is in this cut.
The Forest of Fools: eurodance with a nineties memory
The second outfit is cut by Platronic and Imppu, the keyboard player and remixer from Lahti. Titled “The Forest of Fools”, it swaps the fortress for a forest in more ways than one. This version leans heavily on nineties eurodance and is the most danceable of the three.
It is the rework that changes spirit the most. Where the previous one looks inward, this one looks at the dancefloor, and the contrast between theme and wrapping has its charm: a fable about collective cowardice set to a beat made for jumping. That clash works as an ironic reading of the song, and Imppu’s production plays it with conviction rather than as a joke. It is the version that would hold up best in a club.
Dark Medieval Gothic Dress: the pulse drops
The third rework is by Platronic alone and is the most radical by subtraction. The heart rate falls. Kay recites more than she sings, and the poem that started everything returns to the foreground as text, as if the tale were finally read aloud the way it was born.
There are very epic moments, driven by war drums that give the piece the air of a procession. It is the version that asks for the closest listening, but also the one that shows the skeleton of the song most clearly. After the previous track’s dancing it works as a counterweight and closes the EP in a register few would expect from a futurepop duo.
The video: a storybook with Kay inside
The official video for “Fortress of Fools”, produced by Platronic themselves, was shot in Savonlinna and Alicante. It mixes filmed footage with comic-book panels in which Kay appears to read passages from a storybook as she sings. The choice is consistent with the song’s origin: Andersen’s tale becomes a book again, and she reads it to camera like someone telling it to others.
Other Voices verdict
Remix EPs are usually fan filler. “The emperor’s new clothes” is something else. Three versions very different from each other and, above all, from the original, with a result that improves the song they start from. The collaboration with On Moral Ends is the best of the set and justifies the EP on its own, though the epic drop of the medieval version and Imppu’s dancefloor turn have arguments of their own.
Platronic have a good 2027 ahead, with live dates announced in Finland and Germany and this EP holding the place until new material arrives.
