You’d be forgiven for not knowing Mixes From the Lost World exists—and after hearing it, you might wish you didn’t. Billed as a companion to 2024’s long-gestating, fantastic comeback album, Songs Of A Lost World, this new collection sees a bunch of electro artists revisit, stretch, and smudge out those tracks into elongated remixes.
The result is a muddy, meandering hour-plus of post-goth wallpaper that mostly misses the mark. These mixes feel like Robert Smith and company decided to let the songs rot in a reverb tank, although I have no idea how much Smith was actually involved in the process of green lighting these mixes. Nearly every track overstays its welcome, stripped of structure and coated in ambient haze. The intention might’ve been meditative or cinematic, but what we get is indulgent and limp. Take “Endsong (Orbital Mix).” What was once a gloomy curtain-raiser is now 6 minutes of sluggish build-up to… nothing. There’s another more post-rock version from the likes of Mogwai at the very end of Mixes, but again, nothing really needed to be added.
The worst offender has to be the sped up version of “A Fragile Thing (Âme Remix),” which feels like someone who just learned how to control a Pioneer DJ deck…
Longtime Cure fans will find ways to justify this album—I get it, nostalgia’s a hell of a drug. But Mixes From the Lost World does little to expand on the original record, and even less to justify its existence. I’m not sure why this was created in the first place. I had to relisten to the majesty of the actual Songs Of A Lost World album and throw on Disintegration for a palate cleanse after.
