When I reviewed Songs of a Lost World, I wrote that it felt more like a series of sad film scenes to music, a project steeped in grief, aging, and the weight of simply surviving. It was unmistakably The Cure — massive, moody, and gorgeously bleak — but it was also tired. Not tired like lazy or unoriginal, but in an absolutely exhausted, existential way. Like Robert Smith has seen too much, lost too much, but is still here, whispering his lyrics from the ruins.
So when Mixes From the Lost World was announced, I didn’t know what to expect. Remix albums are often afterthoughts; padded EPs with extended cuts and “now with more reverb and beep beep bedoos!” versions of songs we already liked fine. I expected to get a few palatable reworks, maybe something dance-friendly if I squinted hard enough.
What I got instead was an album that doesn’t just remix, it reimagines.
There’s a boldness to this collection that caught me off guard. Instead of slapping four-on-the-floor beats onto sad bangers and calling it a day, a collection of OG DJs, new-to-me electroheads, and… Chino Moreno (Deftones, †††) dug deep and pumped out entirely new versions of the Lost World tracks. It reminds me of the remix culture in the late ’90s, when albums like Spawn: The Album handed over rock tracks to electronic and industrial artists who weren’t interested in polishing tracks, they mutated them.
And speaking of the ’90s — let’s get back to Chino Moreno’s Warsong remix, which might just be the best thing on this release. Easily the highlight of the dozens of songs that make up the album. It’s cinematic, suffocating, and has a… goth accordion intro? Moreno leans into the song’s emotional density and then cranks it into something even heavier. The remix stretches the track out like the accordion that kicks it off, drenched in delay and submerged under layers of breathy despair. It feels like floating — and sinking — at the same time. It’s one of those tracks that is made for audiophiles. There’s panning left to right, nuanced synths that hide in the periphery, and a helluva crescendo leading up to the lyrics.
Jesus Christ, it’s so good.
It’s a perfect pairing: Smith’s ghostly resolve and Chino’s sense of atmosphere creating a moment that’s neither Cure nor Deftones, but something hauntingly between.
Other remixers bring their own vision without ever diluting the source material. The songs aren’t just louder or faster — they’re different. They ask new questions. They paint the same ghosts in neon and despair. The ache of Songs of a Lost World is still here, but it’s refracted; sharper in some places, more distorted in others, but there everywhere you look.
This album doesn’t try to chase hits or pander to the algorithm. It’s weird. It’s ambitious. And most impressively, it’s something to immerse yourself in. In a remix culture where songs are often reduced to background noise or TikTok fodder, this stands out as a rare love of crafting moods as music.
Mixes From the Lost World reminded me of my love of music that doesn’t settle, but embraces being unsettling.
If Songs of a Lost World was a reckoning with mortality, Mixes is its strange, glowing afterlife.