Most of the original 12" mixes are unnecessary without there fore being bad (Hot Hot Hot, Lullaby, Fascination Street, Love Song), but the ones done especially for the compilation are pretty decent. In fact, I remembering reading that “A Forest” is a completely new recording, because they lost the original master or something. Then again, i don’t know how that fits in with the whole remaster project much later on. Then again again, the remaster of Seventeen Seconds sound identical to the original release, so I’m not sure it was actually remastered.
At any rate, the remixes of “A Forest” and “The Walk”, and even “Inbetween Days” are all pretty good, I reckon. Always hated the dub version of “Pictures of you”, though.
I really like this album. ‘Lullaby’ is the definitive version for me, ‘Close To Me’ is great, ’ ‘Fascination Street’ works really well and the new version of ‘A Forest’ is huge. A worthy addition to their catalogue I think.
Just listened to Mixed Up for the first time and it was pretty much as I expected, not bad as such but I do find it annoying in a vague sort of way, the Close To Me mix is pleasant though and I do love the video. That’s the only mix I really think is worthwhile, I can’t imagine when I’ll want to put this on again and I don’t like Never Enough much either.
Torn Down is more of the same, the most interesting bit is the song choices, picking one song from every album and off the usual beaten track is pretty cool. If it had come off like how Robert was talking it up in 2012 then it could have been more interesting:
“There will be a Mixed Up 2 album coming out, probably this side of Christmas. Mixed Up 2. I’ve given songs to groups I really love, like Mogwai, Cranes and some other people. I thought the best thing to do would be to have some new remasters, but rather than by producers, I think that having groups that you love remix your songs is a much more interesting idea than producers remixing your songs. So Mixed Up 2 will be our favorite bands remixing Cure songs. It’s good. It’ll be this Christmas. Mogwai are doing ‘Faith.’ So good. It’ll be really good. Cure fans will love it.”
This is how I became a Cure fan. I loved Burn from the Crow ost. At a friends house in uni, i put this tape on and before it finsihed I was a Cure fan.