Back catalogue: Experimental/Electronic

Review: More than four decades after he first appeared in smudged eyeliner and a mop of jet-black hair, Robert Smith is still finding new ways to pull his music apart and stitch it back together. This new remix collection i assembled and curated by Smith himself i feels less like a victory lap and more like a restless dissection of a legacy he's still actively shaping. The collaborators here are hardly incidental: Four Tet, Orbital, Ame, Chino Moreno, Mura Masa, Trentemoller, Mogwai. It reads like a list built by someone still hungrily tuned into the present, not stuck in the past. And true to form, the results are all over the place i a feature, not a flaw. Some tracks lean into grandeur: Paul Oakenfold's take on 'I Can Never Say Goodbye' opens with all the sweeping melodrama you'd expect, while Daybreakers stretch 'WarSong' into widescreen synthwork. Elsewhere, Shanti Celeste and Ex-Easter Island Head bring a strange intimacy to 'Alone', teasing out its ache with a different kind of spaciousness. At times, you wonder if Smith enjoys seeing how far his work can be bent before it breaks. But it never does i even filtered through others' hands, his sense of tension, drama and deep emotional unease holds everything together.