The Cure
Mixed Up Deluxe Edition-Torn Down/Mixed Up Extra

At first, Robert Smith considered collaborating with bands he had always loved, such as Cranes, My Bloody Valentine, Mogwai, Nine Inch Nails, etc., for a new remix album for the Deluxe version of Mixed Up (... and, I swear, I never would have imagined a Deluxe of that 1990 album—at the time only listened to out of curiosity, but immediately dismissed in favor of the great single Never Enough/Harold and Joe). Then, by remixing "Three Imaginary Boys" himself and captivated by that creative process, he decides to continue down that path, leading him to add, in addition to the reissue of a double Mixed Up (with the 1990 Mixed Up album and another collection of Remixes 1982-1990), the very precious Torn Down: Mixed Up Extras 2018, a third Remix album of the most beloved tracks. Now, it makes quite an impression to scroll through the titles:

1. Three Imaginary Boys- Help Me Mix by Robert Smith
2. M- Attack Mix by Robert Smith
3. The Drowning Man- Bright Birds Mix by Robert Smith
4. A Strange Day- Drowning Waves Mix by Robert Smith
5. Just One Kiss- Remember Mix by Robert Smith
6. Shake Dog Shake- New Blood Mix by Robert Smith
7. A Night Like This- Hello Goodbye Mix by Robert Smith
8. Like Cockatoos- Lonely In The Rain Mix by Robert Smith
9. Plainsong- Edge Of The World Mix by Robert Smith
10. Never Enough- Time To Kill Mix by Robert Smith
11. From The Edge Of The Deep Green Sea- Love In Vain Mix by Robert Smith
12. Want- Time Mix by Robert Smith
13. The Last Day of Summer- 31 August Mix by Robert Smith
14. Cut Here- If Only Mix by Robert Smith
15. Lost- Found Mix by Robert Smith
16. It’s Over- Whisper Mix by Robert Smith

My first doubt was: how can you remix "The Drowning Man"???

Anyway, listening to this Torn Down, precisely because it opens up abyssal spaces of personal memory, can make some people wrinkle their noses at the final product, but according to Robert Smith, all dogmas imposed by our emotions on some masterpieces that we as fans consider untouchable must be shattered (as far as I'm concerned, "Three Imaginary Boys- Help Me Mix" is the least successful, while there are other very beautiful tracks worth listening to). For this reason, we prefer not to describe anything about Torn Down; we exercise an epoché, to leave everyone with their own unique and original phenomenology!

Sure, someone will say: for the forty years of The Cure, not even a shadow of a new album of originals? But here lies the creative drama that has been dragging on for some time for Robert Smith (already present in Wild Mood Swing from 1996 up to the insipid 4:13 Dream in 2008). Also curious was the painful decision to close the discography of The Cure for Fiction Records after the double DVD Trilogy- Live In Berlin (2003), stating that the album Bloodflowers (2000) concluded, worthily but definitively, the era of the seminal productions of the group; however, it is recent news that he has resumed writing and working in the studio for some interesting (others less) demos, announcing the release of a new album for 2019 (..and about time, "dear Robert," to hear an album with the now super-experienced Reeves Gabrels, who deserves it...). And if Robert Smith's creative crises don't move the unbreakable love of millions of fans worldwide by a single millimeter, I want to emphasize a fact that emerges from listening to the triple Mixed Up- Deluxe Edition, (published in conjunction with the celebrations for the 40-year career (the Meltdown Festival and the upcoming concert at Hyde Park).

From a quick glance at the tracks present in the three discs of the Deluxe, randomly, a large number of tracks from the 1983 collection Japanese Whispers emerge. But it’s not really random. Here we must remember a name: Chris Parry, Robert Smith's and his bandmates' record mentor until 2001; to whom we owe much of the support for The Cure's extraordinary global success. In fact, it was he (in addition to signing the English band, exactly forty years ago -1978, for his record label) who ferried and safeguarded the human destiny of a leader when after "Pornography" he seemed to be preparing for the worst (then Smith publicly declared he would kill himself before the age of 25). On the contrary, Parry's great insight provoked in Robert Smith's creative genius that change of direction towards shamelessly pop and dance sounds (The Love Cats, Let’s Go to Bed, The Walk), absent and unimaginable in the band's compositional writing before 1983 (closer to Joy Division/Buzzcocks). In this way, Robert Smith, beyond the Cure-canon, developed (and expanded), over the years, his specific pop attitude, adding a bit of everything (and more): from jazz flirtations to quirky use of brass, from references to Bowie's Young Americans, to flamenco (The Blood) or even to waltz (The 13th). Therefore, the gamble on pop, if only to give at least a sequel to the history of The Cure (instead of vanishing into an impossible thematic continuation of "Pornography"), was, ultimately, more than providential.

From that fateful crossroads, Robert Smith had no more escape: he consolidates as an indisputable existentialist dark icon, upheaves the lives of generations of fans, provokes in the collective imagination an unprecedented solidification of The Cure's sound for an indie band, the very one that has managed to look beyond the dark seductions of a sound all entangled in the psychotic dark rage, of which they will always be unparalleled masters.