During a chance meeting at a club night in 2013, then-unknown English producer Vegyn handed James Blake a USB containing some of his first tunes. Blake is reported to have later played those tunes on BBC Radio, kickstarting Vegyn’s career. Over the next few years, Vegyn contributed production to Frank Ocean’s Blonde and Endless albums and performed all over the world, but an apt full-circle moment arrived in late 2024 when pioneering French electronica duo Air sent their own debut album Moon Safari to Vegyn for a special remixed re-release.
Released in 1998, Moon Safari is widely regarded as a landmark moment in the development of French pop, unique at the time for selling far more units outside of the country than inside. Air’s dreamlike synths and downtempo vibe helped propel French music to a new global audience but, in Vegyn’s hands, the newly remixed Blue Moon Safari, becomes something a little darker.
If the original Moon Safari has “an early evening, dusk quality to it”, says Vegyn, then Blue Moon Safari “is more of a witching hour, 3am hallucinatory dream; or if you were trying to remember this album after suffering some sort of serious head trauma.” Indeed, in Vegyn’s iteration, the mood is much heavier – drums are pushed to the fore and, on “Sexy Boy”, the original’s groove-oriented bassline is replaced with menacing distortion. Where Moon Safari plods off into a warm horizon on the closing track “Le voyage de Pénélope”, Blue Moon Safari’s fading synths contain a sense of finality.
Suffice to say, Blue Moon Safari is a great remix album that has helped introduce new audiences to Air’s beloved original, but there’s more where that came from. Where many remix albums are little more than a label-driven attempt to extend a record’s shelf life, below, we spotlight ten remix albums that go above and beyond to breathe new life into an existing project.
Mad Professor’s dub reimagining of Massive Attack’s trip-hop debut Protection is the benchmark of a good remix album. The sound system legend tackles the original project without fear, leaving entire verses out and pushing reverb and delay to the brink of dissonance. But at its core, Massive Attack’s vision of a soulful electronic music future remains.
What’s more, this project also literally inspired Air’s decision to overhaul Moon Safari. “When we were younger, No Protection, the Mad Professor remix of Massive Attack’s album Protection, was un exemple of a cool thing to do,” says Air co-founder Nicolas Godin. “We asked another artist to try a dub remix of the album to match our original fantasy, and it was very hard to decide who to ask to remix the album, because we wanted a coherent listening experience – not a collection of remixes.” Eventually, the duo settled on Vegyn, and the rest is history.
Despite transplanting the late MF Doom’s acapellas onto original jazz-tinged Grip Grand production, this project feels as quintessentially Doom as you can get. The project leans heavily on snippets of old-school cartoons, telling an elaborate evil supervillain story that plays as central a role as Doom’s vocals themselves. It is firmly cemented in my own personal head-canon as part of the wider MF Doom universe. This isn’t just a great remix album, it’s one of hip-hop’s best deep cuts, period.
Thom Yorke’s voice contains a certain eeriness at the best of times, but these remixes of his solo debut The Eraser plunge right into the uncanny valley. Between UK dubstep producer The Bug’s apocalyptic remix of “Harrowdown Hill” and Burial’s trancelike remix of lead track “And It Rained All Night”, Thom Yorke’s experimental rock original is transplanted into a dark and gloomy soundscape of deep electronica.
Born in Chicago in the late 40s, poet and blues singer Gil Scott-Heron’s long and prolific career deserves endless respect. His deeply political lyrics, and his passionate polemic “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” in particular, were a key precursor to rap music. Four decades and one prison sentence later, his 2010 comeback album I’m New Here broke boundaries once again by incorporating elements of electronica and trip-hop.
It’s in this revolutionary spirit that British producer Jamie xx transplanted Scott-Heron’s timeless words onto deep and soulful garage and UK dubstep production. Guided by written correspondences between Jamie xx and Scott-Heron, the project is not least significant for arriving one month before Scott-Heron tragically passed. RIP!
More than just paying homage to a single classic album, Bexblu’s Wavy Volume 1 straight-up revived a whole culture that was nearly lost in the dusty corners of late 2000s YouTube. The project is organised around one key mission, and it executes it perfectly: transplanting classic grime freestyles onto overhauled, jazzy production. Wavy Volume 1 arrived as a crystallisation of the bubbling mellow grime movement, which is elsewhere being explored by the likes of Wize, Namesbliss, Kwollem and more. The genre is, above all, a testament to the legendary MCing of artists like Skepta, Wiley, JME and more whose verses are still managing to get parties started nigh-on two decades after they were first spat.
This full refix of Jennifer Lopez’ sophomore album J-Lo is no less than the fifth best-selling remix album of all time, behind the likes of Michael Jackson, The Beatles and Madonna. Where the original album was a slow and sexy pop record decorated with Latin rhythms, these remixes take J-Lo downtown with bass-heavy production and the support of rappers-of-the-moment Ja Rule and Fat Joe.
First things first, DJ Lucas isn’t a DJ, he’s a rapper. Secondly, this one is pushing the definition of remix album a little bit but, as you can probably tell, labels were never quite Lucas’ bag. Thirdly, listen to this project at your own peril – the DJ Lucas rabbit hole goes deep. DJ Lucas spearheaded Western Massachusetts’ Dark World Records cult phenomenon in the early 2010s, which produced such oddball rap-adjacent stars as Gods Wisdom and Morimoto, as well as his own distinct ‘art rap’ style, which revels in Lucas’ unlikely positioning as both a farm boy and a viral rap sensation.
This project pays homage to hip-hop’s long-running, copyright-defying mixtape culture, casting DJ Lucas’ one-of-a-kind rap lyrics over a range of iconic instrumentals, from Gorillaz’ “Feel Good Inc.” to Eminem’s “The Way I Am”. It’s a whirlwind but, at its centre, is a testament to Lucas’ own journey finding his feet as a rapper miles away from any established hip hop scene. He grew up listening to all of these rap classics out in the sticks, and, on some level, Farm Boy Chronicles II: Mysteries of the Bike Path represents Lucas staking his own claim to the genre, however different his upbringing might have been.
This project is mad… like really mad. Reconstructing their own critically-acclaimed debut I Love You Jennifer B from the ground up, English experimental duo Jockstrap push old samples into nearly unrecognisable territory on this remix project. Where the original project is a cohesive, if somewhat understated, art pop record, I<3UQTINVU is a multi-genre chimera, ranging all the way from spoken word to hyperpop to trap (literally, in that order). Tracks are overhauled to such a degree here that it’s hard to even call it a remix album anymore, but that’s what makes it one of the best.
Lady Gaga is the queen of a lot of things, including remix albums. Her third fully reworked project, Dawn of Chromatica, reinterprets the original Chromatica pop album through a kaleidoscope of globetrotting genres. There’s a hyperpop take on “911” featuring Charli xcx and A. G. Cook, a trap reimagining of “Plastic Girl” by Ashnikko, a deep club remix of the BLACKPINK-featured “Sour Candy” by Shygirl and Mura Masa, and more. Released over a decade and six albums after Lady Gaga’s initial debut, Dawn of Chromatica proved the superstar was still able to stay ahead of music trends.
I know Brat summer was so 2024, and that we’re all giggling to Skrillex and raving to Eusexua right now, but you just can’t deny how big of a moment Charli xcx’s Brat overhaul was. The production was completely reworked, the features were star-studded, and the lore surrounding moments like Charli and Lorde “working it out on the remix” are just too big to ignore. As the dust settles on Charli’s astronomic year and the trend cycle churns on, we’ll eventually be able to look back fondly on the cultural megalith that the 365 party girl created (plus, I still maintain that Ariana Grande’s feature was the best thing to come out of the Brat-verse – fight me).