Avalon
Remixed
Sparrow
Remix discs are usually a hit-and-miss affair – for each genuinely good new version of a track, there are a dozen edited, already-released or just plain bad excuses for songs. Take this concept and transplant it in the heart of an inspirational Christian group, and you have a recipe for disaster, especially when I’m the one assessing it. I don’t have anything against Christian music per se, but the words formulaic and bland are always close at hand.
To be fair, I’ll focus on the music and leave my religious prejudice aside. (But really, can I help it if I was brought up in strongly Christian schools that have forever seen pain and suffering associated with Jesus in my mind?) The remixes here are bright, glossy and boring – most of them feel like rejected cuts from 1995. There’s some funky R’n’B, lots of Euro-dance – the biggest name here, DJ Tiesto, delivers a remix sounding exactly he wants to be Chicane (in Chicane’s lowest moments). It’s not pretty.
If I was being harsh, I’d say this disc was utter crap. If you like big, inspirational dance with a Biblical twist, though, you might well enjoy this. But even if this disc was released by a group comprised of Satanists and Atheists, I’d still dislike it a great deal.
