New releases last two weeks: Indie/Alternative

Review: Robert Smith has always treated remixing less like revision, more like ritual i a habit that's followed him since his days in Crawley, West Sussex and then surfacing officially on the first Cure remix album, 1990's Mixed Up. This triple-disc release of reworkings from the band's latest LP Songs of a Lost World feels assembled with obsessive care, mapping out every possible mood lurking beneath the surface. There are club-ready flips, yes i Sally C, Danny Briottet and Gregor Tresher all push the rhythm forward i but they sit beside glacial pieces that feel more like haunted sketches than reworks. Mura Masa's take on 'All I Ever Am' is disintegrated almost beyond recognition, its vocal a flickering memory. Mogwai's 'Endsong' feels like the end of the world in slow motion. Even Chino Moreno turns in something striking i 'WarSong' morphs into a sludgy howl with heat-warped edges. But it's the sequencing that surprises: these aren't bolted together, but grouped in arcs, as though Smith were arranging the bones of an old idea into something still alive. Four Tet's version of 'Alone' is a high point i deeply textured but featherlight. Like all The Cure's output, what really matters is the feeling of being drawn somewhere, and Smith's hand never letting go.

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.

Review: The Cure's live albums has always been a generous collection, and perhaps it pinnacled with the ruinous film shot in the depths of southern France, Live In Orange. But this double-disc set of live radio recordings from 2005 and 2008, capturing the band in two late-period phases, hears them in a rawer, prenatal stage. Though often folded into goth rock, the band has always hovered just outside the lines, blending post-punk moodiness with pop precision and sonic excess. In the dusty wake of their most recent album, Songs Of A Lost World, these sessions pull from across their catalogue, from the shimmer of 'Plainsong' and 'Just Like Heaven' to the frayed aggression of 'Shake Dog Shake', 'Disintegration' and 'Us Or Them', all still burning with drama.

Review: As they prepare to squabble, rock out and reprise their infamously hooky riffs at a series of sold-out reunion shows, Oasis have decided to reissue their official best-off collection, 2010's Time Flies...1994-2009. Now presented in remastered, souped-up form, the two-disc set showcases all 27 of their UK singles (including non-album cuts 'Whatever' and 'Lord Don't Slow Me Down') as well as a hidden bonus track ('Sunday Morning Call', which appears two minutes after the final cut on disc two). While plenty of high points and fan favourites are missing, it does a great job in reminding us that Oasis were, at their very best, an iconic indie-rock band - as highlights such as 'Supersonic', 'Cigarettes & Alcohol', 'Some Might Say' and the epic 'All Around The World' emphatically prove.