Recharged
Artist: Linkin Park
Year Released: 2013
Rating: 2.5/5
I picked up Linkin Park’s second official remix album, Recharged, on my way home from Los Angeles recently. I am a Linkin Park fan (have grown less so since the horrible Rick Rubin got involved in their process) but was unaware this album had ever been released, so I was quite shocked when I saw it on the shelf of some random Best Buy in the SoCal desert. I was excited to pop it into my cd player for the rest of the 5 hour drive home.
Man, was I surprised by what I heard on this cd. Don’t get me wrong, it isn’t horrible and there are actually some pretty solid tracks on the collection, but it is not the LP I was expecting to hear. With a selection of DJs remixing more recent tracks from Linkin Park, this cd sounds more like over produced music that once held the promise of being good being re-produced with the goal of removing all genuine music from each track until all that is left is some beat that can be danced to in the club.
If that was the goal, they did a great job of achieving it. Tracks #3 (Lost In The Echo [Killsonik Remix]) and #5 (I’Ll Be Gone (Vice Remix) [Feat. Pusha T]) in particular are favorites of mine. They have a really great sound that compliments both Chester and Mike’s voices. The rest of the cd is fun for a few listens but for any long time or hard core LP fans, this is not the album to pick up.
My only hope in hearing this album was that maybe this satisfies Linkin Park’s commitment to Warner Brothers and they can ditch them and the hack Rick Rubin and get back to the truly experimental sound that they emerged with, you know the music that wasn’t created on an Apple device but was recorded in a studio with instruments and human beings.