Disney would lead you to believe that the remixed Daft Punk album “Tron: Legacy Reconfigured” actually involves Daft Punk, or sounds somewhat like the original soundtrack.
Oh, but what a silly assumption to make. After all, this is Disney.
The original “Tron: Legacy” soundtrack, composed by Daft Punk and released in 2010, was a hit with critics, who credited Daft Punk for its orchestral-mixed-with-synth score.
Daft Punk’s technopop style and musical artistry made the duo a perfect fit to write for the aesthetically attractive, futuristic movie.
In the same way Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails made the crossover to soundtrack with his composition for “The Social Network,” Daft Punk made its with “Tron: Legacy,” even if the movie itself was sort of a dud.
Disney decided to capitalize on the soundtrack’s success by creating a remix album.
But instead of enhancing the original score, various well-known and obscure electronic musicians took the structure, melodies, harmonies and overall feel from the original soundtrack and threw them out the window.
The result: a mish-mash of club-ready dance songs that are white noise compared to the originals.
The album on its own, when not compared to the original, isn’t completely awful — there are some catchy remixes that are perfect for the dance floor or for an intense workout.
The remix of “Derezzed” by the Glitch Mob is one of those songs. It keeps a lot of the original orchestration and composition, but it doesn’t do a whole lot with the song, other than slow it down.
But that’s really all they are.
They’re filler songs, whereas the original Daft Punk soundtrack actually highlights their compositional skills with engaging buildup and interesting song structure, with the help of the sweeping orchestral backdrop and creative use of electronic music.
Moby’s remix of the song “The Son of Flynn,” is one of the few songs that takes the original structure of the song and turns it into something musically interesting.
The rest of the songs on the album, however, overwhelm with their heavy beats on top of the Daft Punk original and call it a “remix.”
According to the L.A. Times, Daft Punk is “nonplussed” and totally uninvolved with this remix project, which is not much of a surprise.
But then again, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise Disney decided to capitalize on a remix album and it sucked — that much should have been expected.
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