Ryan Leahan’s album “spark” is a simple pop-rock album, with good writing and even better production. This album has a lot of incredible moments even from its intro song, ‘Photophobia,’ a five minute journey that despite its length does not feel repetitive at all. This is just one of many incredible moments of the project. This album in itself is worthy of some high praises, but this album came with a remix compilation too that truly brings a different experience to an already amazing album.

Photophobia, for example, gets revamped by artists underscores and kaixan into an electronic/dubstep inspired tune, and the track following that ‘Hibiscus’, goes from a simple folk song to a super orchestral cinematic tune remixed by dobi. Some of the remixes are simpler than this, with the remix of “Haunted” simply expanding on the previous production and adding two new verses from the remixers. Even with such a simple addition brings the song into a completely different and new light.

Perhaps one of the best remixes is grape milk’s edit of “call me a friend” (Bias? What’s that?), not entirely because a personal favorite artist remixed a song, but because of how completely different they took the song. Call me a friend is a simple and slow guitar ballad normally, but this artist works to turn it into more of an emotional piece using electronic synths and intense drums. It goes from a simple song to very complicated, but still keeps the slower and laid-back energy of the original song.

All in all, remix compilations of already existing albums can work to paint each song in a completely different and sometimes better way. I highly recommend listens to both projects.