Enter Shikari - The Mindsweep:Hospitalised Album Review

After the success of Enter Shikari’s latest album release The Mindsweep you’d have thought that they couldn’t do any more to such a brilliant album. But we were wrong.

With the announcement of The Mindsweep: Hospitalised, a drum & bass remix of The Mindsweep created through a collaboration between Enter Shikari and Hospital Records, a brand new love child was born.

Enter Shikari have always been big on remixing tracks and having B-sides. Because of the variety within The Mindsweep, which is heavy on the electronics as it is, a drum & bass remix of the whole album was always going to be an interesting, but clever move.

With the exact same track listing, but with the addition of some of the most talented d’n’b artists of today, such as Metrik, Keeno, Reso, London Elektricity, Danny Byrd and many more, the reimagining of The Mindsweep gives it a whole new ferocity.

The Appeal & The Mindsweep (Metrik remix) radiates a whole new electronic pulse through the opening track. Coupled with the vicious vocals of Rou Reynolds, a sense of urgency that the original track didn’t have is created. It’s still angry, it’s still powerful, but the remix brings the song to a whole new level of darkness.

The One True Colour (Keeno Remix) opens with an almost relaxing drum beat. It calms us down as we recover from the anger of the opening track. With its melodic sounds, the track overcomes any difficulties in projection of meaning that it may have had when first released.

Myopia retains its simplicity from the original album, especially during the opening of the song. And when the drop hits, you can’t help but to be absorbed into the waves of sound. The screams mixed with the drum & bass sounds mean the remix is mesmerising and sends the listener into some sort of trance.

Interlude is no longer the recognisable instrumental that it once was. The drum beat makes head nodding and toe tapping almost compulsory and with a new set of vocal overlay, the track is not something we expected.

It’s worth noting that The Mindsweep: Hospitalised isn’t full of relentless energy that you would expect from d’n’b artists. Whilst the likes of Danny Byrd gives us the energy we’re used to hearing, other artists such as London Elektricity is happy to hold back and let things cool down with his remix of Dear Future Historians. Every aspect of the d’n’b genre is infused into the album, and the array of artists that feature show how thought-out it really is.

Rou Reynold’s vocals contort their way around every beat that they are saturated with, and although the oppositional elements of rock music and drum & bass rarely come together, Enter Shikari have shown just how well they can work. It is a welcome breath of fresh air to both genres, and has opened up a whole new world of revitalised rock.

Track Listing
1. The Appeal & The Mindsweep I – Metrik remix
2. The One True Colour – Keeno remix
3. Anaesthetist – Reso remix
4. The Last Garrison – S.P.Y remix
5. Never Let Go Of The Microscope – Etherwood remix
6. Myopia – Bop remix
7. Torn Apart – Hugh Hardie remix
8. Interlude – The Erised remix
9. The Bank Of England – Lynx remix
10. There's A Price On Your Head – Danny Byrd remix
11. Dear Future Historians – London Elektricity remix
12. The Appeal & The Mindsweep II – Krakota remix