TOKiMONSTA is one of the mainstays of the Los Angeles beat scene at this point, starting her career over ten years ago. Just last year, she released her fifth solo album, Lune Rouge. Now, about six months later, we get the remix album to revisit the material.

There are a lot of different reasons to drop a remix album, whether it be a genuine interest from producers to reinterpret the material, or maybe just as a filler to keep fans engaged as your work on your next project. Listening to Lune Rouge Remixed, I have to wonder if there’s another option to consider, because this sounds like a release that wants to secure those nice sync rights for TOKiMONSTA. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, acts do this all the time now, so I’m not going to go after TOKiMONSTA for doing what everyone else in L.A. is doing. However, I should also be up front that I didn’t care much for Lune Rouge when it was released last year. After getting excited in 2014 and 2015, when she released Desiderium and You’re Invited, I’ve been largely unimpressed with her output since then. It hasn’t been bad, but it hasn’t been all that interesting or unique, either. So when I listen to Lune Rouge Remixed, I hear an album that I thought was kind of boring getting remixed in a way that sounds like it would sound good in the background of a show like Insecure or You’re the Worst. There are plenty of names involved, with everyone from Joey Purp to Dam Funk adding their contributions, but nobody sounds especially inspired. It just all sounds incredibly generic, which is where I’m having trouble getting my interest up.

Remix albums can be a lot of fun when done right, but you need a lot of factors to line up. When the source material isn’t that exciting, it’s going to take a lot of effort to transform it into something interesting. Unfortunately, all of these remixes just sound like something that would sound pleasant in the background.