IDK, I think the genie has been out of the bottle for a while now on remaking music - with it mainly being a digital form now for most of the audience, the democratization and easy availability of digital editing tools, and internet culture being what it is, it's definitely going to happen and often more extremely. The good news is it's generally done by passionate fans who are engaged and excited by the work (that's who is going to put in the effort and want to share it), but I also get the questionable nature and ambiguity of it.
I also see it as an extension of mixtape/playlists/DJ-culture (which Underworld is a huge part of), with DJ's making their own edits/selections/remixes. Autechre famously started out in the 80's by making pause-button edits at home to "tighten-up" (as they said) their favorite tracks to play to friends, which led to deeper remixing, then inserting their own compositions in their mixtapes and later DJ sets. The electro culture lent itself to this, but it also just happened anyway by people finding their own means and stepping up. Autechre are about to drop a new collection of live sets in place of an album (their words) and some fans will soon be chopping them up and enjoying that as well.
I know for myself it's something I really enjoy both the process of and end results of, and is something I probably can't turn off easily. I don't really consider myself a musician, but as a music producer I've done a ton of editing of my friends' work and collaborate mainly by suggesting or physically making edits (and I have written a few albums worth of tracks solo, but they've still mainly felt like editing as well). I'm a creative director in my day job, so spend the day recommending, deciding or physically making edits to other designer's work. And as an avid collector, I really love curation, which sometimes extends beyond the initial object into related items, and making decisions about fit and relevancy.
I think I have probably remade about 1/4 of my favorite albums, generally just dropping tracks, re-sequencing for better flow, and/or occasionally pulling in b-sides from same sessions to replace tracks when seems to fit better. Already re-sequenced the new Pixies album which also dropped yesterday to give it more energy upfront (and does our loose cultural/narrative preference for energy to kick things off and quiet/beautiful/slower endings stem actually from the limitations of vinyl, which preferred denser more bombastic songs physically be placed first and quiet songs last on the more limited inner bands, or is it more inherently intrinsic?) Is the album version definitive or the single edit that more people will probably hear and know? Or the live version that gets refined and settles more into itself sometimes from the comparatively early on album one?
I don't participate in any other online communities, so please forgive the occasional diatribes, but obviously something important to me that I care and think a lot about. I have totally redone Drift
as I shared here, but other than that, for the albums, I've only adjusted Barking by replacing Diamond Jigsaw with Downpipe and dropping Louisiana (which really makes the whole thing quite a stomper). I've been there for every new release since Second Toughest and love the surprises (and still love most of SH), but I'd be lying if I didn't take stock of it feeling and fitting oddly different this time. IDK, still very exciting overall.