RAC - Volume 2
- ️http://www.slothboogie.com/author/admin/
- ️Tue Mar 01 2011
When it comes to remixing theres not much better than the Remix Artist Collective or RAC for short…
Having dominated the blogosphere for a very long time and releasing various volumes of their work, its nearly time to dig in to their latest offering of volume 2.0 on Friday.
We got in touch with one of the RAC guys a while back to get a look into how the set up works. Meet Andrew Maury who joined Andre Anjos under the RAC banner around 3 years ago.
“When I first heard an RAC remix, I was a senior in college at Syracuse University in 2007. Over the college years, I had become acquainted with a band by the name of Ra Ra Riot (who formed at Syracuse and took campus by storm). Since their graduation in ’06, they started touring and really kicking ass in the indie rock scene.
I heard a remix of their track “Each Year” … with the tag (RAC Mix). Having little knowledge of remixes in general, or who the hell did them, I could not get enough of this thing. I looked up “RAC Mix” and discovered that a guy named André Anjos was behind it. He had also done remixes for Bloc Party, The Shins, and a couple other sweet bands. I immediately took interest in the idea of merging indie rock and this pseudo-dancy, lo-fi, grimy, playful electronic sound that André was pioneering. Fresh sounds aside, the best thing about them was that André had formed new compositions around the songs and brought out a new animal in them. It was as if he rewrote the song, but maintained the spirit of the original. And in many cases, improved it.
Fast forward a few months, I was starting to make my own remixes, chatting with André online and making a little portfolio of my own. After a while, we decided to team up, and I was an official member of RAC. I’ve been lucky to be a part of the ride for about 3 years now, receiving emails from dozens of bands around the world requesting remixes from me.
Despite my compartmentalized work as a remix artist in RAC… the inspiration is actually entirely driven by both rock music and my initial fascination in André’s work. Perhaps also a few artists like Justice and Dntel. I never, ever listen to dance music. I grew up as a guitarist loving rock and loving playing in a band. I played in bands all through my teen years and really developed a sense for how a composition and performance are executed. The funny thing is that I don’t claim to be a “songwriter” by any means. In fact, I’ve never actually written a song start to finish. It’s a strange phenomena because I feel like I really understand a great composition. This is why working as an engineer/producer and remixer really gets me going. I’m able to step into the process where songs have already been written and impart what I think I do best: detail. Producing, mixing, and working as a freelance recording engineer are now at the helm of my ambitions. But I can’t begin to imagine where I’d be if I hadn’t been in the trenches working on these remixes. And they continue to open doors.”
The new RAC Volume 2 collection that is currently dropping track by track around the blogosphere will be fully unveiled on the RAC Soundcloud on Friday. As a bit of hype Andrew very generously put together a playlist of tracks that seem to encapsulate a lot of moods and styles that he draws from when making a remix.