(200+). Check them out here. It started with an ambitious goal to change the way things were remixed. Taking the focus away from danceabil- ity and attempting different and in- teresting arrangements. Some notable examples include: U2, Lady Ga Ga, Bob Marley, Ella Fitzgerald, Kings Of Leon, Katy Perry, The Shins, Bloc Party, Chromeo, Lana Del Rey, Two Door Cinema Club and many many more. Recently, Andr released two singles off an upcoming album coming out on Cherrytree / Interscope Records. "Let Go" features Kele (Bloc Party) and MNDR. "Hollywood" features Penguin Prison. WHAT? Remix Artist Collective rac RAC USED TO STAND FOR "REMIX ARTIST COLLECTIVE". THAT NAME DOESN'T MAKE MUCH SENSE ANYMORE. WHO CARES? C M Y CM MY CY CMY K TonNu_MagFINAL.pdf 1 8/5/14 12:31 PM andre anjos AGE: 27 HOMETOWN: Porto, Portugal CURRENT LOCATION: I actually just got back to Portland, which is where I live. I'm a little bit out of it but back home in rainy Portland. I was born in Portugal and spent most of my life thereI just moved here for col- lege and I've kind of been here ever since. I got married and all that. WHAT'S A COLLEGE KID TO DO? It was about 2007. I was at college and I had no idea what I was gonna do, like many people. I was kind of a studio nerdI really liked recordingand I kind of saw this opportunity where not many people were doing remixes for indie bands. I ended up spending almost six months emailing everybody, call- ing all these managers, and they were probably getting annoyed, because I didn't really have anything to my name. I was just some kid. I don't really know [what my pitch was]. [laughs] I actually should look that up at some point. I had a couple of bootleg remixes that I'd done of M.I.A. and Madonna, and I think I used that to kind of show what I could do. But I was practically beg- ging for it, I imagine. A MULTI-INSTRUMENTALIST: [I play] a little bit of every- thing, but I will say definitely I'm a guitar player. I grew up playing Nirvana and Weezer and stuff like that; I was into metal bands for a while when I was young [laughs]. I think the very first song [I learned to play] was "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana. I think that was the first guitar song. Or it was "Come As You Are." PICKING A SONG TO REMIX: It's kind of different now than it was in the beginning. Right now we're kind of in a position where people just ask us to remix a lot of stuff. At this point, most of it is just sifting through that and seeing what we like, or what makes sense. But in the beginning it was a lot more working with any band and trying to get the name out there as much as pos- sible. I have to like [the song]. That's like the ulti- mate test. [laughs] Musically, it's just if we like or not; there's not really that much thought put into it. It's where our taste lies I guess. DOES REMIXING RUIN A GOOD SONG? [laughs] I try not to think about that. For example, one of our bigger remixes was for Edward Sharpe; they have this song called "Home," and a lot of people are very attached to that original version. You worry about it a little bit but I try to block it out; I'm just doing what feels right. For the most part we haven't had too much of a backlash. [laughs] I kind of see [remixing] as putting a different perspec- tive on a song. The stuff that we remix, it's really song- oriented. It probably started with somebody with a guitar in a room and they wrote the song and then, it's changing up the arrangement, but keeping true to the original song. RELEASING AN ORIGINAL SINGLE: It just kind of got to a point where, with remixes I feel like we kind of hit a little bit of a wall. Not that that is a bad thing, but it forces you to get out and rethink things, maybe try some new stuff, and that's sort of where the idea came up. I feel like the remixes, there's a lot of original work in it under somebody else's vocal or something like that. It's not really perceived that way, of course, but that was a little bit of the reasoning why we wanted [to record] a single. DANCING SHOES: It's actually kind of funny because I really don't [like to dance]. I really like the music. I don't know if the fact that I don't really like to dance is the reason why I DJ. I like to be around that music, but it's just something I like listening to, and playing in front of people is also incredibly fun. Getting an immediate reaction you just don't get from posting tracks on the Internet. THE ALBUM: I started out writing it thinking it was going to be a dance album, something we could DJ with. It kind of turned out to be much more of aI wanna call it a pop album, but I wouldn't call it a top-40 pop album or any- thing. I feel like I really tried my best to write pop songs in their purest form and use the kind of arrange- ments that I've been doing with remixing; trying to apply the sound that we have, whatever it is, to pop-rock basi- cally. ABOUT: BY EMMA BROWN C M Y CM MY CY CMY K TonNu_MagFINAL.pdf 2 8/5/14 12:31 PM