I have a lot of appreciation for RAC, or Remix Artists Collected, or Andre and friends, or whatever you want to call that magical sound. He released a ton of remixes over a few years and collected those into Chapter One, a massive collection of his tasty takes on some great pieces. Since then he’s gone on to release a debut album of original work, Strangers, in 2014, the original soundtrack to the game Master Spy, a slew of supplementary remixes and was on a roughly single-a-month schedule as well as touring for a portion of 2015. Speaking of, I had the amazing pleasure of seeing Filous, Karl Kling (part of ‘Andre friends’), Big Data, and RAC at the Ogden in November and I highly recommend their live show. The main producer of the group is Andre but in the live show he plays guitar, and wonderfully too, while Karl Kling and Speak trade off an amazing vocal set. Sadly Pink Feathers started to lose her voice during the show but for the tail end of the set on Let Go, the crowd knew virtually the whole song and sang it from the rooftops. Speak was even a little jealous and asked for some similar help from the audience, Colorado can be a bit hard on vocalists because of the altitude. They seemed to have a fantastic time and the energy was fantastic Anyway about Concrete Wall, it’s so smooth. In the original, Zee Avi visualizes a vivid breakdown of a relationship in the most vocally sweet way I could ever imagine. RAC really just adds some more comprehensive instrumentation to it, with an extremely in rhythm bass and drums and god the almost slaphappy guitar sound compliments the bounce of the “boom she-clack-clack” so perfectly. Finally the touches of the deeper synth adds some appreciated movement to the song in general, and the windup before each chorus makes the shoe hit the wall like a wrecking ball. I’m not always down to listen to it because of it’s imagery and tone, but the song captures what it wants to so nicely.

TL;DR Listen to RAC’s Chapter One and check out his newer work, they’re instrumentally wonderful and he always picks the best source material and vocalists.

-A