Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

RAC Takes the Show on the Road

Over the past few years, RAC has been creating some of the most notable and respected remixes of hits in the indie music genre.

RAC, short for Remix Artist Collective, was originally created between a few friends as a way to play remixes of their favorite songs, but not as remixes in the usual sense. Rather than focusing on taking these indie and rock songs and making them applicable for a club setting, RAC’s focus was to take them and expand upon the style and reinterpret in them in all new ways. The results over the past few years have been extraordinary.

As it stands now, Andre Allen Anjos, a founding member of RAC, is the most active member and responsible for most, if not all, of the releases. This month, he and a group of friends embarked on RAC’s first live tour, during which they played a collection of RAC’s most famous remixes live. A risky venture to be sure, but in the end, the pay off was worth it. The D.C. date at the Rock & Roll Hotel on November 15 was completely sold out. In fact, they managed to sell out almost every date on the tour.

MNDR opened for RAC and although singer Amanda Warner’s set started off shaky, she bounced back from a weaker beginning and was able to laugh it off throughout the rest of her performance. Although MNDR is a musical duo in which Warner and Peter Wade create the music, she performs alone and was able to command the attention of the entire audience. This was quite an impressive feat since all she had on stage with her was a Macbook. Despite this unusual lack of equipment, she got the crowd pumped for RAC and by the time the band hit the stage, the bottom floor of the hotel was packed.

Andre was joined on stage by Liz Anjos, Karl Kling and Jeffrey Jerusalem. The full band immediately launched into RAC’s Foster the People remix. The band performed most of the music for every song live while the vocals, if it wasn’t an original RAC song, were pre-recorded and provided by the original artist. The execution was extremely organized and well-run. The energy by all of the band members was infectious and everyone in the room was dancing throughout the performance.

The band’s live show was complemented by engrossing visuals. There was a screen behind the band that was synchronized in order to show something different for each song while a large strip of LED lights in the middle of the stage danced around to the beat. Both of these displays added a great artistic element to the performance.

For the encore, Liz sang a cover of “1979” and MNDR joined the band on stage for “Let Go,” one of the collective’s original songs and a great way to close out an amazing night of live music.

The entire idea to take RAC on a live tour with a full band and pre-recorded vocals of their remixes seems like a very odd thing to do. However, the group manages to pull it off and make it seem like the most natural idea – it’s hard to imagine why he didn’t decide to do this sooner. For the rest of the year Andre is scheduled for DJ sets, but hopefully in 2014 he will take the show on the road once again.

 

The entire idea to take RAC on a live tour with a full band and pre-recorded vocals of their remixes seems like a very odd thing to do. However, the group manages to pull it off and make it seem like the most natural idea – it’s hard to imagine why he didn’t decide to do this sooner. 

 

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