MAY 14 | NAUTICAL BY NATURE BOAT PARTY | SAN FRANCISCO
Remixers to indie luminaries such as Washed Out, Phoenix,Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Death Cab for Cutie, RAC -- short for Remix Artist Collective -- is the brainchild of producer/multi-instrumentalist André Allen Anjos. Born and raised in Portugal, Anjos studied piano and guitar, and in his teens performed with the pop/rock band Believe. He continued his studies in the States, studying music business at Illinois' Greenville College, before settling in Portland, Oregon. Frustrated with the quality of remixes dominating the scene in the mid-2000s, Anjos founded RAC with the help of Seattle's and Netherlands-based remixer Chris Crookram Angelovski; later additions to the collective included Andrew Maury, a remixer/producer/engineer out of Brooklyn, and Portland's Karl Kling, with whom Anjos founded the electro-rock band the Pragmatic. RAC cultivated a distinctive approach to remixing, opting for reinventing artists' songs instead of grafting dance beats on them. This style was evident from the collective's first official remix, a reworking of the Shins' "Sleeping Lessons," which the group included as the B-side of a U.K. single. From there, RAC worked with Surfer Blood, Foster the People, and Bloc Party, among others, and in 2008 the music website Stereogum released a collection of Anjos and company's work to date. That year also saw the release of their first EP, Nintendo vs. Sega. Anjos began releasing original RAC songs in 2012, when the single "Hollywood" -- which featured Penguin Prison's Chris Glover -- arrived in the summer of that year. After signing to Cherrytree Records, in October 2013 RAC released the Don't Talk To EP, which included "Hollywood" and "Let Go," a collaboration with MNDR and Bloc Party's Kele. Featuring collaborations with Tokyo Police Club and Tegan and Sara, RAC's debut album, Strangers, was initially released as two EPs early in 2014; it arrived as a full-length that April.
