When Radiohead released In Rainbows, an obscure hip-hop producer unleashed a critically celebrated unauthorized remix album called Rainydayz Remixes shortly after, free of charge. His name was Amp Live and the EP featured guest spots from Too $hort, MC Zumbi of Zion I, Chali2na of Jurassic 5, Codany Holiday, and Del The Funky Homosapien. A cease and desist order almost killed the project, but with the help of blogs and certain relevant cultural ouposts, the project saw the light of day finally as Oakland native Amp Live reached a settlement with Radiohead. You can still download the album free of charge on this web site, if you haven't heard it yet!
This brings us to today's topic, a track that Amp Live issued last spring is brought back into the spotlight due to an amazing remix EP launched yesterday on junodownload. Gary Is A Robot is a hip-hop club banger, with a auto-tuned poisoned chorus. But at least there's a vocoder the rest of the time. It's track infatuated with futurist ideals of spaceships and space travel, aptly reminding me of certain Brooklyn based Kapt10kurt productions. The track also features microphone interventions by MCs Micro Jaxson & Trackademicks. Needless to say the above isn't quite my cup to tea. However a brilliant set of remixes on this new EP rekindled my appreciation for epic scale eletro-house.
San Fransisco's Al Vellila's remix was the first track I listened to and after hearing the rest, it still sticks out as my favorite. It is a track that is ripe with Valérie collective throwback antics. But with MCs. Space age synths and 80s percussive fills carry the track until the galaxy shattering arpeggio comes to punch it up. A guaranteed dance-floor pleaser.
Other highlights include the James Curd remix, bringing a more downtempo approach to this track with an octave skipping bass line punctuated by a vibraphone maintained melody.
Web Site: www.zionicrew.com
Twitter: twitter.com/amplive
Release Date: November 10th 2009
Label: Child's Play
Purchase Link: Juno Download
Watch for Amp Live's solo debut sometime in 2010 called Murder at the Discotek.
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