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It's the Remix :: Once created by millionaire producers to be spun by superstar DJs, the remix—thanks to studio and performance software—is now in the hands of amateur beat-heads everywhere. But is it a victory for the music or just fodder for the masses?

By Andrew Parks   Photography by Ashkahn

08/27/07 :: URB 149

Pedro Winter is pissed. And with good reason. Justice’s schoolyard disco jam, “D.A.N.C.E.”—one of the most promising singles on Winter’s Ed Banger imprint—is floating around the Internet in the form of unofficial remixes and lo-fi-as-fuck edits. You’d think this would be a good thing, a case of organic buzz setting blogs ablaze with various versions of that hot new Justice track. And to some degree it is. Except for one problem: All these D.I.Y. bootlegs are overshadowing the actual single—a Vice Recordsbacked 12-inch, featuring authorized remixes from Alan Braxe, MSTRKRFT and Justice itself.
    
“2007 is all about having anything anytime, which [record label owners] can’t do anything about,” admits Winter. “[Bootlegs] allow kids to try and show their skills; they can do poor remixes, drop a killer beat and suddenly become a ‘great artist.’ I love hearing low-tech remixes, but none of the unofficial Justice remixes were good.”
    
He’s half right. Although most of Middle America’s “D.A.N.C.E.” edits leave something to be desired (a grating, and at times god-awful, Jigga/Justice mashup; a stuttering “Plus Move Pirate Remix”); some are white-label-worthy, from seriously coked-out, zero-hour edits (Charlie Fanclub; Ed Ward B Dark) to a bass-in-your-face treatment from ghetto-tech don Tittsworth. All of which have ended up on Vice Records’ official MP3 blog thanks to the Web-scouring efforts of label manager Adam Shore.
    
“Some labels might want to shut these songs down because they’re unofficial and violate the publishing rights of the artist,” says Shore, “but I thought we could do the opposite: shine a magnifying glass on all of it so everyone sees it. We’re living in an age where music distribution is completely decentralized. It costs a lot of money to turn a bootleg into a white label and nothing to put it on MySpace or a blog.”
    
Because of this free-market mentality, MP3 blogs have been flooded with unofficial remixes lately, so much so that custom edits have become the expected rather than the exception, whether you’ve been DJing for a decade or just bought Serato last week.  “It’s funny,” says five-time world champion and Kanye West’s touring DJ, A-Trak, who recently launched his own label (Fool’s Gold) with noted blogger Nick Catchdubs. “When you look at people’s playlists from this party scene, everything is a remix or an edit. There’s this weird appeal of everyone wanting something that’s a little bit flipped.”

THE REAL THING
In true ADD fashion—something our iPod/YouTube/MySpace era demands—many about-to-break DJs have already dumped “D.A.N.C.E.” and moved on to mangling other Justice songs, jams such as the Uffie-supported album cut, “The Party,” which the DJ/production duo LA Riots recently turned into a club-friendly Internet sensation so fresh and new that Shore hasn’t even heard it yet.
    
“We were talking in the car on the way to a gig about how we could blow up the quickest,” admits Jo’B, who formed LA Riots with Daniel Ledisko this past March. “With the Justice album about to come out, we figured we’d try to guess the next big single and be the first to remix it. ‘The Party’ seemed like that tune to us, and the plan worked.”
    
One of the reasons it worked—and why the duo’s been offered a distribution deal and legit remixes for Photek, Jupiter One and The Cure—is that LA Riots’ Justice remix was built from a “good quality MP3,” not some radio rip or 128K file. Unfortunately, some blogs have posted a lo-fi version of the track without realizing it or caring about the crap they’re undoubtedly spreading.