February 17, 2011
Instruments – Assembly Room
- by 319
The new Instruments album is a really dope co-production with some of Endemik’s favorite producers who remixed tracks from Instruments’ earlier works. Graematter, Ango, Deadly Stare, K-the-I???, P-Love, Mattr, Edison, Masashi of 8th Wonder, Jayrope, Speed Dial 7, FRKSE, and Modulator (Stigg of the Dump) all take their turn at re-interpreting Instruments’ rock.
In 2006 Scott Da Ros from Endemik Music contacted us about recording a remix of a track for the Japanese release of Skyrider’s “47:34”. With mostly live instrumentation, our “remix” came off more like a cover version, but the process piqued our interest, and we soon found ourselves with some similar projects on our plate, collaborating with American rapper Bleubird, and remixing a second track, this time for Berlin’s Prinzenallee. We were starting to enjoy this process of reverse-engineering songs built from samples and electronics, and recreating them through our rock band filter – and we started to wonder how the same thing would work in reverse. Could our songs be re-interpreted electronically? Apparently Scott had been thinking the same thing, as in 2009 he proposed a full length release of our songs remixed, and proceeded to assemble an all-star cast of avant garde beatsmiths from around the world. So here we are in 2011 with 12 remixers representing 6 countries, all of whom took our tracks to places far beyond what we could have imagined. Many thanks go out to all the artists who contributed – there’s a lot of novel thought in the room. Double thanks to Scott Da Ros for making this happen for the sheer love of music. To exhume an old MOTES liner note, “The individuals involved received no payment for their efforts and in most cases everyone was damn near killed”. We hope to return the favour someday.
Best,
– J.
