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E-Mix: André Anjos and the Remix Artist Collective leverage initiative, ingenuity and the Internet into an online music force

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Anjos isn't concerned about the potential legal consequences of posting these tracks; of the mini-mixes, he says, "I'm thinking of it more like a radio-station feel. My Web site is kind of like my station: I'm just playing some of the songs I like." And if people did object to anything he posts? Anjos says no one ever has, but if they did he'd "immediately take it down." In fact, opposition to his interpretation of "Baba O'Riley" was more aesthetic than ethical.

"A lot of people were like, 'That's blasphemy! The Who would never want this!'" he says. "It was really funny. It was like, 'I'm doing this for fun! I'm not making any grand statement.'"

At the same time, he's not shy about being proactive. When he felt the RAC's remix of Tegan and Sara's "Back in Your Head" wasn't getting the promotional push it deserved, he "took matters into my own hands" and e-mailed it out to blogs himself — though he adds that he sought approval from the band before doing so.

Anjos first contacted Tokyo Police Club about doing a remix in December 2006. Back then the quartet had only sold a few thousand copies of its A Lesson in Crime EP and didn't have money to spare for remixes. (Says band manager Rich Cohen: "The fact that anyone would want to remix them seemed really cool.") But Anjos' reworkings of the band's songs struck a chord.

"So many remixes, they zoom in on one aspect of the song and you've got a really one-dimensional remix," says vocalist/bassist Dave Monks. "Or they'll simply rearrange a song, and you just kind of get a different version. But he seems to, like, take the elements of the song and rewrite something entirely different with them. His remixes are a totally new entity, a totally new piece of work."

When the group's profile did elevate — Elephant Shell, Tokyo Police Club's debut album, is set for April release on the well-regarded indie label Saddle Creek — Anjos' goodwill and talent were rewarded. Paper Bag, the label that released the band's EP, Smith, retroactively paid him for its use of "Be Good." He'll also be compensated when his recent remix of Elephant Shell's "Sixties Remake" sees the light of day.

"I feel like you can't really turn your back on people who helped you," Cohen says. "He's done these remixes for us for little to no money. In a managerial sense, I totally appreciate and want to do it and try to get him work. But I also have tried to explain to him after he's given us our remixes for no money that he should start charging people for remixing. It's a livelihood. And when you're talented, you deserve to get paid for talent. Once people start seeking you out, you have to start getting paid for your work."

This dues-paying has begun to reap dividends. Entourage's Scott Vener first noticed the RAC's Shins remix posted online. After visiting the collective's Web site, he struck up a relationship with Anjos when he saw the latter's impressive résumé. That résumé was enhanced when a snippet of "Be Good" appeared in an Entourage episode called "The Day Fu*kers."

"You have all these sort of indie artists that were considered the A-list indie bands that were lending their material to him to remix," says Vener. "You could tell he was, like, the musician's musician."

Like many kids, Anjos took piano lessons. And like many kids, he hated them. He was more enthusiastic about guitar, which he picked up in his early teens.

"I begged my parents. I wanted one of those fake guitars you buy at Wal-Mart, with the buttons and stuff," Anjos recounts. "They bring me this classical guitar and I'm like, 'What the heck?' But it got me started playing."

He proceeded to take three years of lessons from a bossa nova expert — "This 50-year-old Brazilian guy" — but he never studied music theory and considers himself self-taught.

"My approach to music doesn't make sense to anybody I know," says Anjos. "If I play a chord, I know what it is. But if I do anything more complicated, I have no clue what I'm doing; I'm just playing music. I can hear everything in my head, but I don't know how to write that down, I don't know how to tell anybody how to play it."

That quality shows in Anjos' remixes. His methodology is akin to that of a musician writing and arranging for a band. He isn't afraid to construct new melodies or use nontraditional instruments. He'll employ fluttery riffs played on a Brazilian guitar, the cavaquinho, or have his fiancée add vocal flourishes if he thinks they'll enhance a song. He's also always on the lookout for unorthodox gear; one of his latest scores was a reel-to-reel tape machine he liberated from Greenville's radio station for $75.

"Where most remixes are meant for a dance floor, the remixes that I do are more oriented towards a music lover, somebody that really enjoys a band and wants to hear the song in a different way, instead of just hearing a dance beat behind it," Anjos says. "That's what our goals are."

Though he has a slate of bands on the horizon — including up-and-comers Dead Kids and Jukebox the Ghost, and (he hopes) current buzz band Vampire Weekend — the RAC hasn't quite gotten to where Anjos wants it to be. In the future he'd like the remixing to be spread out more equally among him, Crookram and Jasinski. (Both say they're open to more work.) And he has always wanted to produce other artists; he says a few major labels have approached him, though nothing has come of that yet.

Like his remix work, Anjos considers the prospect of producing "fun."

The bands he has worked with can see why. "One time he actually sent me a bunch of his remixes, and I was having a party," says Ra Ra Riot's Roth. "All of them are just so upbeat that I was able to put that on repeat all night, because they're all so danceable and just fun."

"Whenever we talk about bands, he'll get so excited about a song. He'll talk about it in a way that I don't even necessarily understand, I just can appreciate that. You can just tell he loves doing what he does, and is thinking of new ways of working on people's music."

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