Just when you thought the undead couldn’t uprise any harder… This week sees the long-awaited Resurrection of Zomboy.
Only the finest spirit handlers can find the Ouija function on their DAW, and they’ve all been called into bring the undead back from the undead. Zomboy – Resurrected features Dillon Francis, The Prototypes, Bro Safari, DC Breaks, MUST DIE!, Barely Alive, Twine, Far Too Loud and a whole bunch more.
“It’s just all my homies I wanted on the record,” grins Zomboy. “Luckily they all were able to do that. And they all instantly smashed it, which was fucking awesome.”
In a highly irregular twist, even Zomboy’s smashed it… On his own remix album! He’s bookended the compendium with two brand new originals – Back Once Again and Resurrected.
“They were new ideas that I had and didn’t know what to do with them,” he explains. “It’s nice to add them to the album so it’s not just a package of remixes but also some cool new stuff from me.”
Following Zomboy – Resurrected, the UK horror-bass connoisseur reveals he has loads more cool ideas in the pipeline, too… An entire album’s worth, no less.
“I’ve got a whole ton of different ideas. I could release an album right now if I wasn’t bothered about quality control!” laughs the man. “I’m still playing around with a lot of tempos and genres and having a lot of fun with that. But I’m looking for more vocalists to work with. Female singers, male singers, rappers… This new material I’ve got is begging for vocalists!”
Keep your eye out for that new material much later in the year. In the meantime, back to the re-rubs… These are Zomboy’s three golden rules to killer remixes.
Stay true to the original
“This aspect of remixing got lost a little in recent times, but staying true to the original is really important in my opinion. I think a good remix should carry, or at least hint at, the original ideas. Obviously there’s no right or wrong, but it’s nice to hear elements of the original. The clue is in the title – it’s remix, not an original production.”
A good remix can be translated into any type of genre
“But…. While I’m keen on hearing certain musical elements of the original – like chords or pads or a lead or vocal – the true sign of a really fucking good producer is one who can take a track and remix it into a whole other genre and still make sense of the original. See The Prototypes’ bootleg of LRAD as a fine example!”
Finally… It has to bang!
“I appreciate the shit out of experimental stuff but for me, personally, a good remix has to hit the dancefloor. And hit it hard. I want to play it out at the end of the day. So it needs to be energetic and really bump. This is a very personal requirement, obviously, but I love putting different versions of well-known tracks into my set… Especially if they’re versions of my own tracks!”
Zomboy’s Top 4 Remixes
Knife Party – LRAD (Prototypes Bootleg)
“Can I include bootlegs in this? Well I am anyway. This is a fine example of keeping the essence of a track but making it their own. This still kills it!”
Benny Benassi – Cinema (Skrillex Remix)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaIZ0mUJzr0
“I love what he did with this… He flipped a major-sounding, quite commercial record into something a lot darker and more dramatic. He totally changed the pitch and made it into a minor scale which was really interesting and creative. Plus it goes off to this day.”
Chainsmokers – #Selfie (Botnek Remix)
“I wasn’t really into the original. Actually I thought it was a trainwreck. But this remix? This remix is goddamn gnarly! Botnek killed it and I hammered it for a long, long time.”
Fedde Le Grand & DI-RECT – Where We Belong (Zomboy Remix)
“Sorry to be a bit self- indulgent but I’m throwing this in for good measure… This really kills it in my sets, which was one of my main points on killer remixes. Whenever I drop this it gets the crowd singing along, it gets them fist-pumping and it’s gnarly. I ticked the boxes I looked for in a remix anyway!”
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