Album Review: The Remixes, Vol. 1 by AraabMuzik

In dance music, ideas become cornerstones, cornerstones become rules, rules become clichés, clichés become memes-- and memes are made to be subverted. AraabMuzik is one of the unlikeliest crossover stars to jump from hip-hop production to festival-scale electronic bass music, and it's largely because he treats that latter genre in the context of the former. Albums like Electronic Dream and For Professional Use Only took an approach to beat-extending, break-isolating mixing that goes back four decades, and drew out some of the moodier, wilder elements of his source material using the oldest trick in the hip-hop book: repossessing the entire intent of a song by isolating one specific stretch of it.

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This hip-hop-producer-turned-EDM-festival star operates under two guises. Live, he's a bombastic dervish; on record, he's mesmerizing, either glazing over limpid trance, or applying Molly'ed-up languor to a wider array of material. He takes the latter approach on this set, which remixes songs by EDM royalty (Wolfgang Gartner, Benny Benassi, Steve Aoki), while adding three of his own tracks (see the cartoony noir of "Darkside," one of the album's highlights).

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The distance between electronic music and hip-hop isn’t big. You could argue that in some cases a rap instrumental falls under the electronic music tag. So for AraabMUZIK, who made a name for himself after working with the Diplomats during the latter half of the 2000s, the initial instinct is to label his solo instrumental releases as beat tapes. While it wouldn’t be wrong to call The Remixes, Vol.

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Raised in hip-hop, AraabMuzik has his own spin on the remix as a musical form. Touted for his MPC talents, the 24-year-old producer born Abraham Orellana prefers to chop tracks and build up new beats from their elemental remnants. To begin his debut mix for Ultra Records, The Remixes Vol. 1, Orellana’s remixes of Steve Aoki’s ”Cudi the Kid” and Mt.

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