The combination of LowHero.DLL and the excellent Toronto alt rock group, Hello Operator, is one of true magic. In 2008, Mike and Evan from Hello Operator reached out to me for an electro remix of their hit TAKE ME AWAY, which as part of their album THE BREAKS, was getting massive listens on MySpace (millions), significant radio play (they charted in Canada and several other countries), and even made an appearance on MTV and MuchMusic. They had a successful tour and released a few very polished music videos. These guys appeared by all measures to be headed to the big time.

With all that in mind, they now appear to be defunct. Their official site is gone. They still have a MySpace, Facebook, and Youtube presence, however the most recent activity on any of them is 8 months ago and nearly another 8 months for the nearest post prior to that. It would seem that sometime in late 2009 or early 2010 they just disappeared. What happened? Not sure, but I am thinking something big.

Their original version is a great alt-rock tune and the experience of remixing this song had a real influence on the direction LowHero.DLL would take with the Sub-Intellect EP, where more indie rock elements were incorporated into the sonic regimen with strong success. While their original version is great, it isn’t electro and Mike and Evan felt strongly that they needed an electro mix for accessibility to a different audience. The band was extremely happy with my remix. After hearing the original longer version, they wanted to edit the official video to the electro version and asked that I make a shorter version of the remix that lined up phrase for phrase with the original. Many remixers would scoff at such a request but I happily obliged and delivered the second as a radio edit. Hello Operator did post the radio edit of the electro remix to their fans for digital download and it got tons of listens on MySpace. You can still see it floating around the internet on media aggregator sites. It unfortunately never was edited to the video.

Be sure to check out the fantastic original version of Take Me Away in the official video on Youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kv1CUtWQ-Qc

I don’t take remixing lightly and I am very selective about who I remix for. I consider this mix to be some of my very best work as do others. I changed the style of the song considerably without really changing the song itself. All the key elements from the original are still there. It has nearly the same dynamics and passionate delivery as the original. This was very important to me and I think greatly appreciated by Mike and Evan. I would love to get any and all comments on comparisons between versions and know what you think about this edit.