This Is Our Jam: AraabMuzik, “I Remember”

On this year’s fantastic Electronic Dream, AraabMuzik was able to re-contextualize house and trance, darkening the tone of glittery club music while adding his own warped MPC beats. Weirdly, part of what made that album so compelling was how little AraabMuzik altered the samples he was working with, especially with regard to vocal hooks. It was a matter of shifting the atmosphere just slightly rather than reworking the tracks that makes his music work so well.

With bonus track “I Remember,” AraabMuzik pulls from the Deadmau5 (feat. Kaskade) track by the same name, and winds up with a nightmarishly beautiful result. Rather than the Euro-trance of the original, “I Remember” floats in an ethereal dream space, with the vocal sample being the only hint of the former track’s amped-up schamltz. It’s Deadmau5 for an alternate reality, where tank tops and Ray-Bans are replaced by flickering candles and billowing sheets. It may be a “bonus track,” but “I Remember” is further proof that “you are now listening to AraabMuzik” owned the dance floors of 2011.