When I was growing up, I LOVED remix albums. I would search record stores all over Long Island looking for import NIN remix albums, find all the bonus discs for Bowies electronic era, jam constantly to White Zombie’s Super Swinging Sexy Sounds, or really jam out to anything fun and bouncy that had hints of other songs in it. The idea that a song could be ret-conned or reconsidered or re-formed or re-jiggered or re-constructed with beautiful technology…it was a huge concept for me. Pink Floyd trance remixes (unofficial of course!) were a gigantic influence…taking these classic melodies and lines and beats and just jumbling them into something totally different. It didn’t even have to make people dance..just a recombination of elements into a new idea. Artists like Girl Talk and others made an art form out of it. It was a beautiful form of collaboration for artists also…seeing established artists remix their peers is a wonderful idealism for what music can do for multiple humans creating at once.

I love remixes.

So earlier this year I decided to do one of my own. The points and goals of this exercise are threefold:
Take some of my earlier work from 10 years ago and make it, as my friend Will would say, “more awesomer,” using experience and acquired skill as new found weapons.
Release some rarities and otherwise unreleased tracks, that had been gathering dust but still were close to my heart and brain.
Get out a couple of new bangers that didn’t really have a home in the near future of Ruthless or j. Cowit releases.

So in the interest of delineating some notion of what everything came from, I’ve written some notes below on the album Outliers. Everything on this album is something new, even if it’s a remix of something a decade old. I believe everything has some new value, although I hope that some folks will go back and compare it to the old versions, for the sake of the experiment. That said, with the new tracks and a lot of elbow grease, I really came to see this project as a full cohesive ALBUM, vs. a compilation of oddballs and outtakes. And so, with that, please enjoy it.

No one:
Absolutely no one:

Me:

Condor
Produced this little prog-disco frankenstein’s monster this year. Really loved the drum sample and felt it was good for something large and flowing. I ran the bass notes through guitar rig and tried to give everything a lot of space. I like that it combined some of the metal stuff with more of the house ideas….enjoyed letting a lot of the distorted guitars remain on the dance beats. “Mars Volta and Georgio Moroder have an insane bat child.”

Lazy Suzan (Ruthless Remix)
Remix of a track from 2013’s Metamorphasis World Peace.
Original track was more of a weird dub downtempo thing; added some DnB and spaced out the keyboards. The bassline is really what changes the feel of the OG tho. Love how this one flows. “Werewolf Bachelor Party on the Moon pre-party.”

Mosaic
The newest track on the entire album. I listened to a set of music by DJ Seven Sages, and was inspired to ask him about it. He said he enjoyed taking psy-trance and slowing it down to closer to 120-140, and living with it. I took his advice. Tried to make it drive even at the slower tempo. Big fan of this one.

Peace in the Valley (Ruthless Remix)
Remix of a track from 2014’s Televisionary.
This is one of my favorite things I ever wrote, and it honestly was my favorite track on that album. I gave the bass a bit of weird (charlie) sheen, and decided on lowering the key of the front section of the song. I like how the modulation happens now for the finale. For the ending, I delayed the ever living fuck out of the “lead” line and I think it sounds like a small army now. This song makes me want to write an action movie to put it in.

Chainsaw (McEvoy Remix)
Remix of a track from 2012’s Ruthless.
A lot of this project was initiated as a complete album remix of my first solo album, Ruthless. As it stands, most of the tracks from that album are remixed on this release. This is one of two tracks I worked on in 2020 with the incredible Jim McEvoy, as we all waited our lockdown and needed new fun things to work on. At the time, we were planning on releasing these tracks (plus a few others and some of his work as well) as an EP, but life can sometimes get in the way of things! That said, we loved these tracks and kinda loved swimming in the BRIGHTNESS and HUGENESS of the sound, just making it bigger and bigger. I asked Jim if I could release this and FatBoy on this, and he graciously agreed. Glad we could get these out in some form, and his guitar work is just so damn cool. Glad the track gave him real estate to run wild.

Gorilla Monsoon (Ruthless Remix)
Remix of a track from 2012’s Ruthless.
This was kinda the first electronic experiment I ever made. When I play with WBT or Sometime Boys, it’s an incredible collaboration of genius musicians and beautiful thoughtful artists. And I love every moment of it, but it’s also a sacrifice to the gods of creativity to sometimes compromise, for the good of the art and the band. For the solo stuff, it’s me. Good or bad. So this track is special to me, cause it was an escape and a challenge and a failure and a gateway all at the same time. The original is a really weird combination of downtempo beats, psych guitars and keys, and a bassline that is hard to really catch. The remix was 10 years of experience helping ALL those factors into something that’s a lot more dancy, fun, and bouncy. I had a mixed time listening back to the OG all these years, but this mix made me love this track all over again.

88 Mph (Ruthless Remix)
Remix of a track from 2012’s Ruthless.
My first solo album was like a bad chinese buffet of different electronic ideas. Downtempo, House, Dubstep…fuck I was throwing kitchen sinks into blenders and trying out everything I could. It’s a novice debut at best….BUT…it gave me one of my greatest loves: DnB. 88’ was my first real foray into the genre, and boy lemme tell you it’s a junk pile tire fire. I knew I loved the beat, the style, the way DnB forces its energy into the front part of your brain, and the way it moved my torso and shoulders. I was listening to a ton of Bukem and Pendulum and Aphrodite and i was falling into musical lust. Of course, having no editor on this album led to the gigantic 8 minute monster that ended up on Ruthless. Ten years later, I can safely say I know at least 1-2 more things about producing DnB, and thus I’m really relieved to bring a more mature adult version of the track to this album. It’s a real boy now! Less wooden.

Fatboy (McEvoy Remix)
Remix of a track from 2012’s Ruthless.
The second of two tracks re-created with Jim McEvoy. This is a song that kicked around WBT for a while, even being played a few times live. It’s my favorite track off the OG Ruthless album, with a few hooks that I’m especially proud about. The OG had a big distortion/feedback thing to it, but Jim took the skeleton of the song and wrote some absolutely stunning riffs, licks, and melodies that change the whole thing into something truly beautiful. His guitar creeps along the intro, and then blooms into a gorgeous garden of colors and conversation as the song continues. His work on the ending is remarkable. This song makes me smile very hard.

Theme from Fuck Island
Outtake from 2022’s Deep.
I put out a downtempo album earlier this year, and this track didn’t quite fit the bill. That album is dark and ponderous, and frankly this song sounds like it could be a reality tv show soundtrack. It’s deliciously corny, and for this release I owned that a little. Most of the parts of this song make me laugh, which is a worthy reason to include it. I couldn’t come up with a better title so I made it a fake theme of a fake show (that will probably be real eventually).


Liquid Ghosts iii
Outtake from 2017’s Ghosts.
One of my favorite albums I made was Ghosts, which is a strict DnB album with a lot of melodies that bring back good memories. It’s one of my favorite albums with respect to drum noises. It also has a cohesion that brings my joy. This track was only kinda sorta related to DnB, and so it eventually fell to the cutting floor. I revisited it while making Outliers to see if I could ret-con it, and I was able to build it bigger and make it it’s own love hotel. Still not thrilled with the intro sections but I felt it was worth it to get to the third act.

Keep Calm and Carry Bomb (Ruthless Remix)
Remix of a track from 2012’s Katharsis.
In 2012 I made three albums. Katharsis was the final one, and the first one that had a point. It was mean, angry, fast. I liked the feeling it gave me. The songs had a weird furious connection to them. This was the lead song on the album, an ode to a phrase I find remarkably funny. I don’t even know what genre this track was, or is now, or what umbrella it falls under. It just makes me tense up and I know that’s a success.

Ruthless (Even More Ruthless Remix)
Remix of a track from 2012’s Ruthless.
The title card! The name “Ruthless” for my electronic arc came from Aja Nealley, of whom I (accidentally!) chipped her tooth one night at some show or another. She called me “ruthless, jay cowit, ruthless!” and I liked it enough to keep it. I still owe her for the name and the tooth! Anyways, this song was one of the early attempts at messing with samples and fucking around. The original is a giant mess, and I’m not sure this one is any better, but I still love the riffs and the horn sample. I used to close a lot of my shows with a reprise of this number, so it brings me nostalgic happiness to hear it a little more fleshed out and metal.

Security (Ruthless Remix)
Remix from 2016’s Synesthesia.
Honestly one of my favorite albums was Synesthesia, which was an experiment in dub and downtempo that still holds up to my ears. It also has a fucking amazing album cover by the incredible Justin Wood, who did most of the art on my first 15 albums or so, and tons of work with Wounded Buffalo Theory as our projectionist, percussion player, and onetime MC. This album is a lush wonderland of slowness, and Security (the title is a tribute to Peter Gabriel’s 4th album) is one of the darker tracks on the disc. OG track had some kinda salsa feel to it, but I ret-conned the bastard for semi-jungle purposes, and I think the whole thing flows freer now.

The Sultana
Remix of a track from 2012’s Ruthless.
As previously mentioned, Ruthless (the album) was a hodgepodge of lots of different experiments and ideas, with no real central finite curve. As such, my best shot at a post rock anthem somehow found its way onto the back end of the album, despite not really sounding at all like any of the other tracks. Ironically, that’s not terribly dissimilar from its placement on THIS album, but, as Tolkein once famously told his critics: shut up. This one was a beast to remix, beset by as many aged technical problems as the ship it’s named after; but I’m happier with the overall vibe of the piece, having removed more drums than I added back. Also, it’s my best “guitar” work ever, lol.

Take Your Time
Outtake from 2021’s Mi Casa Es Su Casa.
I made a sweet lil house album in 2021, with help from one of the best humans ever produced, T.L. Malone. We focused mostly on dancey stuff with a lot of hooks. Right around that same time I made Take Your Time, which is anything but:) A true horror movie of a downtempo track, featuring all sorts of weird synths and windy keys. It scares me every time I listen, frankly.

Zoom Sex Party (Ruthless Remix)
A track that could’ve only been made and titled during the pandemic of 2020. A little funk fun for the kids, that could easily be the score of the cheapest pornography ever made. I had fun making a little classical middle for this wack track, but otherwise it’s a bit of jape for y’all.

Hopefully (Ruthless Remix)
Remix of a track from 2012’s Hopefully
Hopefully was my second album, and honestly, it’s my nicest. Like, as in, attitude. It contains a lot of major key stuff, happy little ambient tracks, and this lil cute title track. I think I just wanted an album at the time to listen to at the end of trips:) There’s not too much different on this remix, but I added some wild bass to give it a bit more umph.