Tracks

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Under the name ‘Ansolo’, Ansel Elgort has produced a number of remixes and originals, though only a few remain available on his SoundCloud page currently.

His first original, a high energy track, was called Mountain Man. It was on his SoundCloud for a short period of time in 2013, but now he considers it his “old style”.

Another remix that was available in early 2013 was called Sunshine Remix. He later reworked it and retitled it Jacked Sunshine, before finally taking it down a few months later.

One of the first collaborations Ansolo ever did was with his cousin, Mikkel Øwre. They did a mash-up of Adele’s Rolling in the Deep and Zedd’s Epos. It can still be found on YouTube.

Two other remixes made in Ansolo’s early days were Zedd’s Clarity ft. Foxes, and one he did for a remix competition in early 2013 called “Discovery Project- Beyond Wonderland” of James Egbert’s Back to New.

Ansel created social media accounts for his musical identity around May of 2013. He made a twitter and Instagram with the same handle: @ansolo_music. A Facebook account followed not long after in June. Once that happened, Ansolo fans started coming out of the woodwork. Ansel was able to use these accounts to focus on talking about his music and sharing his remixes with fans through these accounts, and while they haven’t had the same skyrocketing popularity that his regular accounts have seen, they’ve been a huge boon to the growth of his career.

One of the first things Ansel used his new social media accounts for was to drive up interest for his remix of Lana Del Rey’s Born to Die. Ansel asked for his fans to find him 1,000 followers for his new Ansolo account and in return he’d give out a free download of this new remix. Along with the song’s release, he also answered all of his fans questions on his new Instagram account. These early instances of relationship-building between Ansolo and his fans have gone a long way towards creating a lasting image of his willingness and ability to relate to the public.

Ansolo released a remix (or mash-up might be more accurate) of Daft Punk’s Get Lucky and Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger in June of 2013 on his SoundCloud account. He shared it with his followers on social media, but unfortunately the song was removed almost within the hour due to copyright issues.

In July of 2013 Ansel entered into a second remix competition. Beatport.com, a prominent website for EDM artists, offered up the pieces of the song The Fire by Felix Cartal and the Clockwork for hopeful producers to remix into their own tracks. Even though Ansolo had the support of his burgeoning fandom, it wasn’t enough to win him the prize. The Fire remained available on Ansolo’s soundcloud for the better part of a year until he decided it represented his “old sound” and he removed it in an effort to clean up his musical library.

August 2013 brought us Ansolo’s second completely original track, Sevante. A few months later in December, Ansolo released a “redrop edit” of Martin Garrix and Jay Hardaway’s The Wizard. Unfortunately this track was taken down within a couple of days due to copyright issues.

As 2014 rolled around, Ansel began dropping hints of his upcoming involvement with labels. He talked about many songs in the works, and shared his hopes of getting original tracks signed. Sure enough, by April Ansolo had signed a song with Tom Staar’s label, Staar Traxx. This song would be an international collaboration with producer Special Features, based out of London.

Unite, Ansolo’s first track ever released with a label, came out on Beatport on April 21^st, 2014, and followed on iTunes a couple weeks later. To help promote sales of his new song, Ansel took to social media and held raffles for his fans to enter once they purchased Unite for the chance to win a one-on-one skype chat. Thanks to this campaign, Unite made it to the Top 5 of Beatport’s Progressive House Top 100 list and into the Top 10 of their overall Top 100!

Ansolo released a remix of his roommate Pierce Fulton’s track, Runaway, in early summer of 2014 as well.

Size Records, a very well-known label, signed Ansolo’s collaboration with Tom Staar, Totem, and released it in July of 2014. True to form, Ansel held another social media promotion to celebrate its release with a livestream and a week of raffles for seven lucky people to win Skype chats. Totem hit new levels of popularity and made it into the Top 10 of iTunes Dance chart within its first week. Many high-profile DJs are dropping Totem in their shows across the world and on the radio, giving Ansel a level of support he could never have imagined.

In August, Ansolo played a set at the Electric Zoo Festival in New York City. His set aired on Electric Area, a wildly popular station on Sirius XM, a subscription based radio service. During live sets Ansolo is able to play a much wider range of remixes and tracks that he can’t release on the internet. This is due to various copyright laws. Ansolo shared the set on his SoundCloud account on September 3rd.

November brought Ansolo’s next big track, an official remix of Norman Doray and Arno Cost’s Strong. The remix was originally set to drop on November 11th but was pushed back to the 17th. Size Records, the record label responsible for Strong and it’s remixes, pushed it back so that it wouldn’t compete with releases from other big name producers on the same day. The strategy worked as evidenced in Ansolo’s remix of Strong skyrocketing to the top of the Beatport(.com) Progressive House Top 100 and enjoying a few days in the #2 slot. The track was released on iTunes on December 4th. Ansolo shared a 25 second long video on YouTube of him dropping this track at one of his shows.

The new year brought with it a wave of shows for Ansolo for the spring of 2015. His growing reputation scored him a guest mix on Arno Cost’s popular radio show, “When in Rome”. (Episode 4- listen here!)

The next track that Ansolo officially released didn’t come until around his 21st birthday in March. He was signed by Big Beat Records to do an official remix of Galantis’ Runaway (U&I). Ansolo debuted this song months earlier, however, at an under 18 show in New York City at Pacha. The following day he released a video of the track on his YouTube account. Steve Angello premiered the song a month later, in December, on a radio show for BB1 called R1 Residency. Just prior to the track’s official release in March, Ansolo released a video recap of his New Year’s Eve show at Pier 36 in NYC with his remix as the featured music. It’s worth noting that this is unofficially Ansolo’s first music video.

Close on the heels of this tracks release, Ansolo had another big slot to fill. This time in Miami at the Ultra Festival. His set included some fun new remixes and the debut of an entirely new original track. This track, as of yet unreleased, is entitled To Life and features a trio called Too Many Zooz. Ansolo’s entire set from Ultra has since been made available online, and To Life was shared with the internet in the form of a Facebook video.

June of 2015 brought a number of new tracks from Ansolo, both in the form of collaborations. The first came out June 2nd as a free download on SoundCloud. The Right Stuff was a collaboration with a Miami producer called Jerm.

The second new track June brought was the debut of Ansolo and Pierce Fulton’s new duo called Shirts and Skins. Their first original track was called Genius of Time – Same Old Place. They dubbed it “sexy house”, branching outside of Ansolo’s usual “groovy house” genre. The song was made available as a free download on SoundCloud.

Late June brought us some incredible new Ansolo mixes cleverly hidden within his set at the Life in Color Festival in NYC. His new spins on some old classics are to die for. Make sure to listen to it here!