Afghan Raiders win… what, exactly?

By Deanna Rilling

Monday, Aug. 24, 2009 | 12:30 p.m.

Kudos to local band Afghan Raiders. The electronic/indie duo of Vincent "Beans" Campillo and Michael "Mikey" Francis entered a Filter Magazine remix contest, created their own version of the Black Lips’ song “The Drop I Hold”—and won.

“I’m a huge Black Lips fan,” said Beans. “I love the original, but we wanted this to be a really fun summer song, just a really fun upbeat dance theme.” Mikey explained that while the contest supplied entrants with the drum and guitar parts from the original song, he and Beans ended up focusing on the vocals.

“As soon as we finished it, we submitted it to the contest and then we released it on our own just through blogs,” said Beans. “It got a lot of blog love.”

Beans said the Black Lips’ manager really liked Afghan Raiders’ version of “The Drop I Hold” and sent it off to the band. “We never heard directly back from them,” said Beans, “but they did pick the winner, so that tells us that they like it, they’re into it.”

“Hopefully [Black Lips] will want to release it,” added Mikey. “But if not, maybe we can incorporate it live.”

“We’re thinking about possibly doing a remix EP and including it, and we’ll definitely ask the band, but I think they’d be ok with releasing it since they had selected it,” Beans said.

So, other than blog love and a nod from the Black Lips what did Mikey and Beans win exactly? “I think just street cred and bragging rights,” said Beans.

The next installment of the Monthly Filter Mixed Series brings Las Vegas back into the spotlight, featuring The Crystal Method’s “Come Back Clean” as the next remix challenge (this time, a microKorg XL synthesizer goes to the winner). It’d be interesting to see Afghan Raiders tackle another Vegas electronic music duo, but the pair may be too busy with other projects. “We had considered it, but we have a couple of official remixes in the works,” said Beans. “We didn’t want to get too bogged down.”