Standout Track: No. 1, “N.Y.R. (Reverse),” in which 27-year-old producer Outputmessage takes what used to be an uplifting and soulful song about coping with a close friend’s suicide and makes it appropriately turbulent. The edit, which leads off an album remixing cuts from Outputmessage’s excellent 2010 full-length, is danceable but dark. “I decided to use a heavier electro feeling to give the track a more sinister vibe,” says the artist, née Bernard Farley. “It’s the version I really get into at my live shows.”

Musical Motivation: Autonomix may contain remixes, but it’s mostly an album of self-reinterpretation. “The remix-album concept originated from having so many remixes of my tracks for my live vocal performances,” says Outputmessage. “‘N.Y.R.’ in particular is a track with such personal impact that it felt good to attack it from a different mindset and drain all of the emotion from it.” He has similar success with “My Love”—whose original evoked early-’90s house but here centers on orchestral breakbeats—and gets help from other producers on the last three tracks. Triobelisk, the electronica alter-ego of Frodus frontman Shelby Cinca, bathes the formerly sparse “Foreign” in lush electric guitars.

Nom de House: Like many producers with wide-ranging projects, Farley makes music under a number of different identities. He records with local producer Micah Vellian in disco-house duo Dmerit, and the two produce with U Street Music Hall co-owner Will Eastman as Volta Bureau. The Outputmessage moniker dates back to high school. “It relates to the fact that the productions I make under this name reflect my personal message, my personal output,” he says. —Marcus K. Dowling