Off The Grid

Album: The Mix-Up (2007)
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Songfacts®:

  • A jazzy instrumental jam by the Beastie Boys? Your ears do not deceive you. In fact, their entire 2007 album The Mix-Up is comprised of instrumentals.

    Their previous album, To The 5 Boroughs, was all rap, so they decided to change course completely, with no vocals and a retro vibe. To get in the spirit, every day they recorded they dressed in getups from 1956-1964 - the band loved costumes, dating back to their "Sabotage" video.
  • The song is called "Off The Grid" because it wasn't locked to a specific tempo in Pro Tools, which they used to record it.
  • Mark Nishita, who played keyboards with the group, co-wrote this song with them and also played on it. When Beastie Boys moved away from sampling and drum machines, Nishita became a crucial component.
  • Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys asks us to admire the the break in the middle of this song, writing in the Beastie Boys Book that it's "one of my favorite musical left turns we ever made."

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