Star Wars fans love making the absurd out of the most dramatic moments of its saga, and transforming Mon Mothma’s hypnotic wedding crashout into a dance-meme-turned-song-of-the-summer-candidate is just one such instance of that. Some creatives might bristle at their serious work being made light of, but Andor showrunner Tony Gilroy has another approach: let the people remix!
“I love it. Why not? It’s fun,” Gilroy recently told Vanity Fair of the oodles of remixes, extensions, and memes that have come out of the scene. “You’d have to be wrapped pretty tight to not want to do that.”
While the climactic moment of Andor season 2’s first act–as Mon wrestles with Luthen’s demand that her old friend and financial aide, Tay Kolma, must be killed to stop him from betraying the nascent rebellion by getting into a trancelike dance state at her daughter’s wedding bash–is one of the season’s dramatic highs, the music that punctuates it all has become one of the show’s breakout cultural moments. Itself a remix of the first season’s similar club classic “Niamos!”, composer Brandon Robert’s updated synth track keeps the crunchy techno vibes of Nicholas Britell’s original, will incorporating elements of EDM and house music to create the perfect beat to have an existential crisis to.
Lucasfilm has embraced the moment, from releasing the soundtrack, to hour-long extensions, to last week’s release of the official single “Niamos! (Chandrilan Club Mix). But both Gilroy and Roberts alike want them to go further: releasing the separate audio elements of the track so fans can more easily remix it themselves, and spread new versions of “Niamos!” across the world much like it seemingly swept over the galaxy far, far away.
“I’m hoping that they’re working out the legality of getting the stems out to, if not everybody, at least a certain number of DJs who they approve of, who can mess with it,” Gilroy noted. “It really could be a gas.”
“It’s always interesting to see what people do, but I think the most interesting thing would be to see what people do from scratch but using the musical material,” Roberts added. “I bet there’s going to be some very cool versions of it out there, much hipper than anything I could do.”
There is something very thematically Andor about trying to make this happen, and make “Niamos!” an anthem of the fandom as much as it is the show’s. In our own Mon Mothma summer, we have friends everywhere–and they’re ready to hit the dance floor.
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