Zeds Dead 谈二十年采样生涯：“兴趣在于历史，AI 没有历史”

Zeds Dead are equal parts historians and musicians. Hooks (Zachary Rapp-Rovan) and DC (Dylan Mamid) have been running their production partnership and alternative electronic project for nearly 20 years, and their guiding light throughout this Journey Of A Lifetime has been an affinity for the creative works that came before them.

Their moniker is a reference to Quentin Tarantino’s breakout masterpiece, Pulp Fiction, and their early love of hip-hop has led them to master sampling audio and visual works that imbue their entire catalogue with iconic moments from the past.

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Their first major single started out as a bootleg of Blue Foundation’s Eyes on Fire (2007) before getting an official release, and for their recent albums, Return to the Spectrum of Intergalactic Happiness (2025) and Return to the Return (2026), they sampled everything from such legendary musicians as Duke Ellington to Norma Jean Wright to lauded films such as Scarface and Blue Velvet.

“It’s all in this lineage of sampling and following in the footsteps of people we admire,” says Mamid. “Tarantino himself is a very sample-based director. Producers too, like DJ Shadow.”

“When you sample a record, you sample the magic of that room. There are things that you can bring out in someone playing the piano that are only in that one recording,” adds Rapp-Rovan.

Zeds Dead have taken this reverence for the past beyond the studio and onto the stage as well. Their show brings together both sides of their approach by pairing their audio samples with music videos and live footage, creating a comprehensive, almost time-machine-like experience of reviving a piece of history. For example, for their fan-favourite Sweet Memories, they found a video of Ann Peebles singing her 1973 classic I Can’t Stand the Rain, whose vocals fuel Mamid and Rapp-Rovan’s sizzling, epic beat.

“DJing is being a historian in some ways. Our set is hip-hop DJ culture, just more bass-leaning and with the dimension of the videos,” says Rapp-Rovan. “It wouldn’t be uncommon to hear things from so many separate genres in the kind of DJ sets we heard at parties.”

That’s what Zeds Dead have been doing this whole time. Playing parties just like their Bassmentality night they started in their native Toronto back in 2009. Except now their Journey of a Lifetime tour sold hundreds of thousands of tickets for significant venues including Factory Town in Miami, Forest Hills Stadium in New York, and closing things out with two sold-out nights at Grand Park in Los Angeles before they take an extended break from the road.

We speak with Mamid and Rapp-Rovan a few minutes before they went on stage for their first LA show of the Journey of a Lifetime tour.

How does it feel for the Journey of a Lifetime tour to be coming to a close?

Rapp-Rovan: It’s been an amazing tour. The venues have been insane. Every night we walk out on stage, and we can’t believe how many people are there.

Mamid: We’ve been building this visual component to our show for the last five years. Being able to do these venues, we took the opportunity to see this vision to its pinnacle.

Your show involves unabashed audiovisual sampling. You’re not hiding the source material but instead highlighting it and celebrating it. What are your thoughts on that kind of sampling in the AI age?

Rapp-Rovan: Where I’m at now, the interest is more in the history. AI has no history. It’s an average of things that sound similar. I can’t speak for where my interest might go, but I know for sure people will sample stuff that’s from AI.

Mamid: I’m sure they already are.

Rapp-Rovan: There are some moral and ethical dilemmas there. Much like with sampling, people were very against it, but it was an art. I’m sure there is art in AI. But where I’m standing right now, I’m seeing it as something that could be catastrophic to the thing that I love, which is searching for some kind of connection with something bigger than myself. The idea that it can be done on a computer in a few seconds by someone who’s never put any effort into making music… something about it seems very “Not why I got into music.”

Mamid: I haven’t engaged with it very much either. I’ve tried out the tools just to see what they were like, and it tends to be sort of weird. It creeps me out when I see what it comes back with.

Rapp-Rovan: I’m totally into some of the AI tools like stem separation and voice changing. But the idea that, out of the box, you can be making stuff on the same level as someone who’s been doing it for a long time, it does seem more bad than good at the moment.

Generative AI, to a certain degree, is the same as sampling. You’re drawing from models developed based on music that existed before, then using a tool to rework that material into something else.

Mamid: It’s like hyper-sampling.

Rapp-Rovan: There’s something legit in a way because it is human work. The basis of it all is something that really happened.

Mamid: You’re in dialogue with humanity. You’re not in dialogue with some unknown being.

Rapp-Rovan: In the same way that the thing might be giving seven fingers—I know it’s not like that anymore—on a microscopic level in sound, there might be some weird artefacts there that are totally…

Mamid: Demonic.

Rapp-Rovan: You might be injecting some evil into your songs.

The difference, it seems, is the intention. You guys are approaching samples to explore history.

Mamid: It’s in support of human culture. Not denigrating it.

How do you feel about your technique exposing new movies, TV shows, and games to your audience?

Rapp-Rovan: The context you hear movie samples in a song, you might have no idea where it came from or no interest, and it does what it’s supposed to do. It gives a feeling or makes you think about the words that person is saying. Then there’s the extra element of when you see it that might give it more context and appreciation. But it’s not always about looking for where the sample came from, although that is interesting. Sometimes it’s the end product that you’re trying to achieve. When we did Bad Guy, we weren’t thinking, ‘We want you to know Scarface.’

Mamid: The song felt like it needed some coked-up Miami energy.

Rapp-Rovan: In our show, we’ve done a lot of things where you see what the sample is. Certain times, when you see the singer, it adds this dimension that gives a certain emotional weight. But the video has to be right. Our videos are very precise. It’s a look we’re going for. Almost like making a movie. Plenty of samples don’t have good videos. It doesn’t give that emotion.

Why now to take a hiatus away from the project?

Rapp-Rovan: It’s always a push and pull with being on the road and making music. The show takes up a lot of creative headspace. It’s amazing, and we love that. But we also love being in the studio and making stuff that might not be dance music or influenced by the show. But we end up having to split the time so much between thinking about what we’re going to play. We always wondered what it would be like if we focused on unbridled creativity.

Mamid: We’ve been touring pretty steadily for quite a while. It’s just giving space to be creative in a different way.

Rapp-Rovan: Doing all the shows and making all the music makes it difficult to think about anything else. We need time where we aren’t doing anything for a while before we come out of that with a great idea.

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