homemade noize

I found this on the very cool Retro Thing. When I heard about Radiohead’s remix contest for Nude I was excited. Then when I heard the track my enthusiasm waned a bit. Radiohead were having some fun with the song they selected. If Radiohead was a Shakespearean character the their fatal flaw would be being too clever. I am not discounting their musical talents somethings they have done musically and other wise have suffered a little form being a little to clever. At least I think so which is odd because that special British brand of cleverness I never can get enough of in the forms of comedy and literature. Still a great band. And how often do you get access to each track of a song by a great band. That was my attract to it rather than any contest. I bought the stems and plan to have go at it despite 6/8 time and 63 bpm. Normal remixes are made for the clubby dance numbers. Which seemed impossible if you were going to use most of the music made available to you. So, I though I will just make it in to something else unique and not dancy or hip-hoppy. Stretching the sounds to a normal tempo the sounded well stretched and found it pretty hard to work with do to the songs structure. I don’t claim to be a talented remixer. I was falling miserably when The Great Hard Drive Disaster of ‘08 hit. Then I learned things like the also very clever Apple doesn’t let you download purchased music again. So, I was doubly defeated.

I was glad to see someone succeed at doing something original and generally awesome. Just give the video a minute to get going and you will see Radiohead’s Nude created on old computer parts and gear. You have to love a dot matrix rhythm sections & unintended purposes.


Big Ideas (don’t get any) from James Houston on Vimeo.