So recently Radiohead announced a remix competition for their track “Nude” off In Rainbows. This audacious request, normally drawing anyone with a copy of Reason and some sweet beats, turned out to be frustrating for remixers. As it turns out (and as the below remixer noted), “Nude” is in 6/8 time and is 63bpm.

Those who work with music know that 63bpm is awfully slow for typical remix music, and heaven forbid using anything not in standard 4/4 time. Again, this is probably a nod to kids with Reason or Fruity Loops who are used to their program defaults and not used to a challenge.

Considering this, electronic music artist James Houston decided to play with the challenge a bit, or “take the piss” in his words. Check out his creation below: Houston took pieces of obsolete computer equipment and programmed them to “play” the song. The effect is chilling, considering how eerily similar a stack of hard drives (hacked into speakers of sorts), an old printer, a scanner, and some antiquated electronic bits sound like Radiohead — especially Thom Yorke’s vocals.

Check it out: Big Ideas (don’t get any) from James Houston on Vimeo

I love the concept of turning old into new, especially when it comes to bending rules in an otherwise boring remix competition. Head to the Radiohead Remix website to hear the most popular submissions (sadly, the above isn’t even on the site), but be warned: it’s nothing as good as a dot matrix printer jam.

Last 5 posts by jon arnold

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