Fans redo Radiohead — astonishingly — well
By MICHAEL BRODEUR | April 29, 2008
Radiohead |
Last month, Radiohead thrilled the big black glasses off thousands of hundreds when they posted stems (that is, isolated audio tracks) for the public to download, remix, and upload to the band’s Web site to compete for listeners’ votes. Thing is, the stems were bits of “Nude” — a largely dreary number off In Rainbows that finds Thom Yorke sounding more like a cranky, exhausted toddler than ever before. Not the most obvious candidate for a successful dancefloorphosis by a long stretch. Still, nearly 2000 persons have given it a whack, and — astonishingly — a good percentage of them aren’t wack.
Nteibint, “Nude (Nteibeint 3.5)”
A not-so-very-special Holy Fuck remix has been holding court in the rankings at #1 for a while, but nine places down, from Athens, Georgia, is Nteibint (think “David” transliterated into Greek), who turns “Nude” into a multi-textured stomper and completely changes its proverbial prescription to happier pills.
Aetherlone, “Oblique Nude Strategies”
By using vocal harmonies as primary leads and supplanting the subdued instrumentation of the original with beds of sprawling strings and faux brass, France’s Aetherlone has smuggled the subdued pop of “Nude” into truly tranceworthy territory.
Dirty Scarab, “Nude (Dirty Scarab Remix)"
Dirty Scarab stays pretty faithful to the delicate melodicism of “Nude,” but his deep, dark lows and sedated, chunky beats are satisfying like a Snickers — and it comes as no big surprise to discover that he resides in Baltimore by way of Leicester, England.
Hipster Runoff, “Nude (Hipster Runoff Remix)”
This is some funny shit. Hipster Runoff (“a blog worth blogging about”) reduces Radiohead’s presence to a distant Yorkian hooting below a deadpan hipster ruminating on losing his virginity to “Idioteque” and pondering what Pitchfork would rate his life. (“Probably somewhere around a 5.”)
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Topics:
Download
, Radiohead
, Thom Yorke
