Radiohead Contest : Big Ideas (don’t get any)

This dude is beyond amazing! I want to scream his name 500 times. James Houston . Student James Houston graduating from the Glasgow School of Art’s visual communication course in a few days did this for his final project and a contest that Radiohead held an online to remix “Nude” from their album – “In Rainbows”.

“Nude” is in 6/8 timing, and 63bpm. Most music that’s played in clubs is around 120bpm and usually 4/4 timing. It’s pretty difficult to seamlessly mix a waltz beat into a DJ set.

This resulted in lots of generic entries consisting of a typical 4/4 beat, but with arbitrary clips from “Nude” thrown in so that they qualified for the contest.
Thom Yorke joked at the ridiculousness of it in an interview for NPR radio, hinting that they set the competition to find out how people would approach such a challenging task.
Based on the lyric (and alternate title) “Big Ideas: Don’t get any” he grouped together a collection of old redundant hardware, and placed them in a situation where they’re trying their best to do something that they’re not exactly designed to do, and not quite getting there.

He missed the contest deadline, but its clear after seeing and hearing this that he is no the one missing anything. Utter Brilliance!

Sinclair ZX Spectrum – Guitars (rhythm & lead)
Epson LX-81 Dot Matrix Printer – Drums
HP Scanjet 3c – Bass Guitar
Hard Drive array – Act as a collection of bad speakers – Vocals & FX




EXPLORE DEEPER