Comments on: A Slightly Differently Approach To Old Skool Remixing...

A Slightly Differently Approach To Old Skool Remixing...

benzo8 — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 07:55:40 -0800

I would have added this to the original post save for the fact that it's closed now. Anyway, this entry to the Radiohead Nude Remix Competition is innovative, interesting, awesome and nostalgic enough to warrant it's own FPP... I bring you Nude, played on ZX Spectrum, Epson LX-81 Dot Matrix Printer, HP Scanjet 3c and a Hard Drive array, the work of video artist James Houston.

By: [NOT HERMITOSIS-IST]

[NOT HERMITOSIS-IST] — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 08:03:54 -0800

I wish there was an mp3 link. I love the original song, but this is something special right here.

By: dbiedny

dbiedny — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 08:14:15 -0800

As a diehard Radiohead fan, I've watched and listened to everything they've ever done, or that someone else did in tribute to the band, but that right there is the best Radiohead thing EVER. Thank you so much for posting it!

By: hincandenza

hincandenza — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 08:15:45 -0800

Okay, the fact that the first 60 seconds are just static is probably a poor choice- I almost gave up. Glad I didn't, because it got really good. I didn't know the original, which I've now gone and listened to on Youtube, and while you can't really replace the more ethereal synth/vocals that Radiohead is known for, in a way I might almost prefer this version. What was the hard drive array- how were those being used as speakers, exactly?

By: DU

DU — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 08:21:34 -0800

I guess it starts with a full minute of annoying clicks and hisses so the rest will sound good in comparison?

By: rusty

rusty — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 08:22:28 -0800

I don't say this lightly, but OMGWTFBBQ. That's just awesome.

By: benzo8

benzo8 — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 08:26:12 -0800

Well, the opening sounds are the ZX Spectrum program loading... You may need to be in your 30s to get that. As for the hard drives, I think they're sitting on a vibrating platform which is being driven by the sound and they're merely resonating - if you watch the armatures, they don't move consistently enough to be to source of the sound, to my eyes.

By: [NOT HERMITOSIS-IST]

[NOT HERMITOSIS-IST] — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 08:26:50 -0800

The full minute delay is part of what makes the music so incredible when it emerges. You're looking at a lot of old junk and hearing rudimentary "non-musical" sounds. This makes the music that follows not only seem "good in comparison," but downright miraculous. The greater your attention span, the more devices an artist has at their disposal to fill you with wonder.

By: Pecinpah

Pecinpah — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 08:30:04 -0800

Most art is bullshit. This is decidedly not bullshit. Thanks for posting this.

By: fungible

fungible — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 08:30:05 -0800

Also very impressed. The distressed video is a nice touch, but maybe he should have shot it on VHS for authenticity's sake.

By: DU

DU — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 08:32:11 -0800

I'm not saying it's not cool. I'm just saying that the intro was actually physically painful in my headphones. (And PS: I'm 35.)

By: Sam.Burdick

Sam.Burdick — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 08:34:58 -0800

Actually that distressed film makes it for me. With the exception of the scanner and the modern hard-drives most of the components in the film mesh quite nicely and remind me of old family home films done on 8 mm when having a spectrograph in your basement was high geekdom.

By: chococat

chococat — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 08:35:36 -0800

That was really good. The bass/scanner is my favourite part but I don't understand how he got it to play the different notes, unless he sampled it. The video is also beautiful, parts of it look like old reversal film. His other videos are quite nice as well.

By: Jofus

Jofus — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 08:38:49 -0800

Fantastic.

By: dubold

dubold — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 08:41:45 -0800

excellent. agreed that the film quality really ratcheted things up a notch or two.

By: Exchequer

Exchequer — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 08:52:15 -0800

How to make hard drive speakers: One Two

By: Poolio

Poolio — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 08:55:50 -0800

Was this actually entered into the Nude Remix competition?

By: blasdelf

blasdelf — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 08:58:57 -0800

No, the remix contest has been closed for a while.

By: Poolio

Poolio — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 09:05:55 -0800

No, the remix contest has been closed for a while. That's what I thought.

By: chimaera

chimaera — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 09:08:15 -0800

That is really amazing. Wow! Now I'm all excited to work on some music today. Thanks for the post!

By: teraflop

teraflop — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 09:12:26 -0800

chococat: With the scanners I've used, changing the scanning resolution usually affects the speed of the motor and changes the pitch of the sound.

By: sveskemus

sveskemus — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 09:29:05 -0800

Holy shit that is good!

By: ardgedee

ardgedee — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 09:34:10 -0800

> The bass/scanner is my favourite part but I don't understand how he got it to play the different notes, Those old HP scanners were pretty loud. Good, but loud. Like teraflop says, you could change the pitch by changing the resolution. In addition, duration of the tone is defined by the area to be scanned. Maximum pitch duration is the length of the scanning bed.

By: saladin

saladin — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 09:35:54 -0800

Human beings can be so wonderful sometimes.

By: chococat

chococat — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 09:36:10 -0800

chococat: With the scanners I've used, changing the scanning resolution usually affects the speed of the motor and changes the pitch of the sound. Ya, I'd thought of that. I remember my scanner just getting way slower and grindier sounding when I bumped up the rez, but not actually changing pitch. You could be right, though...I don't use the scanner much anymore.

By: shmegegge

shmegegge — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 09:50:21 -0800

hot shit

By: kowalski

kowalski — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 09:53:02 -0800

The last twenty four hours have been a bit difficult, and this is beautiful enough to bring me close to tears. It took ten years, but someone finally managed to capture in raw sound and video the broken devastation of the technological modern that was being mined lyrically in the late 1990s not only by Radiohead but other bands, most notably I guess Grandaddy. Those were the ideas that my musical tastes first matured on, and here someone's gone and distilled the pure expression of them in a wonderfully backwards way.

By: jokeefe

jokeefe — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 10:42:59 -0800

Colin Greenwood has posted the link to this on RH's blog, Dead Air Space. I'm guessing they love it as much as everyone else does. It's amazing.

By: lubujackson

lubujackson — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:06:46 -0800

Here's an mp3 link.

By: jack_mo

jack_mo — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:28:14 -0800

Totally ace. I have no idea what the original sounds like - is this version relatively faithful to it, given the equipment?

By: kowalski

kowalski — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:31:09 -0800

As regards the mp3 link, I'm having trouble with it, either because the captcha is incomprehensible, or because it is more broken than the hard drives in the music.

By: lubujackson

lubujackson — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:42:02 -0800

I agree, that might be the worst captcha of all time. Here's an mp3 link that works better.

By: dersins

dersins — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 11:53:38 -0800

oh. fuck. yeah.

By: TheOnlyCoolTim

TheOnlyCoolTim — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 12:33:55 -0800

Totally ace. I have no idea what the original sounds like - is this version relatively faithful to it, given the equipment? Yes, except for the poor choice of putting a minute of static and a blank screen as some sort of early computing in-joke.

By: supercres

supercres — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 12:58:35 -0800

Saw this on Engadget, and they don't post about music very often. Very very cool. The MP3 is good (thanks!), but it really just loses something when you don't see the scanner head moving, or the dot matrix printer clicking away.

By: jack_mo

jack_mo — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 13:09:38 -0800

TheOnlyCoolTim: "Yes, except for the poor choice of putting a minute of static and a blank screen as some sort of early computing in-joke." What's the opposite of 'get off my lawn'? ;-)

By: lekvar

lekvar — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 13:21:21 -0800

That was exactly what I needed. benzo8, you've officially made my day. *goes off to scavenge some old, dead hard drives*

By: kyleg

kyleg — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 13:28:13 -0800

I came by just to see if this had been posted yet, because even though it's all over the tubes today, it's incredible. Best of the web for sure.

By: drfu

drfu — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 13:28:53 -0800

chococat, teraflop: Not quite on topic, but this is an amusing easter egg built in to the HP ScanJet 5p -- it can play "Ode to Joy".

By: silence

silence — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 13:42:36 -0800

if you liked that you'll love this

By: 2or3whiskeysodas

2or3whiskeysodas — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 17:10:06 -0800

That is honestly pretty amazingly cool. But (unless I'm missing it) I certainly don't see anything on the artist's site indicating that he got this to happen in real-time. I'm thinking that at least some of the sounds were sampled and/or multitracked. If I am missing something saying that that's not the case, please do point it out so that this guy can be made my god.

By: friendlyjuan

friendlyjuan — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 17:30:48 -0800

Had to wait and hear this when I got home from work, and am glad that I did. Thanks for posting this here, not sure I would have seen it otherwise. I know some folks that don't read MeFi who will be happy when I email them the link.

By: mkb

mkb — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 20:44:10 -0800

silence: that link is a bit NSFW (boobs)

By: jack_mo

jack_mo — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 05:53:27 -0800

2or3whiskeysodas wrote: That is honestly pretty amazingly cool. But (unless I'm missing it) I certainly don't see anything on the artist's site indicating that he got this to happen in real-time. I'm thinking that at least some of the sounds were sampled and/or multitracked. If I am missing something saying that that's not the case, please do point it out so that this guy can be made my god. The photo on his Vimeo homepage of all the gear set up with mics for recording at least implies that it was done in real-time, but I was wondering the same thing. Lovely as the video is, it might have been more impressive if it were just a static shot of all the machines blooping away together live.

By: sparkletone

sparkletone — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 05:31:55 -0800

Man or Astro-man? a sadly-hiatus'd surf rock band included a song made with a dot-matrix printer on their final(?) album. The song's called A Simple Text File. I'd link it, but I can't find a streaming copy anywhere... They'd "perform" the song live by wheeling a printer out on stage, and pointing a mic at it and then leaving to go get a beer or something. Good stuff.

By: jack_mo

jack_mo — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 10:07:12 -0800

I just got a press release announcing that Houston won the Newbery Medal and The Bram Stoker Award for his degree show work at Glasgow School of Art. The Newberry Medal is given to the top student in the final year. Is it too cynical of me to think that this massive viral video hit he made might have something to do with the award?

By: archagon

archagon — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 18:06:47 -0800

The cinematography is definitely what made it work for me.

By: benzo8

benzo8 — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 00:54:49 -0800

jack_mo: "I just got a press release announcing that Houston won the Newbery Medal and The Bram Stoker Award for his degree show work at Glasgow School of Art. The Newberry Medal is given to the top student in the final year. Is it too cynical of me to think that this massive viral video hit he made might have something to do with the award?" Well, any modern artist will tell you that the business is 25% craft and 75% publicity these days, so maybe he deserved the award on the back of that alone... Of course, this means that success is no indicator of artistic ability, but you just need to q.v. with people such as Tracey Emin and Damien Hurst to show that that's the norm. If the rest of his work was of a similar quality to this video though, I think he might have plausibly won on merit too...