Influential electronic musician Thomas Dolby has produced a stunning remix of Radiohead’s current single ‘Nude’. The dreamy, semi-ambient mix is reminiscent of Dolby’s work as a collaborator with the likes of Joni Mitchell, Prefab Sprout and Joan Armatrading. Continuing the innovative marketing approach for their album ‘In Rainbows’, Radiohead has allowed users to download individual ‘stems’ of the song to create their own remix, and upload it for public listening and voting. Thomas Dolby has never met Radiohead, and his remix was unsolicited. Instead, he simply downloaded to song parts from iTunes for $0.99 each and created his own mix, submitting it to http://www.radioheadremix.com along with nearly 2000 other fans. Most of these remixers are amateur enthusiasts and virtually unknown, but Dolby is perhaps the best-known participant to date. He explains how it came about: ‘I was trying out my new wireless router to see if I could get reception down on the beach in front of my house,’ said Dolby. ‘Sitting there shivering beside the North Sea with my laptop, huddled in a blanket and listening to Radiohead’s ‘Nude’ stems on iTunes, with the waves lapping the shore and a crowd of seagulls fighting over a crab shell, I got an idea for a lovely remix.’ Entitled ‘Nude (Bathing In The Icefloe Mix)’. There are no plans to release it commercially. Thomas Dolby—these days often regarded as the original steampunk–made a return to touring last year after a hiatus of nearly 15 years. During this time his technology company Beatnik Inc was responsible for engineering the ringtone synthesiser embedded in nearly 800 million mobile phones made by Nokia and other manufacturers. In the mid-90’s Beatnik also powered the first ever Web-wide remix contests for artists like Queen Latifah, Britney Spears, N’Sync and David Bowie. How does Dolby feel about being on the ‘other end of the wire’ and submitting his own Radiohead remix along with thousands of fans? ‘Well as a fan myself I’m happy to pay homage to Radiohead just because I adore their music. But objectively, it’s great that a band of their stature would open up their intricately crafted music to regular users. And I love the fact that anyone with affordable music software gets to have a go, and might end up with the most votes. It’s a true meritocracy in this amazing age of YouTube and MySpace, where big record labels and stadium rock bands are on level playing field with the hordes of brilliant amateurs out there who have never had an audience of their own.’
Hear Thomas Dolby’s ‘Nude (Bathing In The Icefloe Mix)’ at http://www.radioheadremix.com/remix/?id=1825
