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GP Jonny Greenwood Radiohead

New Radiohead Remix Contest

w.a.s.t.e. sent out an email last week about a new remix contest that is going on:

To coincide with asking radio stations to think about playing Reckoner we are breaking up the tune into pieces for you to remix. After the insane response we got from the Nude remix stems and the site that was dedicated to your remixes…

Unique visitors: 6,193,776, Page Views: 29,090,134, Hits: 58,340,512, Bandwidth: 10.666 Terabytes, Number of mixes: 2,252, Number of votes: 461,090, Number of track listens: 1,745,304

…we thought it only fair to do the same with a tune that at least is in 4/4. You can get the stems (the different instruments/elements) from here
Sample, cut, take the sounds, whatever. Play it in a club. Or your room. Then if you want you can upload your finished mixes to http://www.radioheadremix.com and be judged by everyone else. You can create a widget allowing votes from your own site, Facebook or MySpace to be sent through too. To start things off we asked James Holden and Diplo to do their versions.

Oh, and by the way, if you weren’t lucky enough to get your hands on one of our recycled plastic bottle shirts at a show this summer, you’ll be glad to hear we’ve made some more and they are available at the w.a.s.t.e. shop here

All at w.a.s.t.e x

Categories
In Rainbows Radiohead

Fan-made “Nude” Video

Check out this fan-made video for “Nude” that Stefan Ringelschwandtner made. Pretty cool….

Radiohead – Nude (unofficial) from Stefan Ringelschwandtner on Vimeo.

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In Rainbows Radiohead

Nigel Godrich on “Nude”

godrich200.jpgThere’s an excellent article from Word Magazine with Radiohead’s “unofficial 6th man” and long-time producer, Nigel Godrich. Nigel is featured in an article called “The Music Producers” and he explains the very long, but amazing, history of “Nude.”

Nigel Godrich On NUDE by Radiohead (2007)

Nigel Godrich started out at RAK Studios, where he engineered Carnival Of Light by Ride and The Bends by Radiohead. He has produced Radiohead’s last four albums, and has also worked with Travis, Paul McCartney (Chaos And Creation In The Back Yard) and on Beck’s last three albums. He remixed U2’s Walk On and produced Band Aid 20’s Do They Know It’s Christmas?

Thom’s very prolific, he’s always writing, and one time I made a list of songs that he had that they hadn’t recorded. Radiohead have a little catalogue of songs that just never get done. It’s almost because it’s their best material and no version is ever quite good enough. It’s too precious to them. I said, “You have to record them, because one day you’re going to die and they’ll go with you. It’s criminal. And if you don’t fucking record them, I’m going to fucking do it! I’ll do a covers album!” And Nude was one of these songs.

After The Bends was all done and dusted, I’d seen them at a show and they said they’d been thinking about us all working together. We’d done a bunch of B-sides on The Bends and it had gone really well, so we hatched a plan to have a couple of little try-outs to see how it would work.

We booked a weekend in the studio to start recording what would become OK Computer, although it took a long time to really get into that. We recorded two songs; one was called Big Boots – actually, it was called Man O’ War at the time, which is another great lost Radiohead classic. The other thing we tried to record was a song called Nude. Thom had just written it and it was almost a different song to the version on In Rainbows. It’s recognisable, but it had different lyrics and it was a lot straighter. The idea was for it to be like an Al Green track. It had a Hammond going through it on the version we recorded that weekend. They liked it, it was deemed a great success. But then for some reason everyone went off it. We tried to record it a couple more times for OK Computer, probably about three times for Kid A and another three times for Hail To The Thief. But somehow it had gone.

We had a little holiday from each other. The band tried to record on their own, which – surprise, surprise – didn’t work. Then they tried working with someone else, which also didn’t work. During that time I went to see Colin, the bass player, and he played me a rough live version of Nude that they’d done in rehearsals. He’d written his new bassline, which transformed it from something very straight into something that had much more of a rhythmic flow. The chorus had been taken out – very Radiohead! – and there was this new vocal break and this new end section. It sounded like they were somehow terrified playing it, but it sounded OK. We recorded it three times and the final one – which we did in their house and then overdubbed in Covent Garden – is what you hear today.

Finally, for some inexplicable reason, it made it out! With Radiohead we always say, “It doesn’t matter how we get there, as long as we end up at the right place,” but actually I think the real skill is being able to recognise something that lands on your lap and is fully formed and wonderful. A big part of my job is trying to persuade Thom that just because this thing happened very quickly, it doesn’t mean it’s not great. He doesn’t understand what it is about what he does that’s great. He doesn’t know or understand where it comes from.

Songs have a kind of window where they are really most alive – and you have to capture it. Nude missed its window, and it took a lot of reinvention to bring it back to the place where we could capture it again in a way that resonated for the people playing it. It was essentially the same song; nothing had really changed. What has changed are the people playing it.

Categories
In Rainbows Radiohead

Amazing fan video

This has been spread all over the internet over the last few days, including Dead Air Space. James Houston created a remix of “Nude” using a bunch of old computer hardware. He explains, “Based on the lyric (and alternate title) ‘Big Ideas: Don’t get any’ I 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.”

Watch for yourself. Pretty amazing…


Big Ideas (Don’t get any) from 1030 on Vimeo.

Categories
Ed O'Brien In Rainbows Radiohead Thom Yorke tour

Ed and Thom on BBC 6 Music, talk about In Rainbows and touring

radio205x150.jpgIf you missed Ed and Thom on Steve Lamacq’s BBC 6 Music program, don’t worry! You can listen to it by clicking this link. You’ll need RealPlayer, though.

Some highlights:
– Thom being asked what he did the day the album was released online: “I seem to remember sitting at home thinking there’s something I’m supposed to be doing today. I didn’t do anything that day.”

– Thom and Ed talk about how they recorded part of In Rainbows in a dilapidated mansion and slept in caravans on the grounds. Nigel wanted to throw the band “in an uncomfortable” situation. “Bodysnatchers” was recorded in a live take there.

– Nigel limited the band to about 15 or 16 songs to focus on to record.

– Thom on why “Reckoner” is completely different than the live version: “Because it’s not the same song. There was a song called Reckoner. I wrote a second part to it and then Jonny wrote another part to it and the song as it was left the building.”

– Thom on why “Nude” took so long to be released: “I think it’s because I used to hate the way I sung it.”

– “Down is the New Up” is described as “mental” by Thom. “Wait till you hear it.” He really wanted it to be on the album but according to Ed, it didn’t fit.

– Thom talked about all the “mad theories on the net”, specifically about the theory of 10s.

– Ed remarked that he was happy that Thom’s voice on In Rainbows was upfront and not “pulled back.”

– If they could relive one Radiohead moment again, both Thom and Ed would relive Glastonbury 1997 where the lights and PAs blew up.

– Speaking of Glastonbury, it sounds like they may be playing it this year if “they want us.”

– Though not finalized or confirmed, they may be playing the US for a couple of weeks starting in May. Europe would follow in June/July. Again, nothing is confirmed!

Categories
Phil Selway Radiohead

Phil on msg board

Phil made an appearance on the official Radiohead message board and was asked if the song “Reckoner” was dead, which he simply replied, “and buried RIP.” Then someone asked about “Nude (aka Big Ideas)” and he answered, “it’s just on a sabbatical.”

(thanks Scott)