When melancholic music aficionados Radiohead launched an online competition looking to find a creative remix of “Nude,” a track on their last album “In Rainbows,” the stock standard entrant looked to deal with the song’s pesky 63bpm and 6/8 timing by switching the pacing to a more conventional 4/4 timing and papering over any glaring lack of originality by adding direct song samples taken from the original track.
Glasgow School of Art graduate wows YouTube with defunct hardware recreation of Radiohead\'s "Nude". Image: James Houston.
Not so James Houston, a graduate of Glasgow’s School of Art , who instead applied lashings of creativity to the task by gathering together a static band of consumer electronic devices programmed to collectively issue forth their internal operational noises in a cacophonous din that sounds extraordinarily like Radiohead at their haunting best.
Commenting that Radiohead lead singer Thom Yorke had given an interview with NPR radio poking fun at the competition based on its ridiculously challenging nature, Houston jumped at the opportunity to not only prove Yorke wrong and produce something inventive for his degree course, but to also “take the piss a bit, as the contest seemed to be in that spirit.”
The culmination of that “take the piss” attitude saw Houston employing the unconventional musical talents of a Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer as the piece’s rhythm and lead guitarist, while an Epson LX-81 Dot Matrix Printer hammered out the drum beat, a Hewlett-Packard ScanJet 3C handled bass guitar responsibilities, and an exposed hard drive array (seriously) delivered a vocal performance that Thom Yorke himself would have trouble replicating.
After using a Radiohead lyric for titling the final product, Houston’s hugely impressive feat of electronic coercion, which is called “Big Ideas: Don’t Get Any,” has since found its way onto video-sharing Web site YouTube, where it has so far amassed almost 250,000 views and a wealth of praise from stunned Radiohead fans and casual site visitors alike.
Modest to a fault regarding the fascinating flow of sound he’s managed to squeeze from a collection of archaic and defunct hardware, a self-deprecating Houston comments that the piece “doesn’t sound great, as it’s not supposed to.”
However, given that Houston has been fielding in excess of 500 e-mails per day since the music video first hit YouTube, it’s fair to say that the appreciative public don’t particularly share his down-played opinion as to the effect he has managed to engineer.
Moreover, interest and reaction has been so great that Houston has apparently received a record deal offer and has also seen his video creation posted by Radiohead on the band’s official Web site. Sadly, despite the flood of adoration and the nod from Radiohead, Houston was unable to finish the piece before the competition deadline closed.
“I’m a video maker, and not a musician. To be honest, I’ve been completely overwhelmed by the huge response,” commented Houston in a Creative Review interview in which he describes how the project was merely a “wee video” he set out to create as part of his degree qualification. “It’s grown out of control,” he added.
Click below to view and, more importantly, hear the “Big Ideas: Don’t Get Any” clip.
Click HERE to view more of James Houston's creative projects.
TZizzoJun 20th, 2008 - 15:47:03
I don't totally understand this story-a little on the techie side, and I'm not even a big Radio Head fan, but that was really cool. Anyone who says something like this isn't art is crazy, very cool!
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