Contests that let fans remix a track by their favourite artists have been around for years. Well, the future is here. k-os recently announced that the master tracks of the 11 songs on his new album, Yes!, which is due out in spring ’09, are available for remixing through the music
collaboration site IndabaMusic.com. You can enter the contest for each song, and either download the tracks, or remix them online by using Indaba’s own website interface. The winner of each contest will win $1,000, and possibly also a spot on a companion CD to the disc itself. It’s hard to believe that even in 2008, a major label would let one of their signings make
their masters freely available, but apparently this is real, so props to k-os and Universal Canada for such a forward-thinking idea. I was going to make a joke about how you could remix it by taking his vocals off, but honestly this contest is too amazing to make fun of. (Via Wired Listening Post)
TAKE DIRECTION
Radiohead have allowed Japanese site Wowwow to film one of their concerts in Saitama, outside Tokyo, with 12 cameras. Fans can use the website to make their own edit of “15 Step,” so if I want to watch drummer Phil Selway during the whole thing, it’s my choice. It’s a staggering innovation, but tech nerds of the world, I have a request: can you find at least one band other than Radiohead to experiment with? Surely some engineer wants to give us the option to turn the latest Beyonce video into the “bootylicious edit.” (www.wowow.co.jp/music/radiohead/special/)
MP3 OF THE WEEK
Beenie Man and Wiley, “Rolex It Up (The Heatwave Refix)”: Wiley’s grime-house scorcher “Wearing My Rolex” hasn’t blown up this side of the pond yet. If UK crew Heatwave’s brilliant welding of a Beenie Man freestyle to Wiley’s frame doesn’t do the trick, nothing will. (http://www.theheatwave.co.uk/music/item/beenieman-rolexitup/)