When James Houston realized that Radiohead was having a bit of a wind up with its fans by holding a contest to remix the single "Nude," he decided to jab back with this recreation of the song using very old computer hardware.

"Thom Yorke joked at the ridiculousness of [the remix] in an interview for NPR radio, hinting that they set the competition 'for a laugh' and to find out what would come out of such an impossible task," Houston said. "I decided to take the piss a bit, as the contest seemed to be in that spirit."

The difficulty with traditional electronic musicians remixing "Nude" is that it's in 6/8 time with only 63 bpm, while most club-type music clocks around 120 bpm and is in 4/4 timing. As Houston points out, "It's near impossible to mix a waltz beat into a DJ set ... This resulted in lots of generic entries consisting of a typical 4/4 beat, but with arbitrary clips from 'Nude' thrown in so that they qualified for the contest.

Houston entitles it "Big Ideas: Don't Get Any," which was the song's working title when it was written way back in 1997/1998.  "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.  It doesn't sound great, as it's not supposed to.

Here's the gear he used:

Sinclair ZX Spectrum - Guitars (rhythm & lead)
Epson LX-81 Dot Matrix Printer - Drums
HP Scanjet 3c - Bass Guitar
Hard Drive array - Act as a collection of bad speakers - Vocals & FX

Check out his video of the remix below. Be patient, the song kicks in about a minute into the video. [Hack A Day]