Reckoner Remix Showcase Bonanza!

One things fer sure, Canned Applause <3′s Reckoner. The CEO of CA Towers has got it tastefully set across his opulent stomach in gothic lettering like 2pac’s ‘Thug Life’ tattoo and its celestial string-laden beauty never fails to leave us blubbing into our morning oatmeal almost twice as hard as usual whenever it glides elegantly out of the speakers and into our little brainiums.

After the success of the Nude Remix competition, Radiohead sagely decided to try the whole thing out again, only this time with the best song they’ve written this century. As thousands of producers the world over flail wildly about their macbooks in the rush to upload their Fruity Loops 54-crafted musical afterbirth that sounds like a drum machine having a panic attack, CA knew something had to be done. In these days of drag, it can be tiring sorting the sonic wheat from the aural chaff and dredging up the perfect remix from those digital depths flush with the legions of lesser efforts. The one that is as blissful as angels descending from Heaven to feed you fistfuls of esctacy as the Virgin Mary disgraces herself up and down your midriff. The one that sounds like Dionysus fisting your cerebral cortex. The one that reminds you how much beauty there is in the world, how life is only a dream and we are but the imagination of ourselves.

But if one thing IS fer sure, it’s that you can’t count on the votes system over at http://www.radioheadremix.com/ – cream rises but shit floats in the bureaucracy of democracy. So Canned Applause has bravely sauntered forth onto the infinite digital plains of Youtube and selected the best of the best, the remixes most likely to weld a smile onto your gaping fizzog whilst your ears bleed with giddy glee. We Care Because You Do.

The Reckon I’m Rio Remix – Trance like poppers and European Bob. Sorted.

The Cathartic Mix – As woozy and blissful as sucking the poison out of a tranquiliser dart and staring into a kaleidoscope until mum makes you go outside for some fresh air.

The Metalion Remix – This one is like having your nose broken: initial confusion and terror that slowly gives way to a vague sense of elation.

Three Leaves & A Head RMX – Getting repetitive yet? This one reminds me of all my childhood pets. In order.

Adam ‘Dr Buckles’ Buxton Song Wars Mix – Funnie stuff from BBC 6Music’s resident chucklelump.

Which one is going to get Thom slowgrinding lustily up against Johnny at a late night playback? Which one is as sultry as Phil? As forgettable as Ed? Which one will Colin listen to in his car on the way to a lock & key party? All answers must be written in lipstick on a postcard then thrown into the sea.

B-Side Sunday.

As the drunken candour and closing-time camaraderie of Saturday night gives way to the sombre ruminations of Sunday morning, the grey-eyed congregation from the surrounding indie villages slowly fill the pews of B-Side Sunday, hungry for another shred of sonic absolution from on high.

Looking like the sort who visits hardware stores for sexual gratification, the vicar enters. Carrying a Bible clutched with erudite assurance to his chest and fixing the congregation with a damn-you-sir! look in his eyes, our man begins his sermon. Before long, he’s ranting away like a Tourettes-stricken Noam Chomsky after his fifth line of flake-coke, banging on with all the subtlety of Ron Jeremy in a nunnery after lights out. Good thing he came packing this fire and brimstone too, just take a peek at your copy of the Daily Mail! With sinnery of this severity, B-Side Sunday has to pull out the big guns if there’s any hope of Hell not accosting Heaven’s accounting department for funding to open a new wing in 2009. I mean, there’s a recession on, for God’s sake. Step forward, Radiohead.

Back when ‘Idioteque’ and ’15 Step’ were just dirty dreams that would make Thom’s mum tut at the state they left his bedsheets, Radiohead had broken free of the albatross that was ‘Creep’ and were beginning to evolve from the wide-eyed thunderbolt indie of their first two albums into the darker, more digitised vistas of career highpoint ‘OK Computer’ – a development succinctly captured on the celestial track cherrypicked for today’s B-Side Sunday. Featured as the flipside to 1996 single ‘Street Spirit (Fade Out)’, ‘Talk Show Host’ rose to mainstream attention on the soundtrack to blockbuster ‘Romeo + Juliet’, becoming a mainstay in Radiohead setlists ever since. It’s a track that quietly reflected Thom’s penchant for the trip-hop electronica of Tricky and Portishead, acting as a forebear to the increasingly leftfield direction the band would pursue on subsequent releases ‘Kid A’ and ‘Amnesiac’. Ultimately, this is the sound of a band striving into new territories and getting it right; as warmly horrible as John McCririck coming on to you in a sauna, but with all the same lingering sense of perverse enjoyment.

As the dying embers of ‘Talk Show Host’ ring throughout the church, eyes roll back and jaws fall open amongst the faithful as they bathe in the eternal light and love of B-Side Sunday’s divine glory. It’s like staring directly into that briefcase in ‘Pulp Fiction’ whilst Angelina Jolie massages your adrenal gland and the congregation responds accordingly, applauding until their hands are nought but gummy and bleeding stubs. With adulation and praise still ringing around the church, the vicar slips on his Wayfarers and sneaks quietly out the back door, piling into a waiting taxi bound for Bungalow 8. As Calum Best leans over and offers him three hits of Demerol, the faintest smile plays upon the vicar’s lips as he searches around for a bottle of whiskey to take the edge off. Turns out there’s some in the glove box; JD to boot. Same as it ever was. Amen.