Remix Complements and Compliments
‘Remix is an essential act of RW creativity. It is the expression of a freedom to take “the songs of the day or the old songs” and create with them’ (Lessig 56). One 2014 club hit neatly illustrates this principle: songwriter, producer, remixer, and DJ, Edu Imbernon collaborates with vocalist and producer Sutja Gutiérrez who sings the lyrics from English rock band Joy Division’s 1979 Candidate (1), retaining the essential sounding, reminiscent of Depeche Mode’s early work, but over a completely different musical arrangement: the rock/new wave sound has been replaced by a progressive techno beat, where the new composition’s title is Your Rules (2), which is a phrase from the original lyrics. Your Rules ‘does not compete with or weaken the market for the creative work that gets remixed’ (Lessig 56): Your Rules both complements and compliments Candidate.
Remix and Intertextuality in Zero Gravity Split
You have probably seen that cool series of Volvo Truck adverts where stunning experiments are being performed live to demonstrate the stability and reliability of the trucks. One of them was the Epic Split where Jean-Claude Van Damme performs a split standing between two Volvo trucks moving backwards and slowly drifting apart.
This advert stirred quite a bit of attention and soon a Hungarian CGI company released a parody video called Greetings from Chuck (The Epic Christmas Split). In it, the action star is performing a split standing on the wings of two jets flying high in the air. But that's not all – ten soldiers in combat uniform are standing on Chuck Norris' shoulders, making a Christmas tree!
Van Damme's response soon followed in the Zero Gravity Split. In the video, Van Damme performs his epic split standing on the wings of two satellites orbiting the Earth. Can you go more epic than this?
Restrictive Remix: Political Censorship on Western Music in Communist Bulgaria in the 1960s–1980s
ABSTRACT:
The article studies the impact of a state policy of restriction of access to and influence of Western music on music entertainment and production in countries in the Eastern Bloc during the 1960s–1980s, focusing on the situation in Communist-era Bulgaria. A type of musical works is described that are created in a censorial system having an inhibitive approach to English-language works originating in Britain or the United States. A variety of Bulgarian works are compared to their prototypes, discussing the distortions of the originals and the introduction of moralising features under a politically determined agenda by comparing the lyrics of the original and the remix. The long term impact of this policy of discouragement of Western musical works and production of localised versions is assessed in the present, a quarter of a century after the fall of the Communist regime in Bulgaria.
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