A second opportunity to remix OMD for a competition presented itself very late last year, this time for their single ‘Sister Marie Says’.

This one really only came together when time was running out at the end of January… I mixed and arranged it whilst learning a new DAW (Presonus Studio One) the weekend before it was due.

Again, minimal vocals (otherwise it ends up sounding like dodgy Eurotrance)… took more parts from the original than I’d intended (not that one would notice as further mangling ensued) and added a quite a few of my own.

Many thanks to Gregg Hermetech, who mastered it at very short notice.

The winner was announced last week (oddly enough it’s of the Eurotrance variety) so I think I’m free to post my mix now.

An mp3 version can be downloaded here.

[ It's the first time I've really noticed audible artifacts when uploading tracks to online players... best to download for full quality ]

I think my remix competition fervor is worn out for now… time to get back to taoyoyo projects.

So when OMD (one of my favorite bands of all time) offered all the original parts to their recent single, “If You Want It’, I thought I would try my hand at this whole remix competition game.

I have to say that the track is not one of my favorites – lyrically or musically – so there were not any parts I held sacred. Besides that, there had already been several versions that had planted the vocals almost wholesale over a new backing track. (I’m sat firmly in the camp that believes a remix is a chance to do something different rather than a variation on a theme).

I wanted to set some restrictions and decided to limit myself to only using the source audio parts that were provided… I could edit, chop, mangle, effect and rearrange any way I wanted.

I had no preconceived idea of what genre I was working towards but through the process of discarding parts I didn’t like and mangling the parts I did, two styles emerged: one electro-dub, the other Krautrock-inspired (which is ironic as one of OMD’s original inspirations was NEU!). In the end I decided to combine the two and this is the final result.

The competition closes today, have no idea if it’ll win anything (especially competing alongside ‘The Christmas Rap version’) but it was a cool experiment for me personally and it’s been interesting to hear some of the other interpretations.

An mp3 version can be downloaded here.