from the "duct tape my heart" remix contest, july 2004

duct tape my heart (chinese theater remix)
by krister petersson from sweden

Krister is 29 years old and has been involved in synth bands since 1989. Although quite new in the remixing scene, he has remixed for other bands in the past two years, like Daybehavior, colony 5, color theory,
royal visionairs, and eurovision. although his remix is more aligned with a club mix than with the more
experimental or genre-bending remixes we received, the overall vibe and aesthetic of krister's version really resonated with us. the energy of his drums and mono synths really blends nicely and creates a solid dance mix, much like Stephen Groth's (apop) remix of "Tracey Gold." way to go Krister!

we had 2 runners-up in the contest, being Izzy Maxwell who turned in an amazing version with chopped up live drums, time signature changes, and re-harmed guitar parts, and Matt Mercer, who really went in an interesting direction with a slowly evolving 12/8 ambient techno remix.

we'd also like to give a shout-out to a few other stand-out remixes that piqued our ears.
Nick 'Fix Yo Shoe B*tch' Flavor supplied us with his hysterical Rap Remix. I think we listened to the 3rd verse like 20 times, and comes complete with a whistling solo!!
Kali turned in a great high energy techno remix with lots of great synth programming and vocal manipulations.
Secret Agent Gel really changed things up a bit in his walk like a freezepop remix, complete with a strange half time feel and inventive bass line and strange bursts of glitchy noises

freezepop really wants to thank all of the amazing remixers who spent their free hours toiling over their mixes. All of them were really great and each had something that was unique and fresh. This was a pretty challenging song to remix from a harmonic point of view given that it modulates several times over the course of the song. This makes it harder on the remixer to mess with the chords and melody because you still want the vocal melody to sound good. Thanx again to all the remixers... excellent work! we highly suggest that all who entered put their remixes up on the web for everyone to hear. The best place would be to post them to the files section of our yahoo group.

from the "freezepop forever" remix contest, july 2002

after much deliberation and debate we have chosen the remix by Paul Costello as our winner!
click here to listen to his remix.

paul's remix really caught our attention for a variety of reasons. it was fun and refreshing and had nice chord changes that differed from the original. the vocals were snipped up and turned into new fun little melodies that worked well with his new chords. it has a sentimental sound to it that we all appreciated.

choosing this 1 remix as a winner was difficult for the 3 of us since we each have very different opinions on what makes a good remix. we decided early on that production/sonic quality was not going to be a critical factor since some remixers were using minimal home studios and others would have access to much more professional sounding equipment. this was hard for me to get around since production is a huge part of making music for me so i had to cut some slack on this point : ) in fact, we differed so much in the remixes we liked that we decided to also choose a personal favorite remix as well...

liz chose the Gothsicles (I, Liner remix) because it is "evil-sounding."

sean chose the CSE remix by slaveindvstries. he found it to be professional yet maintaining a certain naive quality that seems central to freezepop. Hearing the vocal tracks, specifically, against a lot of different kinds of backgrounds was interesting and he thought this was the closest to our aesthetic without copying us. As a fan of this type of music i enjoyed the programming and specifically the percussion. It wasn't the most slick of the bunch but its 'heart' was in the right place. i really liked this remix because of the lo-fi casio-ness of it and the funny sampled bridge still makes me laugh every time i hear it.

i chose the remix by chris child because it was excellently programmed and he spent a great deal of time changing the harmonic content of the song, making great sounds and processing vocals. plus the ending is just so dreamy it makes me warm all over...

so a big freezepop thanx goes out to all the remixers who spent their creative time and energy toiling over a frosty remix! we'll have to do this again real soon...
cheerz!
the duke