Indaba Music announce that Peter Gabriel has invited fans and fellow musicians to "scratch his back" by remixing his classic track, "Games Without Frontiers." The "Games Without Frontiers" Remix Contest launched on May 20th, with a six-week submission period followed by a two-week public voting period. One lucky Grand Prize winner will be flown to London to spend a day mastering their remix at Gabriel's Real World Studios. The winning version of "Games Without Frontiers" will then be released as an official digital single on iTunes.
With this competition, Gabriel is continuing his interest in crowd-sourcing talented collaborators through technology, while Indaba community members have the opportunity to team up with one of music's biggest names. In the spirit of Gabriel's recent Scratch My Back album of cover songs, the "Games Without Frontiers" Remix Contest fits right in line with the singer's interest in a non-traditional covers record. Scratch My Back is the first part of a series of song exchanges in which Gabriel and other leading artists reinterpret each other's songs, and finds Gabriel performing personalized versions of tunes by David Bowie, Radiohead, Lou Reed, Neil Young, Arcade Fire, and more. Many of these artists, in turn, are recording reciprocal covers of Gabriel songs, which will follow on the forthcoming sequel, I'll Scratch Yours.
"I have always been fascinated with the craft and the process of putting together a good song," said Gabriel. "I always wanted to do an album of other people's songs; but rather than do a traditional cover record, I though it would be much more interesting to have a song exchange project, in which I would ask some of my favorite writers if they would swap tunes."
"Peter is always up for hearing other peoples' ways of doing music," explains Gabriel's longtime collaborator and producer, Richard Chappell. "It's what keeps him going. He's never precious about keeping it going in one way. He enjoys chaos, and gets off on how one person's idea can trigger another's - a kind of musical pass-the-parcel."
Gabriel is opening up this collaboration to the next level with the "Games Without Frontiers" Remix Contest, allowing remixers to reassemble and re-interpret his classic song in whatever forms their imaginations allow. Each month -on the full moon- a double A-sided single is being released that pairs one of the songs from Scratch My Back with a reciprocal Peter Gabriel track recorded by that respective songwriter. The best remix of "Games Without Frontiers," as judged by Gabriel, Chappell and Indaba Music's Mantis Evar, will thus have the honor of being commercially released as a AA iTunes single, paired with Gabriel's original, sometime in the fourth quarter of 2010. The winning remixer will also be granted a share of the track's royalties, assigned collector's edition of the Scratch My Back box set, and a free year-long Platinum membership to Indaba Music.
In addition, two runners-up will each receive signed Peter Gabriel lithographs and free year-long Platinum Memberships to Indaba Music, while 10 honorable mentions will receive year-long Pro memberships to Indaba and an enhanced double CD of Scratch My Back.
Contestants for the "Games Without Frontiers" Remix Contest will be able to utilize their own software or to take advantage of Indaba's recently unveiled MANTIS, its new web-based Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). Mantis enables anyone, from anywhere in the world, to record, edit and mix high-quality audio - for free. Based on feedback from hundreds of thousands of users, MANTIS sports an elegant redesign and marked increases in speed, stability and usability, and has already been embraced by everyone from DIY bedroom producers to respected pros including reggae/hip-hop singer Matisyahu and Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo.
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