Radiohead’s Thom Yorke has done extensive work with hip-hop artists over the years, including the late MF DOOM, whose 2009 Born Like This single “Gazzillion Ear” Yorke remixed for its original release. However, it turns out Yorke actually made two remixes at the time: The one that made its way onto the original single release was his “Monkey Hustle” version, and his “Man On Fire” version was shelved for the next 11 years. Today, though, as British independent label Lex Records celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, the label has been putting out remixes from its catalog — which includes the “Man On Fire” version of “Gazzillion Ear.”
The remix is a spacey, glitchy, eerie-sounding affair, stripping away most of the percussion and letting DOOM’s intricate lyrics take center stage (the two remixes actually take their titles from a pair of linked bars in the second verse in which DOOM uses both phrases).
DOOM has received a slew of tributes from both fans and his musical peers over the last eight months after his family announced his October death on New Year’s Eve, 2020. A street in his New York hometown was renamed in his honor, while the verses he’d recorded for artists like IDK, Your Old Droog, and his group Czarface have slowly trickled out. Meanwhile, elsewhere on the remix tip, The Avalanches added a verse from the late masked rapper on a remix of their song “Tonight May Have To Last Me All My Life.”