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6 December 2010
Last updated at 11:50 ET
By Ian Youngs
Entertainment reporter, BBC News
An anti-X Factor "supergroup" has recorded its entry in the race for this year's Christmas number one - the sound of silence.
Orbital, Pendulum and Madness star Suggs were among those who did nothing in a recording studio in London.
They were recreating composer John Cage's experimental work 4'33", the sound of an orchestra not playing.
They hope to emulate Rage Against the Machine, who beat X Factor winner Joe McElderry to number one last year.
This year's protest - dubbed Cage Against the Machine - currently has 62,000 Facebook fans.
Guillemots frontman Fyfe Dangerfield, Dan Le Sac and Scroobius Pip and members of Unkle, The Kooks and Heaven 17 also took part in the unconventional session at Dean Street Studios in Soho.
Paul Epworth, who won the Brit Award for best producer this year, was at the controls to record the four-minute, 33-second "performance".
Before the session, Xfm DJ Eddy Temple-Morris, who helped organise the event, said: "We're going to plug everybody in.
"We're going to have a drum kit with a few drummers, some bass players, some guitarists.
"I don't know what the noise will be. I imagine there will be the tweak of a leather jacket, a cough, a s******, a muffled laugh.
"You'll hear whatever happens in that room at that time. That's the performance."
The single will raise money for five charities, including Calm, a service for young men at risk of suicide, and the British Tinnitus Association.
Youth Music, Nordoff Robbins music therapy and Sound & Music, a charity promoting challenging new music and sound art, will also benefit from the proceeds.
The song is 5/1 to be Christmas number one, according to bookmaker William Hill.
But it is still a relative outsider compared with the eventual X Factor winner, who is 4/7 favourite.
'Cruel' spectacle Temple-Morris said 4'33" was chosen because it was the "most avant garde piece of music ever made".
He said he objected to The X Factor because of the way it humiliates contestants who do not make the grade.
"It's really cruel, I think, taking people and giving them false hope," he said.
The show, he continued, was guilty of "putting them on that stage and basically laughing at them like the village idiot in medieval times".
Cage Against the Machine follows the success of another silent "song" that recently made the charts.
The Royal British Legion's 2 Minute Silence, released in the form of a silent video featuring Prime Minister David Cameron, actor David Tennant and Radiohead singer Thom Yorke, reached number 20 in November.
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Orbital, Pendulum and Madness star Suggs were among those who did nothing in a recording studio in London.
They were recreating composer John Cage's experimental work 4'33", the sound of an orchestra not playing.
They hope to emulate Rage Against the Machine, who beat X Factor winner Joe McElderry to number one last year.
This year's protest - dubbed Cage Against the Machine - currently has 62,000 Facebook fans.
Guillemots frontman Fyfe Dangerfield, Dan Le Sac and Scroobius Pip and members of Unkle, The Kooks and Heaven 17 also took part in the unconventional session at Dean Street Studios in Soho.
Paul Epworth, who won the Brit Award for best producer this year, was at the controls to record the four-minute, 33-second "performance".
Before the session, Xfm DJ Eddy Temple-Morris, who helped organise the event, said: "We're going to plug everybody in.
"We're going to have a drum kit with a few drummers, some bass players, some guitarists.
"I don't know what the noise will be. I imagine there will be the tweak of a leather jacket, a cough, a s******, a muffled laugh.
"You'll hear whatever happens in that room at that time. That's the performance."
The single will raise money for five charities, including Calm, a service for young men at risk of suicide, and the British Tinnitus Association.
Youth Music, Nordoff Robbins music therapy and Sound & Music, a charity promoting challenging new music and sound art, will also benefit from the proceeds.
The song is 5/1 to be Christmas number one, according to bookmaker William Hill.
But it is still a relative outsider compared with the eventual X Factor winner, who is 4/7 favourite.
'Cruel' spectacle Temple-Morris said 4'33" was chosen because it was the "most avant garde piece of music ever made".
He said he objected to The X Factor because of the way it humiliates contestants who do not make the grade.
"It's really cruel, I think, taking people and giving them false hope," he said.
The show, he continued, was guilty of "putting them on that stage and basically laughing at them like the village idiot in medieval times".
Cage Against the Machine follows the success of another silent "song" that recently made the charts.
The Royal British Legion's 2 Minute Silence, released in the form of a silent video featuring Prime Minister David Cameron, actor David Tennant and Radiohead singer Thom Yorke, reached number 20 in November.
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