
In a Room with Radiohead - tintinnabula
http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/just-playing-in-a-room-with-friends/
======
atdt
If you were born at the right time, in the right place, with a suitably
brooding disposition, you got to grow up with this band. Pablo Honey was the
first album I ever bought, age 10. This was Israel and "Creep" had gotten big
after being featured in a racy television commercial for Castro, the clothing
company. It is not a very good record. Two years later, "The Bends" came out,
and gave the first real hint of the band's trajectory. "OK Computer", which
came out when I was fourteen, was the soundtrack to my teenage years: angry,
lonely, smart, scared, confused. (Fitter, happier..) I carried the liner notes
in my backpack. In my senior year of high school, "Kid A" came out, and I
found out the band had been listening to the same music I had been (Warp
Records, Aphex Twin, Autechre). "Amnesiac" was mostly forgettable, but by the
time "Hail to the Thief" and "In Rainbows" came out, I had -- like the band --
broken out of the self-serious and humorless teenage shell, and could
appreciate things like irony and fun and craft.

Do adolescents today have this kind of relationship with bands? That thing
Morrissey captured so well in "Rubber Ring": "But don't forget the songs /
That made you cry / And the songs that saved your life / Yes, you're older now
And you're a clever swine / But they were the only ones who ever stood by
you". The pop music landscape just seems so much broader now, so much more
diverse, and it moves so much faster, that it is hard for me to imagine
children and young adults having the same kind of abiding, intense association
with a particular act. It's probably a good thing!

~~~
rsp1984
> "Amnesiac" was mostly forgettable

Oh no no no! Why does this get repeated over and over?

Amnesiac is gold! It's really a more mature version of Kid A. Evolved. In my
opinion Kid A was the v1 product and Amnesiac was v2. Much more balanced and
much fewer "bugs" and issues. There's not a single weak track on Amnesiac,
whereas there are quite a few on Kid A.

To be honest I find Amnesiac is one of their best albums.

~~~
S_A_P
This times 1000000000!!! I don't even like kid a that much but find amnesiac
to at least have proper son structure. Pyramid song is the perfect haunting
melody. You and whose army is a great take on 1940s lounge music with out the
optimism. Amnesiac is probably my favorite radio head album

------
urs2102
Another example of the genius of Radiohead comes from the fact that in the
early days, Jonny Greenwood, Radiohead's brilliant guitarist, used to write
software to generate sounds the band would use in their music versus using
standard DAWs.

"So when I started on Max I felt like I’d got past all that, and didn’t have
to use someone else’s idea of what a delay, or a reverb, or a sequencer should
do, or should sound like – I could start from the ground, and think in terms
of sound and maths. It was like coming off the rails. Before there was all
this padding between the computer and me. Now there was a blank screen as a
starting point….." \- Greenwood [0]

[0]: [https://cycling74.com/2014/01/02/mini-interview-jonny-
greenw...](https://cycling74.com/2014/01/02/mini-interview-jonny-
greenwood/#.V0Fhycj3anM)

~~~
robotresearcher
This is slightly misleading. Max MSP is a visual programming tool. It does
allow low-level sound gen and processing, but it's not what most people
normally mean by 'write software'.

[https://cycling74.com/products/max/#.V0F3JldAuyo](https://cycling74.com/products/max/#.V0F3JldAuyo)

~~~
urs2102
By writing software, I was implying writing patches. Apologies for the lack of
clarity!

------
Bahamut
"For anyone with a nostalgic attachment to the notion that rock music is a
medium for meaningful artistic expression capable of shaping the wider
culture, the British band Radiohead is either a beacon of hope or the last
bearer of the torch"

This is quite pretentious - I don't view them as either, and I care about
artisticness in rock.

There are plenty of artists out in the wild experimenting with new genres of
rock, and creating new movements (albeit most haven't reached popular culture
excepting maybe the emergence of chiptune production techniques in popular
music, including in rock, but other genres such as hip hop as well).

Music isn't about influencing popular culture necessarily -that is incidental.
Any attachment to such a notion is vapid.

~~~
douche
Radiohead is rock music? No, just, no.

I never understood why people liked Radiohead, aside from it perhaps being the
hipster band to like for a while five or ten years ago.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
I'm fascinated because I _should_ like Radiohead, because they do the kinds of
things I'd usually be interested in - experiments with Max, and so on. And
clearly a lot of people like them.

But I just can't stand the music. To me, it sounds like the artistic
equivalent of wet grey cardboard.

I wish I could hear what people are hearing. But whatever it is, it's just not
there for me.

Edit: To add, I've long suspected that there's a weird imprinting process in
music. You literally imprint on the music and bands that affect you
emotionally when puberty hits. To outsiders it looks like a generational
thing, but in fact it's more physiological - your idea of "good music"
literally gets burned into your brain, and triggers a more generic set of
"this is good music" neural pathways that everyone shares.

~~~
mercer
The subjectivity of taste fascinates me. I can totally understand someone
hating Radiohead. I'm very sensitive to vocals, and I'm not really sure why I
can get past Thom Yorke's voice, where it's kept me from listening to many
other artists or bands that I really _want_ to like.

------
mudil
If you appreciate Radiohead, listen to Russian band Aktsyon. Totally
underappreciated in the West, but what a wonderful and genius band it is!

EDIT:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1apGEJVrIpE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1apGEJVrIpE)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxVpnYgbtA0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxVpnYgbtA0)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aemRlCZV614](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aemRlCZV614)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnifXAwM6KE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnifXAwM6KE)

------
sjclemmy
Ah, Radiohead. Darlings of the cognoscenti, hated by the music loving working
man.

~~~
meowface
I don't think I'd agree with that. They have quite a bit of popular appeal as
well.

~~~
sjclemmy
Noel Gallagher says it well, granted, he's no longer a working man, but he
hails from the section of society I am talking about. And he's pretty eloquent
in his put downs;

[http://consequenceofsound.net/2015/11/noel-gallagher-
mocks-r...](http://consequenceofsound.net/2015/11/noel-gallagher-mocks-
radiohead-if-thom-yorke-fucking-shit-into-a-light-bulb-itd-get-9-out-of-10/)

~~~
Gatsky
1\. In case anyone doesn't know who Noel Gallagher is, he's an attention
grabbing narcissist who broke up his own rubbish derivative band that
pretended to represent a part of society that doesn't actually exist.

2\. Did you just try and make a credible argument by referencing Noel
Gallagher spitting incoherent crap at a music tabloid?

~~~
sjclemmy
> 1\. In your opinion so I'm not going to deconstruct.

> 2\. Yes. His Bon mots are brilliant. And they all have a grain of truth. In
> this instance he mocks the fawning nature of the relationship the
> music/art/radio6/radio4/Guardian newspaper have with Radiohead which is
> really perceptive.

I mean, come on, they recorded the album in Provence. How bourgeois can you
get?

