360 records from 2000: 4. Radiohead: Kid A

Country: UK
Artist: Band
Career: recording since 1993
Language: English
Genre: Alienation


Notes from recovered diary made listening to this album:
‘Everything in its right place’: Just listen to that keyboard sound.
Yorke’s got a voice that deserves to be smeared and erased in space and time. Kid A is their only record that matters cause it’s the one where they realised that.

‘Kid A’ (the song), what makes it so pretty?: Children’s Music box – a little keyboard melody line repeated with electronic pitter patter rumbling underneath – a slurred electronic voice trying to articulate something – it stops for a moment – real drumline falls in with harmonised high vocal lines (also manipulated) – bass, it starts to cook now – stop start bit – bass drops in to a two note bit – break – drums go on alone – ambient keyboards wash over the track – music box motif returns, pitter patter and electronic voice return – drums and two note bass fall in again over swelling ambient keyboard – end noise like a wailing animal – high overtone remains. The most beautiful thing.

‘National anthem’: Forget the machines, the moments when this really starts to soar is when they let the jazz players loose! And the 20th century classical radio station!

‘How to disappear completely’: the backing (drums, bass, strummed acoustic) fades into the background, till it’s a dance between Thom Yorke’s mantra incantations, those swooping strings, slide guitar melodies(?). A lovely prayer song, really.

‘Treefingers’: I highly suspect most musicians have sketches like these in their cupboards (I certainly did at one point in my life). Maybe that was what caused the furore – all those people thinking they’d used this stuff for personal enjoyment, but you weren’t supposed to actually put them on your record company-monitored, statement/trade figures making records in the corporate ‘90s alternative rock scene. ‘What’s up with all this half-assed sun-baked ‘experiment’ that we were all up to but never thought to put on a record? They should be ashamed.’ The truth is I like these sketches (of which I’ve got a hundred in my own cupboard) better than 80% of their real songs.

‘Optimistic’: See, like this one which definitely falls in the 80%.

‘In limbo’: And this one. These two are like the drowsy centre of the record. They have lost their way. Intentionally? Am I reading too much into this? It sets you up perfectly for the finale though.

‘Idioteque’: their ‘Subterranean homesick blues’, only with all the fun sucked out of it. I get this sudden nightmare that we should leave the earth to the machines cause they will take better care of our plants. Curse you, Thom Yorke, there’s a little Michael Stipe in you yet. Other than that, a mighty and brutal track.

‘Morning bell’: it’s good they allowed the band in the studio for at least one track. And make it the soothing, gentle kiss off of ‘Morning bell’. There’s that lovely keyboard sound again – it sounds like the keys are moving all by themselves, no player required. And I just love the high guitar sounds right at the end, I know how they’re made, but they still sound like a bird on fire trying to fly.

‘Motion picture soundtrack’: Fuck, those are some beautiful fantasy sounds – the high angel voices, the swishing syrup sound that signals heaven in movies. It’s a sketch but it’s just right.

Thanks guys, for making one record that really speaks to me in between the hi-alternative posturing and the abstract ‘band as landscape architects’ phase.

At its best: Everything in its right place, Kid A, The national anthem, Idioteque