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Kid A plus: Thom Yorke in 2002 JON SUPER/GETTY IMAGES Jonathan Dean Saturday October 23 2021, 11.01pm GMT, The Sunday Times Twenty-one years ago Radiohead were a melancholic, if thrilling, guitar band in their pomp, surfing on the success of The Bends and OK Computer. Then they released their fourth album, Kid A, which crashed the wave and lost them a lot of fans. Why? It did not have many guitars on it. No wonder Radiohead were bored of guitars. Guitar music was in a rut. Like a gun in the wrong hands, it was not so much the instrument that was to blame, but the people using it. The ghastly US genre of nu-metal — violence, baseball caps — was the six-string music of the time, while younger pretenders such as Coldplay and Travis had listened to Radiohead, figured their ballads sold best and launched careers off the back of them. So Radiohead pivoted. Frontman Thom Yorke immersed himself in the textures of electronic music, while Jonny Greenwood delved into the curveball classical scores that would lead to him being one of Hollywood’s most revered composers. The result was Kid A and, a year later, another album, Amnesiac. Stadium hits such as Creep or Karma Police were replaced with distorted brass, ambience and glitch. It was exhilarating — it sounded futuristic then and still sounds futuristic now. What’s more, Radiohead won. In 2009, at Reading festival, when they opened with Creep and segued into the raucous jazz of Kid A’s The National Anthem, the crowd sang along to both. To celebrate Kid A’s coming-of-age, at 21, Radiohead are releasing a box set combining that album and Amnesiac; Kid A Mnesia. There is also an exhibition and book of the artwork, plus a video game. But the real gem for fans is a bonus disc, with 12 tracks that provide a tantalising glimpse of an alternative past for alternative music — with some of the songs suggesting Kid A and Amnesiac could have been more commercial than they were. The original Amnesiac, for instance, has a song called Like Spinning Plates; four minutes of digitally-reversed music, like wind escaping through a car window, with Yorke’s distorted voice. It evokes a mood, but, live, Yorke played a gorgeous piano take. On the newly released version those two streams join — piano and sonic mush — and the result is stunning. The omission of this beautiful song from the original album shows a band hellbent on challenging what people thought they were. The same can be said of another new version, Pulk/Pull (True Love Waits Version), a rendition of the most extreme electronic song on Amnesiac, but with the classic Radiohead piano ballad True Love Waits sung over the top. The best bonus is a studio version of Follow Me Around, a live song sung for so long it once had a line about Tony Blair. It is guitar-led and mid-paced, with a soaring chorus; alien to Yorke at the turn of the century when he said: “I’d completely had it with melody.” The Blair line has gone, with the lyrics now focusing on Yorke’s own dread. That angst is, to many, Radiohead in a nutshell, but so much of Kid A was about abstract lyrics. Follow Me Around was too direct. “Nowadays, I get panicked/ I ceased to exist,” he sings. The track encapsulates that era — it is a brilliant song made at the wrong time, by a band who had moved on and who, eventually, moved a lot of fans with them too. Because Kid A was not just pop music; it was about educating fans in what pop music could be. You know, like the Beatles did. Extraordinary extras Kid A Mnesia by Radiohead One edition of the upcoming reissue will include a cassette of B-sides. Anyone got a tape player? ____________________ FMA guitar and mid-paced Pulk/Pull (a rendition or the studio version?) with TLW vocal track on top LSP electronic plus piano Coming soon!

I will make sounds they will be good ...and let's put it all on bandcamp

Just realized that rubbish interviewer is Gareth Evans, who has written the "specially commissioned essay, Kid Alphabet" which will appear in the KID A MNESIA HARDBACK ART CATALOGUE I've ordered 😆

The digital exhibition will be a blast for us. I think we'll get an unreleased song called "Little Cinema". You will find it when you head over to the "Theater" which is off to the right of the "Dead End Halls."

Aaaaaaanndd . . . SOLD! HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY: STANLEY DONWOOD x THOM YORKE STANLEY DONWOOD (B. 1968) Residential Nemesis Estimate GBP 10,000 - GBP 15,000 Price Realised GBP 137,500 Closed: 19 Oct 2021

get em while they last

HOW TO DISAPPEAR COMPLETELY: STANLEY DONWOOD x THOM YORKE STANLEY DONWOOD (B. 1968) Residential Nemesis Estimate GBP 10,000 - GBP 15,000 Current Bid (19 Bids) GBP 38,000 Closing: 6 hours 15 minutes 18 seconds

Here's a statement I would put zero faith in: "As for the two Radiohead albums, it is likely that they will be re-released along with a series of previously undisclosed documents on November 7 of this year on the Epic Games Store, which is expected to be the date the exhibition will begin." https://www.newsnpr.org/radiohead-is-about-to-hold-an-exclusive-event-on-the-epic-games-store/ "Undisclosed documents" -- Research yielded nothing from Epic games, namethemachine or Arbitrarily Good Productions giving any November date. (I emailed them weeks ago and got no answer.) If i were RH I'd stagger the digital exhibition release with the anniversary music and art on Nov 5 . . . which means they'll likely do something on the same day.

Christie's sent the link https://youtu.be/7mz9gqPDzho

for anyone who doesn't know what Booger is talking about re FMA and Beryl and such - this ancient article the band are visibly relieved (!) to be included in the 200 "most important artists" in the last 25 years according to p4k

They are both massive whiners about the artistic process, how it's pretty much agony, except for a brief time when you find it's working ("when you hear a sound, and a voice says that's it, and the light pours in").They were both inspired by a Hockney exhibit of landscapes to allow them to create bigger canvases. They repeatedly rejected the overbearing interviewer's attempt to lock in the symbiosis between them in an artsy manner. They talk around what interests them to each other. They tried a lot of stuff, and went back and forth, without a "plan". They do start recording with an agenda, which they jettison, as work progresses. They didn't edit anything going up online at Radiohead.com which Stanley was responsible for. They just put more stuff out in a kind of "accretion". The internet was kinda "niche" back then, and not about "likes". Fire and ice are the colours used in some works. They both were gutted by an "ice melt" report back in the 90's, glaciers receding etc... "The work is multi-layered, and all of the mistakes are still there." "There are paintings which have been almost entirely obscured, with whatever has been deposited upon the surface. " They swapped sketchbooks, having both studied fine art and English.

Takeaway: Thom really needs to trim those whiskers above his lip.

Bout to be on my family zoom with Thom and Stanley "We re thinking about the future"

@stanleydonwood 10 hours ago me and thom will be live in conversation via zoom on monday 11th october at 6pm UK time you can register to join if you follow the link in me bio

Picturing Thom and Stanley asking how can we do this...(so much art and music it's sorta overflowing) and coming up with the virtual exhibition as well as the physical one. I'm hoping for plentiful music and audio too, mossy.

❤️

True or False: "The legacy of Kid A is as an act of art that didn’t just reflect its age, but helped to shape the future, which is something you can say for its visual elements as much as the music.” YOU’RE LIVING IN A FANTASY: THE ART OF ‘KID A’ 31 October 2010

"Here I am talking to Matt Everitt on the radio about it, at 1hr 43mins 06secs: embarrassing radio interview" Stanley is actually talking to Matt about the Kid A/Amnesiac artwork on the BBC6 Chris Hawkins show. The timestamp is correct. "We kind of made far too much work, for one record sleeve. What we were gonna do was weld together a load of shipping containers and make it look like they crashed into the side of the Albert Hall. And then fill that space with an exhibition. And it was all looking good . . . well, uh, obviously there were some obstacles. Westminster Council weren't particularly keen."

Bigger than a feral keychain!

Betting these pieces will sell far above that.

The online preview for "How to Disappear Completely" is open. https://www.christies.com/features/Radiohead-11846-7.aspx Don't miss this webpage for the bright bold details of the works, and the grid of artwork at the close, which includes some blips. If anyone goes to the exhibition venue, let us know what it's like. The estimate for "Get Out Before Saturday" and the other 5 pieces is GBP 10,000 - GBP 15,000 https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/first-open-post-war-contemporary-art-online/stanley-donwood-b-1968-22/132119?ldp_breadcrumb=back Each of these appears illustrated in color in "There Will Be No Quiet"

I would certainly read a book about the relationship of Stanley and Thom, provided one of them wrote it, which is not likely. From a "News From Nowhere" Stanley email. I wonder if the taking of photos is allowed in this exhibition. Is anyone going? O T H E R M A T T E R S There is an exhibition of paintings that I made about two decades ago at Christies in London that runs from 9th - 15th October. On display are six large paintings made during the recording of Radiohead's KID A and Amnesiac, as well as lots and lots of drawings that me and Thom made, also about twenty years ago. These drawings have been carefully removed from our sketchbooks, as well as from the deepest recesses of our twisted minds, and framed and hung on the wall for people to look at. The exhibition is free to view; Christies, King Street, London, SW1Y 6QT

Stanley Donwood’s previous auction record was set in November 2009, when “Kabul” sold for £16,250 (about S$30,000) in the London galleries of Phillips. The six artworks will be presented to the public "alongside drawings, lyrics and digital artworks selected for the occasion by Stanley Donwood and Thom Yorke."