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Radiohead download...
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Jasonaparkes
Jasonaparkes
876 posts

Re: Radiohead download...
Oct 13, 2007, 22:19
I have a thing against Radiohead and Primal Scream - probably 'cos they were the kind of band that I unquestiongly purchased in some sort of blend of music criticism and indoctrination. Since....2000? I've started listening to music in a different way and dug lots of strange stuff - so much that Radiohead just sound like a corporate dilution of the truly odd. They ONLY demonstrate that they have quite good taste, but I hate them as they can afford to buy lots of records with the money made from less exciting records than U2 released in the 1990s...

I have thought of Radiohead as one of those bands who record about 2 - 4 good songs for each album - which probably means I should do a compilation? I currently think that people have confused the almost revolutionary method of delivery with the record being good. I'd like to have paid what I wanted for the two albums (one only available via the £40 box set) - maybe as that would give me a chance of getting one decent album? It's always the same with them: Pablo Honey (Creep, Prove Yourself), The Bends (Street Spirit, Just), OK Computer (Karma Police, The Tourist), Kid A (How to...Completely, Idioteque), Amnesiac (Pactlikesardines, Pyramid Song) & Hail to the Thief (There There, The Gloaming, Sail to the Moon). Oh yeah, the new one...

The notion that it sounds like OK Computer is erroneous - it's more of that confused stuff they've been making for years. 15 Step has bits that sound like Radiohead colliding with a lame take on Kid 606 or Squarepusher, some of that afro/ambient guitar that Michael Karoli or Durutti Column did, and some of that bass synth thing Boards of Canada had on their first LP...in 1999. I know there are very good arguments, some in Japrocksampler, about taking other's stuff and taking it elsewhere...and Bowie in his peak did that and went beyond. But it's so tedious when it's so obvious and fails to transcend the reference points....

I'd hope a HH fatwa, if people were truly unright-on, would occur over a track with the title 'Faust Arp' would occur. The drums are drum machines, Yorke's brief Lydon impersonation at the end of Bodysnatchers is less effective that Genesis P-Orridge's style on What a Day in 1980 or 2004, and All I Need sounds very Twin Peaks (though Paul Morley's amusing comment that mentioned Aphex Twin and James Blunt is probably more accurate!). A friend told me he'd played it three times...and got nothing from it - a friend who gets the pop, shite like Ryan Adams, and more arcane stuff. Maybe it sounds too cerebral and studied, like Yorke & co have thought about the music criticism that would be applied to their product? There are some nice sounding bits, though the songs tail off into less enjoyable bits - it's the same lite-avant garde stuff they've been doing since Kid A really. I did quite like The Eraser as it was like a pop version of the Warp stuff.

So...pay £0.00, especially as they're courting record labels, have had great reviews for a very average record and will cream off from their dubiously priced box set. Bet they resign with EMI - and you know In Rainbows would have been exactly the same had they released it on Parlophone? & the first two minutes or so of Bodysnatchers constitute the worst attempt at rock music I've heard in decades - though there is a nice Edge/Lanois bit before the Lydon impersonation...

U2 were stranger anyway, especially with that Passengers record or parts of the Million Dollar Hotel soundtrack. I quite like U2 from 1991 to 1997 as I wasn't meant to - they're ain't nothing as good as Lemon here, or Theme for Great Cities by Simple Minds/Steve Hillage...
In reply to:
Radiohead download... (bernie the bolt)		 Replies:
Re: Radiohead download... (IanB)
Re: Radiohead download... (postyesterdayman)
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