7 ms·

In a Room with Radiohead

85 points by tintinnabula 10y ago

sjclemmy 10y ago
Ah, Radiohead. Darlings of the cognoscenti, hated by the music loving working man.
- meowface 10y ago
  I don't think I'd agree with that. They have quite a bit of popular appeal as well.
  - sjclemmy 10y ago
    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-radiohead-if-thom-yorke-fucking-shit-into-a-light-bulb-itd-get-9-out-of-10/ http://consequenceofsound.net/2015/11/noel-gallagher-mocks-r...
    - AnonymousPlanet 10y ago
      So they are to be scoffed at because too many people like them for the wrong reasons? That attitude reminds me a bit of those people who will dismiss everyone they see with a macbook as a whimsical hipster who is easily persuaded by shiny shiny.
      - sjclemmy 10y ago
        I actually find the politics of popular music fascinating. I'm not scoffing at Radiohead (alright, I am a bit) but pointing out the cultural/socio-political context of the band. Which is a position borne of privilege and the self-confidence you get from attending public school. They are the hedge fund managers of the music world. I don't actually care whether you like the music or not, that's not the point of my argument, fwiw I adore 'The Bends' - their best.
    - Gatsky 10y ago
      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 10y ago
        > 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?
- golergka 10y ago
  > working man Is that supposed to be a good thing?
atdt 10y ago
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!
- orbitur 10y ago
  > It's probably a good thing! I don't know. This is by no means a "back in my day" complaint, but I miss the concept of a giant, stadium filling band deciding to throw caution to the wind and releasing something effectively "unsellable" to the public at large. The Smashing Pumpkins did it with Adore, and Radiohead did it with Kid A (although Radiohead succeeded sending that album to the top of the charts by having at least one radio-friendly song on there). Some other bands I'm forgetting now. The only "giant" artists I can of who are flirting with experimentation are... Kanye? Maybe Drake.
  - katzface 10y ago
    You can probably put Beyonce in there too!
Bahamut 10y ago
"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 10y ago
  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.
  - lgieron 10y ago
    I like them because it's (to me) the most gorgeous music I've heard in my life.
  - TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
    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.
    - 10y ago
urs2102 10y ago
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-greenwood/#.V0Fhycj3anM https://cycling74.com/2014/01/02/mini-interview-jonny-greenw...
- robotresearcher 10y ago
  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 10y ago
    By writing software, I was implying writing patches. Apologies for the lack of clarity!
mudil 10y ago
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

85 points by tintinnabula 10y ago

sjclemmy 10y ago

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

meowface 10y ago
I don't think I'd agree with that. They have quite a bit of popular appeal as well.
- sjclemmy 10y ago
  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-radiohead-if-thom-yorke-fucking-shit-into-a-light-bulb-itd-get-9-out-of-10/ http://consequenceofsound.net/2015/11/noel-gallagher-mocks-r...
  - AnonymousPlanet 10y ago
    So they are to be scoffed at because too many people like them for the wrong reasons? That attitude reminds me a bit of those people who will dismiss everyone they see with a macbook as a whimsical hipster who is easily persuaded by shiny shiny.
    - sjclemmy 10y ago
      I actually find the politics of popular music fascinating. I'm not scoffing at Radiohead (alright, I am a bit) but pointing out the cultural/socio-political context of the band. Which is a position borne of privilege and the self-confidence you get from attending public school. They are the hedge fund managers of the music world. I don't actually care whether you like the music or not, that's not the point of my argument, fwiw I adore 'The Bends' - their best.
  - Gatsky 10y ago
    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 10y ago
      > 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?
golergka 10y ago
> working man Is that supposed to be a good thing?

atdt 10y ago

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!

orbitur 10y ago
> It's probably a good thing! I don't know. This is by no means a "back in my day" complaint, but I miss the concept of a giant, stadium filling band deciding to throw caution to the wind and releasing something effectively "unsellable" to the public at large. The Smashing Pumpkins did it with Adore, and Radiohead did it with Kid A (although Radiohead succeeded sending that album to the top of the charts by having at least one radio-friendly song on there). Some other bands I'm forgetting now. The only "giant" artists I can of who are flirting with experimentation are... Kanye? Maybe Drake.
- katzface 10y ago
  You can probably put Beyonce in there too!

Bahamut 10y ago

"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 10y ago
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.
- lgieron 10y ago
  I like them because it's (to me) the most gorgeous music I've heard in my life.
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  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.
  - 10y ago

urs2102 10y ago

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-greenwood/#.V0Fhycj3anM https://cycling74.com/2014/01/02/mini-interview-jonny-greenw...

robotresearcher 10y ago
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 10y ago
  By writing software, I was implying writing patches. Apologies for the lack of clarity!

mudil 10y ago

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