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[Disclaimer: I am a big fan of Radiohead and at the same time listen to music almost exclusively album-for-album. No shuffle play for me, thanks.] I seriously

[Disclaimer: I am a big fan of Radiohead and at the same time listen to music almost exclusively album-for-album. No shuffle play for me, thanks.] I seriously hope that they at least always release a couple of tracks together. Whether they call that an "album" doesn't matter to me. I fail to imagine myself to buy a new song every couple of weeks and listen to each of them separately. Am I supposed to listen to new music for just four minutes and then skip to something else? Complex, good music (which, for me, includes that of Radiohead) deserves attention. You cannot build up attention in such a short amount of time. An album is more tan a collection of songs. Every song not only stands for itself but also serves as a frame for all other songs. If I had a short attention span, I would listen to the radio. (Ok, I actually do have a short attention span, but well...)

weaksauce 17y ago
From the article Thom says they are going to release single songs and EP's
tdm911 17y ago
I couldn't agree with you anymore. I fit your description perfectly too. Albums are a group of songs put together for a reason. They flow, have beginnings and endings. The progression of songs tells a story, it makes sense. I would hate to see this disappear. I guess I should note that this isn't true for all artists, but for artists like Radiohead, buying a single off one of their albums would only tell a small part of a grand story. I guess I always knew the day would come where Radiohead stop producing albums, I had just hoped it would be a lot further away.
- tetha 17y ago
  In case you need examples to back up your view of albums, take a look at Adversus' or Eisregens early albums, for example. Adversus' albums are like a depressing hour-long story of a sad love. Eisregen had some really nice 4-song-cycles (FF - like "color darkness" about an evil darkness from the underworld, wiping out humanity, and the Pest-zyklus - like "pestilence cycle", which is a sad, rough tale about abuse of people during the time of pestilence, people going crazy and such.). But I guess such albums are too complicated for todays everyday market and will stay rare. :(
pmorici 17y ago
Many of Charles Dickens's books were originally released one chapter at a time just because Radiohead releases songs as singletons doesn't mean you can't put them together to make something greater than the parts.
- jerf 17y ago
  That's not the question; the question is whether those parts will form a greater whole. I'm not the original poster, so I speak only for myself. Some of my "albums" (read: CDs) are just collections of songs, and that's fine. But some of the albums have coherency, stylistic similarities that don't just come from the artist (as other albums from the same artist will have different stylistic similarities in those songs), and other things that make these albums a bit more than just the sum of their parts. This doesn't just include the "concept albums", but even things that may sound like "just a collection of songs" at first but turn out to have a flow and coherency once you think about it. If nothing else, there's an art to album arrangement. Like good editing, it might be easier to see if I gave an example of a very degenerate case than if I try to say what's good: If you release 6 happy songs and 6 sad songs, you don't want them to show up in that order, as that makes for a terrible break in the flow (it'll feel like two albums glued together); you want to mix them together, and even with the same 12 songs, the tone of the album can be somewhat manipulated just by the order of the songs. (Start and end on happy? Start and end on sad? etc.) It's not just a matter of "my choice"; there's a matter of the artist's choice as well. This is a very fuzzy thing and it is perfectly possible to create a "mix album" with a bit of work that is itself a bit more than the sum of its parts, but there's still something to be said for an artist doing this deliberately. (Besides, call me old-fashioned but I think that there's still a place for the concept album. The short form gets mined out easily, especially in the context of a single artist; giving a bigger canvas to a skilled artist can produce something genuinely different.) I hope that people continue to produce albums and not just single, isolated tracks. (Of course, albums too could be serialized. And maybe that's all you meant, but I still wanted to point out this could be a problem in this bright new era. I'm not prone to complaining about new media but this is one place we could genuinely lose an entire art form, not just be quibbling about the smell of the book or something else that nobody under the age of 10 will ever miss in the future (my personal metric of fuddy-duddy-ness when it comes to complaining about new media).)
freetard 17y ago
> Am I supposed to listen to new music for just four minutes and then skip to something else? So I guess Chopin's Minute Waltz is not for you.

weaksauce 17y ago

From the article Thom says they are going to release single songs and EP's

tdm911 17y ago

I couldn't agree with you anymore. I fit your description perfectly too. Albums are a group of songs put together for a reason. They flow, have beginnings and endings. The progression of songs tells a story, it makes sense. I would hate to see this disappear. I guess I should note that this isn't true for all artists, but for artists like Radiohead, buying a single off one of their albums would only tell a small part of a grand story. I guess I always knew the day would come where Radiohead stop producing albums, I had just hoped it would be a lot further away.

tetha 17y ago
In case you need examples to back up your view of albums, take a look at Adversus' or Eisregens early albums, for example. Adversus' albums are like a depressing hour-long story of a sad love. Eisregen had some really nice 4-song-cycles (FF - like "color darkness" about an evil darkness from the underworld, wiping out humanity, and the Pest-zyklus - like "pestilence cycle", which is a sad, rough tale about abuse of people during the time of pestilence, people going crazy and such.). But I guess such albums are too complicated for todays everyday market and will stay rare. :(

pmorici 17y ago

Many of Charles Dickens's books were originally released one chapter at a time just because Radiohead releases songs as singletons doesn't mean you can't put them together to make something greater than the parts.

jerf 17y ago
That's not the question; the question is whether those parts will form a greater whole. I'm not the original poster, so I speak only for myself. Some of my "albums" (read: CDs) are just collections of songs, and that's fine. But some of the albums have coherency, stylistic similarities that don't just come from the artist (as other albums from the same artist will have different stylistic similarities in those songs), and other things that make these albums a bit more than just the sum of their parts. This doesn't just include the "concept albums", but even things that may sound like "just a collection of songs" at first but turn out to have a flow and coherency once you think about it. If nothing else, there's an art to album arrangement. Like good editing, it might be easier to see if I gave an example of a very degenerate case than if I try to say what's good: If you release 6 happy songs and 6 sad songs, you don't want them to show up in that order, as that makes for a terrible break in the flow (it'll feel like two albums glued together); you want to mix them together, and even with the same 12 songs, the tone of the album can be somewhat manipulated just by the order of the songs. (Start and end on happy? Start and end on sad? etc.) It's not just a matter of "my choice"; there's a matter of the artist's choice as well. This is a very fuzzy thing and it is perfectly possible to create a "mix album" with a bit of work that is itself a bit more than the sum of its parts, but there's still something to be said for an artist doing this deliberately. (Besides, call me old-fashioned but I think that there's still a place for the concept album. The short form gets mined out easily, especially in the context of a single artist; giving a bigger canvas to a skilled artist can produce something genuinely different.) I hope that people continue to produce albums and not just single, isolated tracks. (Of course, albums too could be serialized. And maybe that's all you meant, but I still wanted to point out this could be a problem in this bright new era. I'm not prone to complaining about new media but this is one place we could genuinely lose an entire art form, not just be quibbling about the smell of the book or something else that nobody under the age of 10 will ever miss in the future (my personal metric of fuddy-duddy-ness when it comes to complaining about new media).)

freetard 17y ago

> Am I supposed to listen to new music for just four minutes and then skip to something else? So I guess Chopin's Minute Waltz is not for you.