A stupid "how'd they do it" thread...

  • Thread starter Thread starter Slackmaster2K
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I vote them most overrated since DMB and Phish.

Give me 4 chimps (untrained, mind you), a Tascam Porta01, an SM57, a Theremin, and a snare drum. 6 months later you'll have a better art-rock album and no snotty Brits to deal with.
 
Hmmmmm, putting radiohead in the same sentence as DMB and Phish...... two of the bands I dislike most...... *sigh*

well, guess you can't force feed filet mignon to sheep.
 
damn i missed another radiohead discussion. I have the last 3 radiohead albums and i like them all and each has its own ideal time and place for listening.
ok computer is basically an anytime listen for me. I put this on most of the time and my favorite is surprisingly "climbing up the walls." the scream at the fade out blows me away every time.
Kid A is turned on mostly at 2 am for me with the lights off and headphones on. a great stoner album.
Amnesiac is mostly used in the evening or early mornings. my favorite is life in a glasshouse.

as for tips into their recording processes i know that for "fitter happier" thom used the included simple voice generater plugin on a Mac. As for "Spinning Plates" Thom sang backwards and they reversed it with protools to give that strange voice he had. Sounds damn near impossible to do so i'd be amazed to learn how they accomplished it.
 
Scriabin, that's pretty cool! I knew something was very strange about that track but I could never put my finger on it. I personally prefer the nice live version that's floating around though, it's a great piano piece.

It's always funny to read anti-radiohead comments; not that I didn't expect them from this group. Bad lyrics is the funniest...not enough phat rhymes I guess. Oh well :)

VotaIdiota, I though Amnesiac was kind of all over the place too for a while, but now I think it's definately the natural evolution for them. To me Kid A is a very scattered album with mostly experimental stuff...cool, but I don't listen to it a ton anymore. I think that Amnesiac, on the other hand, is considerably more practiced from a sound perspective, and more thought was put into the songs themselves. There are some fantastic passages in there that stand up with moments from some of the greatest albums. I heard somewhere that they tracked Amnesiac at the same time they did Kid A, but I'm not sure I buy that.

Slackmaster 2000
 
I Don't know too much about radiohead, but what the hell's wrong with that guys eye?
 
i heard that he was involved in a car accident but im not sure if that is true or not.
 
korg kaoss pad


i know that on stage jonny greenwood has thom yorke's vocals sampled on to the koass pad. then he uses the scratch effect to get some of the sound.

luke
 
had to jump in the river

Dude.........that eye is f u c k e d up and it makes me laugh cause it scares me just a little. (sorry but the f word seems mild for that eye)


Votaidiota......dude......dollars and cents has one of the best sound i've heard in years. that SOUND! it makes me wanna........i dont know.........punch that guy in the eye.

Thats what i like about radiohead. there not my favorite band but they are great at sculpting sound.....especially noisy sound.

I think what really gave me a lot of respect wasseeing them on Music Choice(a free music program on my local PBS).
The one guitar player was screwin around with this oldschool swithboard drum-machine thing and playing the knobs on his guitar pedals and the last song (i think) was really cool when the guitar players were capturing loops of fucked-up-eye-dude's vocals and mixing them in on the fly until he gets up a walks off stage and there all these vocal lines stil swirling around.

B.T.W. the jazz factor of the Pyramid Song maks that my favorite of theirs. The song develops naturally as it unfolds and the way the rhythm slightly modulates and gains weight and momentum......slowly and subtly. it almost sounds as if it might be an improv.

Anyway, i think that amnesiac blows Kid a away, overall, except the kid a version of morning bell is the better one.

o.k. thats my 2cents.
-mike
 
Slack, yeah....... about 40-50 songs were recorded during the sessions radiohead had after ok computer..... see, they finished the ok computer tour in late '98, took about six months break, then started recording in various studios for a good year and a half..... various recording done in copenhagen, paris, london, etc.......
they had so many songs that they entertained the idea of making a double album, but felt that it would be a little too pretentious... so they split the tracks into kid a and amnesiac.... in the liner notes of amnesiac, it even says "recorded at the same time as kid a". tons of people thought that amnesiac would be radiohead "returning to form", even though radiohead never once said anything remotely like that..... oh, and most of the leftover songs from the sessions are the b-sides from the amnesiac singles...... kinetic, trans-atlantic drawl, the amazing sounds of orgy, cuttooth, fog, worrywort, etc........
and about the sound thing..... in dollars and cents specifically, the song is great, don't get me wrong.... it just seems like the bass is a little too prominent, and not in a good way.... it just bugs me, cause I've seen them four times and three of the four times they've played that song and the bassline is just so tight and punchy, that it bugs me they recorded it the way they did on amnesiac.....
if you guys REALLY want to hear radiohead at their finest, start looking around for bootlegs of theirs.... one of their best is called moonstruck, it's from a show in the netherlands they did back in '97, it's amazing sound quality and of course, amazing songs. I have my own minidisc bootleg that I did from the second show of theirs I saw (Greek Theatre in '00, the only west coast show they did in support of kid a), and it's pretty damn good, if I don't say so myself. but if you want the easy way, pick up the "I Might Be Wrong" ep, it's got 8 live tracks from three different shows they did on the amnesiac tour.... all kid a/amnesiac songs, and it's worth the price simply for the live version of like spinning plates, and also the never before (at least, not OFFICIALLY) released true love waits, which is a BEAUTIFUL song..... they did it differently back in the old days, but.....
speaking of which, if you ever can, find a live version of motion picture soundtrack from around '96-'97....... AMAZING. just thom and an acoustic guitar.... I wish they would've done it that way on kid a.. *sigh*
I'm sorry, I've gone on way too long about radiohead.... I guess I just pride myself on a bunch of useless trivia about them. believe me slack, if you EVER have any questions about radiohead, just post a thread with the topic of "VotaIdiota!!! I need more useless radiohead shit!" and I'm THERE. :)
 
I Don't know too much about radiohead, but what the hell's wrong with that guys eye?


it's just lazy.

adriano
 
kid a + amnesiac

as for those two albums, i think what bugs me the most is the simple lack of SONGS. i'm not too much into rock or art rock, i like POP, not radio/mtv pop, intelligent pop, be it indiepop or brazilian pop music (called mpb). i think both records frustrate me the most because i like instant gratification. ;)
i loved 'the bends' and 'ok computer' from the first listen. 'pablo honey' took me a while to like because of the overexposition at the time 'creep' hit it big, but there are some great tunes in there too, though nothing as great as what you can find in 'the bends'.
i think from 'ok computer' on they kind of dilluted their sound, and got lost in too much experimentation.
i also think most people have a threshold of pain regarding the exposition to yorke's voice, and mine has been overpassed long ago, especially in live situations.:)

adriano
 
Radiohead freakin rules! I always thought the noise in Exit Music was kids playin at a park or something.

Kid A and Amnesiac also freakin rule! It's not wierd, it's progress!

To you trolls who say Radiohead is overrated, and they just copy off of Aphex Twin are also wrong IMO. What makes them so great is that they can record 2 albums in a row that have no potential singles, are completely different then thier bench mark albums(Bends and OKC) and still sell out arenas worldwide with ease! The thing is, that they can be obscure, and still remain popular, makes them deserve all the recognition they recieve IMO.

Not liking Radiohead is one thing, but they deffinately aren't overated!
 
PostalBlue, the songs on amnesiac are more subtle than the obvious hooks on Ok Computer, but they're still there. I too was turned off on it for a while...it probably took several weeks of just sort of playing it in the background from time to time before one day it just hit me. Weird how some albums are like that, isn't it? Ziggy Stardust was an album like that for me too...didn't like it for a while, then I only liked the second half....took years to even listen to the A side (ah yes, records anyone?). Now it's one of my favorites.

Anyhow, I appreciate many of the comments here about some of the methods used by radiohead. Invaluable to a guy who's got to record himself and still keep it interesting! :)

Slackmaster 2000
 
i think most quality bands that hit it big are called 'overrated' sooner or later.
in the 80s, i always thought u2 was overrated, and the smiths were miles above them. but had the smiths gotten as big as u2, a lot more people would have tagged them overrated than they did u2, in great part because the smiths didn't take themselves as seriously as bono and crew did.

adriano
 
His Name Is Probably Thomas, and he just uses "Thom" to be artsy....

You know sort of like when a girl name "Lana" pronounces her name like "Lonna"....
 
B&P?

Hay VotaIdiota, how about setting up a B&P like the hippies do? I've tried different people on db.etree but no one responds. I'd really like to start a Radiohead boot collection.
 
Honky, I'd love to help you out. I myself only have a few various bootlegs, but I've met a guy here at college that has a TON, so I'm starting to get some from him, so we'll see how that goes.
Oh, and slack.... if you're really interested in finding out more about their studio stuff, in July there's a book coming out called "Radiohead: Back To Save The Universe" that will focus primarily on all their time in the studio, recording techniques, etc... believe me, I'll be the FIRST to get that thing...
and in case you thought I was a troll for mentioning the aphex twin thing... that's actually what I love about kid a... it wears its warp records influence on its sleeve proudly, but it's able to take a form of music that people often cite as "unemotional", and just turn it into this great, emotive, just despairing landscape... that's what I love the most about kid a... in ok computer, sometimes you'd have to wait until thom started singing to really get what the song was about, but in kid a... the moment the song starts, you know where it's coming from... the album could've been an instrumental and it would still have had a very good emotional effect.... but the angelic voice certainly doesn't hurt. :)
 
Cool! Email me at hokypokynose@yahoo.com to give me your address and tell me how many Cds you need. I use cheapies but I've had no incompatabilaty problems when I went through my Phish phase over the summer(it's good working music IMO) so they should work.

I wasn't calling anyone in particular a troll, but I've heard from many other people that they cannot stand Kid A because it "rips off" Aphex Twin. I was just speaking generally(and to that person who posted that Radiohead was overrated).

the album could've been an instrumental and it would still have had a very good emotional effect.... but the angelic voice certainly doesn't hurt.
Click to expand...

Wait until something like Pickin On Kid A comes out!
 
Anyone who thinks Radiohead sucks is a moron. Weak lyrics on OKC?....Yeah....right...

The voices on Exit Music (for a film) is not mellotron.

The seagull part is guitar.
 
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