Thom Yorke / Atoms for Peace - AMOK (2013)

Atoms For Peace, the collaboration between Thom Yorke, Nigel Godrich, Joey Waronker, Mauro Refosco and Flea, are currently working out their tour plans. The album cover, by Stanley Donwood, has been released, as well as a new website at atomsforpeace.info.’Amok’ will be available on CD, Deluxe CD, LP, Deluxe LP and download.

Thom Yorke on the record release: “So finally I can tell you the Atoms for Peace record is coming out on the 25th February, it’s called Amok. We put something new on the website for you to stare at etc for a while here.. www.atomsforpeace.info

It’s a while to wait i know so i’m sure some other things will occur before then. We formed to learn to play The Eraser record, if you don’t know that, and discovered a really good energy doing that.. and it fell into this record.

I’m still reeling from being on tour for much of the year but we are planning to get together and play etc next year !We’re figuring all that out right now.

Atoms is a ongoing and open ended project, where it leads i know not for certain…. which is what is nice about it.”

Tracklisting

Before Your Very Eyes
Default
Ingenue
Dropped
Unless
Stuck Together Pieces
Judge Jury Executioner
Reverse Running
Amok

moka amok

This is the only song from the album that has leaked so far, Default:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxWBd840E9g

And non-album track "what the eyeballs did" that was released for free on their website:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdc02AGKWpo

a mok a mok a

"What the Eyeballs Did" is groovy.

I like both those songs.

Much, much better than I expected, looking forward to it now!

this is pretty sweet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4tW3mhp9io

Zzzzzzz.

He should release his automated songwriting software so we can all tweak it and come up with something interesting.

these songs bore the life out of me

How the mighty have fallen...

not cool to talk about thom dorke anymore because he kind of seems like a total asshole these days, but his remix of "give up the ghost" that's on the new "Dazed Digital" mix would have been by far the most foward thinking song on The King of Limbs

Wait, why does he seem like a total asshole these days?

the first track involving in Yorke in years that I can listen to

in

Interesting, Joey Waronker is one of the top five best drummers I've ever personally witnessed live, yet it sounds like programmed beats. Listening closely, I think maybe I can hear his playing mixed with the electronic stuff.

The artwork on the bottom of the web page is oddly Chicago themed, with the Marina City towers (famously shot on Wilco's Yankee Hotel cover) and the new-ish Trump Tower and other landmarks being flooded by a torrential Chicago river.

So finally I can tell you the Atoms for Peace record is coming out on the 25th February, it’s called Amok. We put something new on the website for you to stare at etc for a while here..

Yea, cause I'm going to be staring at your webpage for a month waiting for your dull record to come out.

i mean if anyone's fans would it's thom yorke's tbf

As i stated above, the new 'thing' on their website is a non-album track that you can download for free.

What free song? I can't stand "clever" unnavigable websites.

not to put too fine a point on it, but arent you deliberately selectively quoting that line from the website to make him look like a dick, when the next one says that it's a long time to wait and more stuff will happen?

have heard the album, and its very strong in my opinion - the rhythm section's absolutely on fire, melodies are a lot more memorable than anything Radiohead have done for a long time. the single choice is mystifying - its definitely one of the more forgettable and weaker tracks. of course, you know what you're getting by now - if you arent a fan of yorkean vocals/layering/harmonising, the whole record's going to be a difficult listen, he definitely doesn't shy away from them on this.

Yea, you are totally right, that is petulant. I guess I feel rather underwhelmed and disappointed by Yorke's solo career so-far, I wish he would sing less tracks in his head voice too, or even sing a little less and be more adventurous.

Has anybody read Simon Reynold's review in Wire? He renders it as sounding neither here nor there.

Well, if it was said the album sounds neither here nor there, then Thom achieved his intent. He already said they wanted to blend the styles and leave people wondering what were real instruments and what were electronic sounds.

Dazed Digital mix best thing he's been involved with since in rainbows imo

GOOD TO SEE THOM TYPES IN ALL CAPS LIKE EVERYONE'S GRANDFATHER

listening to this now...LOL@ how fuckin dull it is.

Qualify / quantify dull.

I'm not into Radiohead at all so maybe it's clouded my judgement, but all I'm hearing throughout the record is vaguely 'atmospheric' synth washes, niggly blass bleeps, dull 'ethereal' vocals drifting in and out of the mix. Kind of record where a highlight is the inclusion of a Balaeric guitar lick that wouldn't really stand out on a shit-tonne of beardy disco stuff. basically sounds like stoner lullabies for dudes sat on their lappys at 3am.

I'm so annoyed by the spam email he sent out and the involvement of flea that I'm disinclined to listen to this.

I can't trust the musical taste of someone who calls a layered powerful beauty like Before Your Very Eyes and the amazing Reverse Running "dull". It is a headphones album, yeah, for dudes who like to "listen" to music. It is a Thom Yorke album, can't believe anyone is waiting for guitar solos or heavy drums. The siren vocals are a given as well, so, like it or move on.

I'd be curious to see if it picks up on some of the sounds used in his recent Dazed mixtape. still listening to that pretty frequently, it's great.

"for dudes who like to "listen" to music" = eternal fucking lol

'Head music for people who like head music' might be a better translation, but yeah. That sounds quite interesting to me.

"eternal fucking lol" -- whatever.

Sounds like another serving of some half-baked Thom Yorke table scraps for "dudes who like to 'convince' themselves Thom Yorke has anything left to say."

There was no spam email sent out, whoever received an email was signed up to the mailing list. Maybe don't sign up for a Radiohead mailing list if you don't want literally one email like every three years. Or maybe don't "forget" that you have signed up for an email list just so you can complain about the audacity of actually receiving a relevant email about an album announcement from something you signed up for.

damn tom york's fans are defensive

I was going to ask if she wrote the E-mail.

"for dudes who like to "listen" to music" = eternal fucking lol

― the Shearer of simulated snowsex etc. (Dwight Yorke), Monday, February 11, 2013 4:25 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM. I mean, what else do people do with music? Shag it?

I like to "listen" to music iykwim

don't think my magazine are running the piece so i'll post it here if anyone wants to read my defense of my claim that it's a boring album

Yeah, go on.

Was hoping for The Bends + slap bass. Bitterly disappointed.

kind of a rushed piece, was asked to write at short notice with a very tight turnaround, so it's not the best thing I've written this year...

Atoms for Peace
AMOK

Supergroups are a baffling thing. Despite the continual low-level disappointment they invariably offer the listener, we still go in with high hopes, demanding time after time that the combined forces of artists who’ve previously provided us with pleasure would coalesce into something more than the sum of their parts, something that melds individual excellence with group efficiency. That this rarely happens hasn’t seemed to deter us. As such, we delve into an album like AMOK – the first full-length product of Thom Yorke’s semi-supergroup with Nigel Godrich, Flea from RHCP, Beck’s drummer Joey Waronker and Brazilian percussionist Mauro Refosco – with a sense of excited trepidation, an excited anxiety.

What the group have delivered is, sadly, somehow worse than a bad record. They’ve given us something that barely seems to exist, something that drifts inoffensively and ineffectually. Something that’s, well, a little boring. AMOK’s a record imbued with the feeling of sketchiness about it. Opening track ‘Before Your Very Eyes’ sets the precedent for the variations on a theme to come – that theme being essentially a rebooted version of Yorke’s The Eraser, all intricate percussion, both live and digital, flittering over and under Flea’s Remain In Light-reminiscent clusters of bass, synth washes riding above and below Yorke’s keening voice, chirruping whirrs writing themselves around distant piano strokes.

Admittedly it sounds wonderful, throbbing and woozy in some places, taut and honed in others, those synths mingling well with Yorke’s shimmering falsetto, but the songs themselves lack something. The listener’s left grasping onto fragments, onto things that wouldn’t normally get the ears pricked – the laconic Balaeric licks on ‘Stuck Together Pieces’ that’d be lost in the mire of countless beardy-disco 12”s, the super-skittery insectoid percussion of ‘Default’ would have been at home on a tonne of early-00s Mille Plateaux clicks'n'cuts compilations, the title track covers it’s vocals with the kind of dub-drenched, rain-soaked chemtrails that Burial’s used consistently.

Perhaps admonishing a record for doing what it sets out to do – Treat it as a mood piece, something that’s meant to sound akin to the dulled narcotic fug of the 3am stoner and it ‘works’ a little better better – with the minimum of fuss and flashness potentially says more about the listener than it does the album, but a sense of disappointment lingers over AMOK. Very little really happens. It just sits there, strangely muted, strangely inert.

11/20

AMOK

vs

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_SGjOCexTsi0/TUjOebGgvGI/AAAAAAAAAFw/YDX0va1DRZc/s1600/amok.jpg

I guess the notion of Atoms for Peace as a supergroup never occurred to me. It's a side project with a well-defined aesthetic. A long-playing mood piece is exactly what I'd expect.

See, that sounds brilliant to me, Dwight.

I listen to a ton of music that sounds like it barely exists
Can't imagine tom Yorke's whinnying not buzz killing such a vibe

Opening track ‘Before Your Very Eyes’ sets the precedent for the variations on a theme to come – that theme being essentially a rebooted version of Yorke’s The Eraser, all intricate percussion, both live and digital, flittering over and under Flea’s Remain In Light-reminiscent clusters of bass, synth washes riding above and below Yorke’s keening voice, chirruping whirrs writing themselves around distant piano strokes.

Admittedly it sounds wonderful, throbbing and woozy in some places, taut and honed in others, those synths mingling well with Yorke’s shimmering falsetto,

sold! seriously! i mean, i was going to check it out anyway but that sounds fantastic

Barely any hooks but the synths sound awesome, indeed. And it's an extremely dense record, to my ears. But I do really enjoy it so far, though exclusively through headphones. It didn't do a lot for me through speakers.

One thing I keep wondering about: Flea?

Can't see what he possibly brought to the table on this record, whether it's ideas or playing on it. Is he only in the band for the upcoming gigs?

i'm trying my best to forget that flea is involved with this whatsoever

poor flea.....

Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

fabulously wealthy flea!

anyway, i haven't yet listened to amok, but working with flea on purpose just seems like an obvious jump the shark moment! hope it's not true.

i'm trying my best to forget that flea is involved with this whatsoever

― Z S, woensdag 20 februari 2013 1:33 (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^ I was trying to be nice, yeah, but this.

Will pop the blue pill tonight and wake up having forgotten about Flea all together.

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m5btg8Jiot1qcxhjoo1_500.gif

Only song you can tell Flea is involved is 'stuck together pieces'.

It's also one of the best in the album, go figure.

Listened to this on the way in, all set to gleefully rip into it but... it sounds fantastic. Initial thoughts after one play:

- This is probably the best and most fully-formed Yorke attempt at making electronic music, well since he and Radiohead started really. It's certainly better than the King of Limbs and The Eraser.

- Part of the reason it's so great is that it sounds so WARM, whereas a lot of the time recent Yorke electronic tracks sound sketchy and half-finished and only make sense when they're played live, there's a real fullness to the sound here.

- Rhythmically and texturally it's fantastic, there's so much going on and so much to hook into. But it also works because it fuses glitchy electronic Yorke with cooing balladry Yorke really well, like if you put the two halves of KoL together.

- Disagree about Flea, you can hear bass guitar all over this and it certainly adds some kind of forward motion. He's probably allowed to do more than Colin is on Radiohead records as well. And no slap bass obviously.

predisposed to hate this for streaming via a player with no volume control /bitchingaboutfreeshit

also for quitting halfway through the first track and redirecting me to a blog in spanish!?

I did the sensible thing and downloaded it. It's pretty kinetic and muscular and textured in a way that wouldn't come through on a stream at all, unless you had amazing computer speakers.

'Head music for people who like head music' might be a better translation

It wouldn't, it's completely meaningless.

MTV Hive: With Atoms For Peace, Thom Yorke Becomes Aphex Twin’s Coldplay.

flea's actually a pretty amazing musician and very capable of doing great bass parts that aren't slap n' pop

otm

he did great slap n pop too

i'm not like a huge chilis guy, but for example, "scar tissue":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGObF2q63Ew

^that's just really ace melodic, in the pocket playing, wouldn't seem out of place coming from a great 60s and 70s session dude

The bass playing on this record is up to par and goes great with the music, but it's also entirely servile and unremarkable. I just don't see why Flea, who is a bassist with a very distinctive style, had to play session musician-like bass on this record. As that's what it is.

yeah, why should flea, who is kinda a master of his instrument, get to have fun and hang out and make music non-slappin' non-poppin' with dudes who are not fuckin' kiedis?

bet Thom Yorke is a ton of fun

had to play session musician-like bass on this record

how humiliating to have to play like duck dunn and james jamerson

Part of the reason it's so great is that it sounds so WARM, whereas a lot of the time recent Yorke electronic tracks sound sketchy and half-finished and only make sense when they're played live, there's a real fullness to the sound here.

Very much otm. Crit consensus seems to be that this is "cautious"/"static" and will flesh out live, but I feel like those were the problems with The Eraser that are here solved. It's tastefully understated in a way Yorke has never really achieved prior through his awkwardly self-conscious cribbing of more traditionally "electronic" styles.

http://www.avclub.com/articles/atoms-for-peace-amok%2C92966/

new vid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpVfF4U75B8

who wants to go clubbing w/ me to try out a few of these moves?

So I was pleasantly surprised by this. Enough negative to lukewarm early reactions allowed my expectations to be sufficiently lowered. It is a surprisingly warm record, though (and I can't believe I'm going to say this) but I found myself wishing for MORE Flea. There's this one little bass riff that pops up towards the end of one of the songs that just sounds go good and not showy at all.

Geeky question: what's the difference between the deluxe and ordinary CDs, apart from two quid?

Quite a nice suit he's wearing in the video. Like his willingness to look a bit silly. Slightly reminded of that Saturday night TV program (name escapes me) where minor celebrities dance with ... people who can dance well.

nice grenson shoes

ancers: Thom Yorke and Fukiko Takase
Director: Garth Jennings
Choreographer: Wayne McGregor

http://atomsforpeace.info
http://www.facebook.com/atomsforpeace
http://xlrecordings.com

Production Company: STK Films
Producer: Helen Power
Director of Photography: Nick Wood
Editor: Dominic Leung @ Trim
Focus: Karl Hui
Gaffer: Paul Allen
Make up: Carol Hart

With thanks to Trinity Laban, Norton & Sons, and Grenson.

pretty weird they get styled, given it's thom yorke. i suppose a video is a video.

love grenson.

I wonder how much impact it will have on sales for the companies thanked.

i really like this record! a pretty groovy improvement on the eraser

didnt pay attn to this but im really feeling the essential mix

yeah it's sick

What essential mix?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01qtckh

Listening now. It's very cool, but the tracklist doesn't seem right? One of the first tracks is from Broadcast's Berberian Sound Studio ost and it's not listed.

Finally had some free time to listen to this one today. On first listen the title track is my favorite one in here followed by Stuck Together Pieces, Ingenue and Reverse Running (probably the best structured song in here?).

The whole thing sounded a bit homogenic to my ears but there's nothing hateable in here, also lots of detail hidden throughout it so I might need to be in the right frame of mind (or using the right amount of drugs) for me to fall in love with it. It's certainly the sort of album that I would have loved about seven years ago.

Just when I thought I was done with Thom Yorke this record pulls me back in, and not by doing anything dramatically different from the stuff I've found tiresome about him in recent years but just by doing it with such warmth and skill.

I really love the first two tracks on this, can't get into the rest of it yet.

Atoms For Peace - BBC Radio 1 Essential Mix

i've been giving this album another shot, it's tough to make it through a full listen but sounds amazing when you pick two random tracks and then bail.

Revisiting this in hopes that new Radiohead is incoming and am really liking it a lot more than I remember to have initially.

It's really strange how I like a lot of what Radiohead have put out over the years, yet I find their solo albums so totally, utterly unengaging. This one is no exception.

Amok is really good

sometimes i think you are my twin in terms of the music you like, ross. almost all my recently updated bookmarked threads have been revived by you...

First time hearing “Hearing Damage” on a random playlist I was streaming and I thought I was listening to an Interpol song

I didn't really get into this album beyond the first two tracks.

https://i.imgflip.com/4he68b.jpg