Thom Yorke / Atoms for Peace - AMOK (2013)

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