Radiohead - The King of Limbs

Was able to listen properly last night & again after work today. It's intriguing, and I like the way it skirts dancier/more electronic stuff that's trendy these days, but I'm left pretty cold by the whole affair.

"Neat enough that I'll keep listening until it seems more interesting": too-faint praise?

xpost - i was thinking more 13-14 years ago.

I will eventually go for the CD, but this annoyingly percussive album may be their worst ever.

After several listens it's clear that Lotus Flower is the best song, followed by Codex. Not massively keen on anything else, though nothing's actually bad.

I'm not finding myself tempted to go back to this very often.

I'm not either but I did like "Seperator" a lot. It sounds like almost all of the album combine drum patterns from "15 Step" and Four Tet's "She Moves She". I like how in "Seperator" the drums at least sound human somewhat (obviously a human couldn't really play like that but at least it sounds organic). It looks like they made a conscious decision not to include anything like "Bodysnatchers" or "2+2=5" or "Knives Out", maybe in a month this will seem better to me

Am I the only one who finds the drums on 'separator' and 'little by little' directly inspired by Jaki Liebezeit? The latter could very well be a song lifted from Tago Mago or Ege Bamyasi.

Also 'bloom' and 'feral' remind me of Four Tet rather than Flying Lotus, particulary the 'everything ecstatic' album.

No, not the only one Moka, 'Seperator' (the best cut on this record for me) drums sound very Can-like. It's a thinner and less organic sound, but Can-y all the same.

(that would be Give Up the Ghost)

― Melissa W, Sunday, February 20, 2011 4:58 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i'm shocked! that's probably my favorite one. seems like thom yorke was digging on some bon iver, maybe?

i like "give up the ghost" and "feral" a lot, they were two that stood out the first time i listened

I also hate Bon Iver.

I'm not that keen on Little By Little, the drums are great but every other aspect of the song feels really lazy.

^ this (xpost)

(that would be Give Up the Ghost)

― Melissa W, Sunday, February 20, 2011 4:58 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i'm shocked! that's probably my favorite one. seems like thom yorke was digging on some bon iver, maybe?

― bows don't kill people, arrows do (Jordan)

Also my favorite one. They're frequently covering Neil Young songs live so I'd pick him over Bon Iver as an influence for that one.

Aside from the quality of the songwriting, does the terrible clipping on Give Up the Ghost bother anyone else? Terribly mastered and subsequently hard to listen to.

who was the production team on this, by the way?

Jam and Spoon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-kjMIJWn5k

Am I the only one who finds the drums on 'separator' and 'little by little' directly inspired by Jaki Liebezeit? The latter could very well be a song lifted from Tago Mago or Ege Bamyasi.

― Moka, Monday, February 21, 2011 Bookmark

No! I said something similar the other day and then followed it up with some YouTube clips here.

That reminds me, Ege Bamyasi is such an amazing record, it's a hell of an album to be inspired by

i wish i could hear how other people's ears are hearing the phrase on "little by little". i mean, i have to work hard to feel the beat in the right place until the first chorus (or whenever that upbeat guitar riff from the beginning is playing).

I like how in "Seperator" the drums at least sound human somewhat (obviously a human couldn't really play like that..

for what it's worth, humans can definitely play like that!

xp I just think of the shitty Oasis song.

trying to figure out what ed o'brien plays on this album.

Shaky things.

i'm warming up to it. i like bloom, little by little, and codex, and separator is alright. the rest just kind of drift by.

"give up the ghost" is probably the weakest song. do not want

not sure what phil does, either. there are live drums in a few places, i suppose, but for the most part the entire album could be a drum machine and it wouldn't be that different. same with colin - the bass could just be keyboards, there's nothing that only colin could have played.

jonny's influence i can hear all over the place. so to me, this seems more like a thom+jonny joint than a solo thom thing, or a full band thing. which is fine, it's just...a different zone than the rest of their releases.

This is hardly a new thing though - it's difficult to hear what half the band did on Everything In Its Right Place or Backdrifts.

yeah, definitely, but sustained throughout the entire album.

I couldn't get into Separator until I started hearing it as a Sundays song.

for what it's worth, humans can definitely play like that!

I'm talking mostly about the way the drum part loops. Like you can tell the fill itself is played by a human but the way the ending and the beginning sync up so quickly is what makes it feel inhuman (to me, at least).

i think assuming that radiohead these days stick rigidly to their assigned live instruments in the studio is a bit of a mistake. unless they actually conduct any interviews around this album, it is going to be hard to tell who, if anyone, was dominant on this release.

Pretty interesting that they're one of the only 4+ member bands I can think of who've maintained exactly the same lineup for as long as they have, all things considered.

thom, thom's falsetto, thom's ego, thom's groove

Melissa - re: Give Up The Ghost and mastering, I haven't noticed any clipping and just had a look at the file in Audacity - there's loads of empty space and it barely ever hits digital zero. I haven't got a paid download but rather what I was told was a copy of a paid one (refuse to pay for it now and again on CD, which I'll be buying), so it could conceivably be an unmastered copy, but I'd be astonished if it wasn't the same set of files given Radiohead's release tactic.

I just opened it up in Audacity as well and the parts that clip/distort for me definitely clip in the file. It may not be as egregious as usual in terms of flattening, but the louder bits have been amplified far too much.

Can you post a screengrab so I can judge if I've got the same file?

http://i54.tinypic.com/14xp3r7.jpg

Just listened to mine again on my better pair of headphones and I'm not noticing any clipping.

Pretty interesting that they're one of the only 4+ member bands I can think of who've maintained exactly the same lineup for as long as they have, all things considered.

U2 is another one...hmmmmmm (hmmmmmm)

Same as me, pretty damn sure. Are you hearing clipping at circa 2:00, 2:45, etc?

Yes.

The more I listen to this, the more I feel like Thom Yorke may actually be the worst thing on this record?

I love the detailed, minimal production - so QUIET, all these silences and little underdone moments, recalling yeah Villalobos, Nicolas Jaar, etc. But Thom just can't crank things back enough, can't undersing enough (or doesn't, here) - he's overdoing it, for a record this understated.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/njsouthall/Screenshot2011-02-21at191808.png%3Ft%3D1298315964

Zoomed right in; if it's there, it's really, really minor. Maybe your ears are more sensitive than mine - I've only listened to it about 4 times so far, and only twice off a really good set of headphones, but it's not struck me.

Fucking Photobucket piece of shit.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v236/njsouthall/Screenshot2011-02-21at191808.png

it doesn't seem like an overly squashed master to me (although it does sound shitty in my car; just low end and vocals, with all the detail in the middle getting wiped out).

It's odd that you can't hear it. At some of those peaks it distorts so much that it actually clicks at points. Tried it with different headphones, different programs, through my ipod, through a stereo, etc. Same sound every time.

The clipping probably comes from Radiohead using an unregistered version of WinRar making the archive files they sent out.