Radiohead - Kid A / Amnesiac Poll

I also wish IT was eight minutes long

I wish Like Spinning Plates was 9 hours, like an Andy Warhol movie.

Taste is subjective. I love treefingers but I wouldn't choose it over any of the other songs in Kid A. Even the hidden track after MPS sounds better to me. To each its own. If you think treefingers is the best song on Kid A, then go listen to one of Eno's ambient albums and prepare to have your mind blown.

I hate the 'Like Spinning Plates' version on Amnesiac always end up skipping it. It's cool how it was made but I prefer the piano version on IMBW. Would prefer if they had made something more similar to that on the studio. It sounded interesting 15 years ago but it's one of their experiments that hasn't aged that good imho.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqZM71MXNfs

live Fog; even better!

most of the second side of Amnesiac (save Glass House) leaves me cold. It's like a warm up for TKOL or something.

Dollars and Cents is a real hidden gem though.

agree w/ dog latin

first half is great though, pyramid song one of the best

It's all over the place it really feels like the b-sides to Kid A. Lots of gems but wouldn't fit in Kid A.

'Dollars and Cents' is one of those tracks that grew on me a great deal. When I heard Amnesiac the first few times it didn't make much of an impression, but nowadays it's a favourite. I particularly love the way the drums are treated in the mix, alternating between heavy reverb and a more drier approach.

Reading back through the studio diary Ed was keeping at the time of recording, it's amazing how much stuff they've put out since that either had its genesis during these sessions or was written earlier, didn't work out, but found a version that worked later on. For all the talk of writers block and all that stuff, it turned out to be an incredibly productive period that you can still feel echoes of in their work even now. They really don't throw anything away, do they!?

*they

I think I've only made it through the whole of Treefingers maybe twice... I like the concept of an ambient interlude at that point in the album, but it's fearsomely dull to actually listen to.

I don't think it's that difficult to get a handle on 'Treefingers', really... it's not formless at all, it has a structure and a chord progression and everything!

Doesn't mean I have to like it.

I've nothing against beatless textural ambient numbers, but I don't think Treefingers is a particularly interesting one.

I've always preferred Amnesiac to Kid A. Kid A has more real songs but they're both mood pieces, basically, and Amnesiac does sustained mood better IMO.

Is there a thread for ppl to discuss their personal kid amnesiac mixes? Bc that's a thing I've done

x-post:

I dunno, I think Kid A works well as a start-to-finish thing, whereas Amnesiac is frontloaded... I would have loved for them to have found a way of putting tracks like 'Fog' and 'Cuttooth' on there.

Both of these albums must have been a pain in the backside to sequence though. I guess they knew they had enough for a couple of albums when it came to compiling Kid A, but they had so much stuff that there must have been some strong debates about what eventually went onto Kid A and in what order. The fact that it came after OK Computer, too... they must have really agonised over it. Then with Kid A done, the approach for Amnesiac must have been "how do we make a decent record up out of the remainder of the tracks?"

Ed's diary of the recording sessions is fine, but doesn't really tell the full story... I'd really love to read a book on the sessions from these records from start to finish.

like both well enough as front-to-back listens that i've never considered stripping them down for parts. do agree that amnesiac lists a bit after "knives out". "treefingers" is perfect tho.

I found Dollars & Cents really dull at the time - same with Knives Out and I Might Be Wrong and most of the middle section of Amnesiac. As someone who was underwhelmed by much of Kid A but was glad they made it, I didn't want them to be making any kind of rock music any more, I wanted them to be better at making electronic music.

I wonder if D&C would sound better in light of the new album though. It seems to be closer to AMSP than anything else from that era.

Ed's diary of the recording sessions is fine, but doesn't really tell the full story... I'd really love to read a book on the sessions from these records from start to finish.

They appear to be so fearsomely passive aggressive and closed off I wonder if anybody knows the full story of their tortured, album making sagas.

i love how Cuttooth got mentioned the most in the diary by far and it ended up being a b side

the weak points of Amnesiac are Knives Out (quite a dull song), Morning Bell/Amnesiac, Pulk/Pull (nothing really wrong with it but doesn't work in context) and Hunting Bears

would have much prefer Cuttoth, Fog, Kinetic & Worrywort on it over those, Cuttooth and Fog especially are among their very best. i don't know why they hate the recording of Fog so much

I think they were originally trying to make fog sound like morr electropop a la worrywort. More synth based and melodic... Early demos were more in that style and then they made an even better piano based version.

the weak points of Amnesiac are Knives Out (quite a dull song), Morning Bell/Amnesiac, Pulk/Pull (nothing really wrong with it but doesn't work in context) and Hunting Bears

would have much prefer Cuttoth, Fog, Kinetic & Worrywort on it over those, Cuttooth and Fog especially are among their very best. i don't know why they hate the recording of Fog so much

― ufo

Upthread:

Amnesiac

The Kid A / Amnesiac era has such amazing b-sides. You could argue Amnesiac was a b-side album and in parts it definitely feels like it. This one is in serious need of a rearrangement imho and the b-sides from the era definitely allow it.

There is actually a Stylus 'playing god' article about this album already! - http://stylusmagazine.com/articles/playing_god/radiohead-amnesiac.htm - and I agree with it for the most part. At the time thAT article was published Nude was still unreleased, and he picked a live version of Spinning Plates too. The live version of Spinning Plates would, in fact, been a much better addition than its final form but it feels a little bit like cheating picking up unreleased or live versions when playing god.

I actually love having the final 'playing god' playlist in my itunes and it breaks the mood completely to have a live track in there. Also he left out 'Fog' which is one of the best b-sides of the era next to Worrywort. So from that article I picked the same tracklist with two slight changes; 'fog' instead of 'nude' (which coincidentally share a similar mood so it doesn't ruin the flow) and I decided to remove Spinning Plates completely.

1. Packt Like Sardines in a Crushed Tin Box
2. Pyramid Song
3. You and Whose Army
4. I Might Be Wrong
5. Fog
6. Cutooth
7. Worrywort
8. The Amazing Sounds of Orgy
9. Kinetic
10. Life in a Glasshouse

― Moka, Saturday, February 15, 2014 5:49 PM (2 years ago)

this is how I have it on itunes and it really improves the album:

http://i.imgur.com/WCgJV5N.png

Maybe nowadays I'd add Dollars & Cents or change it for Orgy or Kinetic. I found it very meandering at first but it has grown on me.

Here's my kid amnesiac playlist:

1) everything in its right place
2) kid a
3) national anthem
4) transatlantic drawl
5) pyramid song
6) pulk/pull revolving doors
7) optimistic
8) in limbo
9) cuttooth
10) worrywort
11) packt like sardines in a crusht tin box
12) idioteque
13) like spinning plates
14) treefingers

There were certain sequences of songs I wanted to preserve, and certain tracks segue p well stylistically. I think I'm the only one who favors transatlantic drawl, it seems, but I like its trashiness followed by warbly boards of canada kinda synths

You left out HTDC

See what he did there?

Haw

Love the orchestration of HTDC, but the song doesn't go anywhere for me

There's something about 'Treefingers' that reminds me of the intro to 'Pearl's Girl' by Underworld.

20th Anniversary announcements today!

New / unreleased song on spotify.

Artwork looks super lazy.

a bit more is coming

https://t.co/sMZGB0eE7V
We humbly submit KID A MNESIA to you.
It's a coming of age for Kid A & Amnesiac and it's joined by a new album, Kid Amnesiae, a memory palace of half-remembered, half-forgotten sessions & unreleased material.
All three come out together on November 5th. pic.twitter.com/V5Ms5iRUKl

— Radiohead (@radiohead) September 7, 2021

New/old track is good!

Tacit admission they should have been a double album?

300 page book looks super tasty.

Oh, it does.

I have quickly shifted from "Well, that's a stupid idea" to "Yeah, probably need both the books and the CD of extras".

The sleeve for Amnesiac is good but I really have no fondness for anything I've seen of Donwood's art, it's very bad.

Sprang for the 3CD set; don't need the book.

I've got a lot of time for Donwood - his Holloway book and the London Views prints, in particular. His There Will Be No Quiet book is very good. Actually, he was posting pencil drawings (on Twitter) at some point during the pandemic that were incredible.

i ordered the big book/vinyl thing because I'm a sucker

Not including the original b-sides in that strikes me as misstep.

that's for the 40th anniversary. finally, then it will all be available in one deluxe package