Radiohead - Kid A / Amnesiac Poll

xxxxxp Yeah they were really aa skirting the.. limits of how much could fit on the surface with that one.

"The Scott Walker one" was how they referred to "Creep" after they recorded it, leading one engineer to remark "The only decent song they have, and it's a cover!"

“How to Disappear into Strings” is just incredible. Would love to hear more of just the string arrangements for their other songs.

though i am very annoyed that they are repackaging these albums yet again, i did enjoy the outtakes. at times, it feels less like outtakes and more like a "remix + rarities" album. i certainly don't have any complaints, even if it is a bit inconsistent. it's good for a super fan of the era and i expectedly really like the ambient / sound collage / harp / orchestral stuff that takes up most of the second half. feels like a very fitting coda to the period. wonder if the following albums will get similar treatment(s). i'm far from a bootleg-seeking tier fan, but i would love a similar `highlights` type disc from the in rainbows period.

Today I did not enjoy to listen to the mid-period stab at “True Love Waits”— I loved that this song existed for the “officially released tracks only” listener that I am as a live version and then as a eulogy. Hearing it paired with Pulk/Pull weakened both tracks for me

While chatting about the experience with a friend tho he tipped me off to what he claims is his favourite RH song, “Worrywort”, which is so lovely, and then I enjoyed the rest of the Amnesiac b-sides, so yeah I agree w you Moka

Also I love that the song “Kid A” ranked so highly in this poll!

I like Idioteque because it really does mangle Thomas Yorke's irritating oxford drawl. Just needs to be mixed into some bass heavy silicon scally electro to truly come alive.

I was laughing at the thought of them swapping the original “Pull/Pulk” with the “True Love Waits” version for the final Amnesiac release and how irate their diehard fans would’ve been with TLW getting officially put out like that.

i actually really like this version of "true love waits" — familiar, yet not, simultaneously.

also agree that this era of b-sides is pretty delicious. in terms of b-side material, i think i prefer only the ok computer era.

“Worrywort” is probably a top 5 song in their discography for me. I don’t think it fits in any of their albums though.

“Kinetic” was always my favorite b-side from that era. Felt completely difficult to pin down compared to the others during those sessions.

my favourites are "cuttooth" and "fog"

While chatting about the experience with a friend tho he tipped me off to what he claims is his favourite RH song, “Worrywort”, which is so lovely, and then I enjoyed the rest of the Amnesiac b-sides, so yeah I agree w you Moka

― flamboyant goon tie included, Friday, November 5, 2021 8:25 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i put this, "transatlantic drawl", and "cuttooth" on my personal kid amnesiac playlist

hearing this early version of "kid a" with piano and live drums opened up this song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-oHjLIcPMU

“How to Disappear into Strings” is just incredible. Would love to hear more of just the string arrangements for their other songs.

Jonny Greenwood albums imo

xp that's not actually an "early" version. it's established that it was one of the first tracks finished for the album (by november 1999), but this version is from their summer 2000 tour, not too long before kid a was released. it's just a fairly different arrangement to how they started playing it from the httt tour onwards (though they've tweaked the live arrangement quite a few more times since then). they never played it between kid a's release & the httt tour, so they presumably weren't happy with this particular arrangement at the time.

i think pretty much everything from kid a/amnesiac was finished by the time they went on tour in june 2000, except "life in a glasshouse"

i stand corrected chronologically but i maintain i was otm about it fuckin slapping

yeah it's a great version

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZhnUWCDuo4

this one's a soundboard recording from that tour, much better quality

thats great!

early “Kid A” live versions were great- think this one is soundboard as well

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aJQcw2GcCM

In context it’s admirable that they were out of their comfort zone not only on record but adapting it to a live setting.

re the Pulk/Pull TLW, what a weird one. Prefer the released versions of both, but I'm fascinated by the history of TLW as a parallel to the song's subject and its final release on what was basically a divorce record, lyrically.

Man I just listened through to the whole reissue and Amnesiac sounds amazing, even Hunting Bears sounds amazing

hot take: hunting bears has always sounded amazing.

(but yes, this new remaster absolutely rewards headphone listening for longtime fans of the material.)

Pull/Pulk sounded a lot less opaque too. Like, I could hear Thom was saying actual words and not just mumbling through an FX unit

Huh? I thought it was confirmed that these weren’t remastered at all? I think the only change is in the half speed vinyl cut?

maybe i'm just listening more intently this time around? i just assumed these were newly spit-shined or whatever. however the case, these albums have always sounded fantastic and always will.

The radiohead subreddit kind of confirms it:

https://www.reddit.com/r/radiohead/comments/qpwmrs/psa_on_kid_amnesia_neither_kid_a_nor_amnesiac_are/

There’s been dozen of threads confirming it’s the same release. It should sound better in vinyl format either way.

XP ah right I was wondering if it was a remaster or if my ears are just working differently now

Don’t fix what’s not broken imho. The originals still sound great to my ears. There’s very little things I’d change.

I’d definitely remaster Hail to the Thief if they release a 20th anniversary thing for that one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xUC-FYazdU

^^^^ This is the very first-ever performance of “How to Disappear Completely” (back when it was known as “How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found”). I far prefer it to the album version.

it took years of listening to kid a before the album version started to seem like the "real" one

that performance truly was a benefit for the bootleggers, lol!

Ummm... I don't hear how that fuzzy live bootleg is really any better or all that different from the studio version?

must agree, sounds at that point like an ok computer outtake. still quite good, but.

and again: much as i love them, i'm not really at the level of fandom that merits appreciating bootlegs with radiohead.

contradiction: the live performances of the king of limbs era material is the definitive way to hear that stuff, but that's probably the consensus by this point.

it's not about the quality or the composition, it's that it was a very early circulated radiohead bootleg, the highest quality one of an unreleased song. everyone listened to it for years and years before the studio version was released

i think i was afraid that would happen to me with "pyramid song" bc i listened to the bootleg from the tibetan freedom concert that's just thom on piano like, over and over again for a solid year before amnesiac came out. the studio version was better though

The KID A MNESIA exhibition / game is astounding. Makes up for how mildly disappointing the physical release for the anniversary was.

it's pretty good yeah

people are currently working on extracting all the audio from it, there's a lot of interesting stuff found already. looking forward to digging through that

there's a 7 minute "pulk/pull" with the chords from the "true love waits" version but the "pulk/pull" vocals

where do i see / hear / experience this exactly?

https://kida-mnesia.com/
https://www.epicgames.com/store/p/kid-a-mnesia-exhibition

& someone's dumping some of the stems & oddities as they go through them here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10FpF2mwKf9ESb8F0OIXOjUplKkOJa49q

but it's very incomplete at the moment, there should be a better collection up within a few days. some of this stuff isn't anywhere (that i could tell anyway) to be found in the exhibition either

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12lJ23Bobg6qt00Z35vbxf1Fwo3Ez48T-

oh this is apparently all the audio files but there's hundreds of them & they're unlabelled

nice!

this was the hope. Sweet. Can't wait to get into this.

Mailed my vinyl back to Toronto. Kid A was a mess!

I find it hard to listen to scuzzy bootlegs of *any* artist tbh.
But bootleg audio aside, that version is pretty uninteresting compared to the album version. No cross-rhythm with the bassline, boring strummy guitar, no strings. Meh.

The most interesting ones I heard were the vocals from pulk/pull without fx that makes Thom sound like a soulless salesman and an 8 bit optimistic.