Radiohead - The King of Limbs

I tried to order this and the last step ended up in SQL hell and I have a short attention span so now I will probably never hear it. good luck king of limbs

radiohead's announcement cynically timed to steal the arcade fire's thunder.

I had to do it twice. It worked the second time. x-post

They suck for not releasing the CD on the same date. I will never pay for downloads when I intend to buy the CD anyway. Physical CDs >>>>>>>>>>>>> downloads.

Uh, if you buy the cd, you get the download on Saturday and the cd when it's ready.

or wait, can you get the cd w/o buying the extravagant vinyl package? maybe not.

That's more offensive to me than buying mp3s.

Preorder? May go for it then. Or just enjoy the album on Spotify until the CD is ready.

I still don't understand why killing the CD seems so important for some people while currently there is no format that can realistically compete with CDs in terms of sound quality. Yes, lossless exists, but nobody buys lossless.

Well, looks like there's no separate cd option yet, but there's one included with the vinyl sale. They do sell it in .wav format, though, so you can burn your own cd.

I doubt if this'll ever be on Spotify, In Rainbows isn't.

xp Yes they do

I had to do it twice. It worked the second time. x-post

yeah I have a rule with shit like this, if your frontend is too clunky to let my order go through the first time then I just buy an old Bathory album from Hells Headbangers instead

in some ways, this is an even more interesting experiment with digital-sales than in rainbows, since now -- with the data the band gathered the last time -- they can see if the model for hitting an optimal price-point works.

i guess the response is that radiohead, unlike a lot of other bands, has a built-in, passionate fanbase that will go out of their way to buy the product.

coincidentally enough, this album is completely comprised of bathory covers!

Haha how weird. Yesterday right before I went to sleep I was listening to a couple of tracks from In Rainbows and wondering when something new would be released.

wow. no tracklisting. clear vinyl. i'm psyched!

x-post But two years later, I bet the data has shifted, no? What someone may have been willing to pay for an album with a novel release scheme a couple of years ago may (and probably is) different from what they're willing to pay today, esp. with so many Amazon MP3 fire sales and whatnot. I mean, the Grammy-winning "Suburbs" is $5 on Amazon.

In other words, curious how this works out.

Haha how weird. Yesterday right before I went to sleep I was listening to a couple of tracks from In Rainbows and wondering when something new would be released.

I wasn't wondering when something new would be released, but I listened to The Bends for the first time in ages last night when going to sleep. Woke up to find out there's a new album imminent.

Ned and I can make things happen, people!

oh man you guys were listening to the wrong albums, now this is gonna suck

Will Ned and Johnny Fever please listen to the Avalanches tonight before going to sleep.

I'm really excited for this album I still listen to In Rainbows a lot.

I am not nearly as excited for this as I would have been before In Rainbows came out.

And so the laughable bullshit begins...

coincidentally enough, this album is completely comprised of bathory covers!

― Daniel, Esq., Monday, 14 February 2011 13:39 (39 minutes ago) Bookmark

Under the Sign of the Thom Yorke

I'm excited it's a return to form after the disappointing In Rainbows!

:P

Exciting news for an otherwise blah Monday, but I'm wishing there was some sort of in-between option that is more than just the downloads and less than super-duper deluxe expensive boxset.

Well, if they are going to do it this way, I miss an option a la "In Rainbows" to pay zilch for the downloads and then full prize for the CD when it appears. I did it then, and I also know many others did.

i suspect you'll be able to buy a normal CD of it in the store eventually

Can't say that I'm all that excited about this. $48 seems too steep for me. I'll wait for the 12" when it's only $15.

The regular CD will be in stores on March 28th.

i suspect you'll be able to buy a normal CD of it in the store eventually

Yeah, but that also means that I'd have to wait until the end of March to hear it when the album has already been discussed to death and no one cares anymore. Good job Radiohead on forcing the illegal downloads!

£6 is not exactly an enormous amount to pay if you want to hear in that much!

Psyched for this, although I'm not sure I'm actually going to be able to listen to this on the 19th. Feels weird for an album to have a RELEASE DATE that means something in 2011 - I miss release date excitement far more than the physical CD in this day and age.

See, I would totally be jumping on a, like, $15 for digital download now and get the physical CD when its rleased. I just happen to fall into that gap where I want a physical product, but I don't want to shell out $48 for it.

Agree there should be a middle option, with just a compact disc preorder. I don't even have a turntable anymore, and if I did, that still seems a pretty steep price to pay for some fancy packaging and an album I'm not even sure yet whether or not I'll like.

In Rainbows = Pay what you want
King of Limbs = sorry, we gotta get paid

i'd imagine if they could have manufactured the CD/LP themselves and sold it and avoided labels completely, they would have. to think they hadnt thought it through and done the sums is probably naive - i would imagine the amounts they lose in illegal downloads in the month before its in the shops is not comparable to taking on the distro themselves.

My barrier isn't the price, it's the extra crap I have no space for in my house.

can't believe you're unwilling to make room for 625 tiny pieces of artwork

In Rainbows = Pay what you want
King of Limbs = sorry, we gotta get paid

― van smack, Monday, February 14, 2011

eh, this is more than a little unfair as a criticism, unless you subscribe to the "music years to be free (of charge)" school of thought.

radiohead have families to feed, you know.

can't believe you're unwilling to make room for 625 tiny pieces of artwork

That has about the same level of appeal as "also included: a really old slice of ham" for me

^ yes, this

i always thought the brilliant bit of the In Rainbows release was not the pay what you want model but the fact that they had complete control of its dissemination, i.e. no leaks, no promos, no record stores opening it early, etc. it's much easier to sell people a record they don't have yet.

The regular CD will be in stores on March 28th.

source?

I admit I am looking forward to the anguished "WHERE ARE THOSE LAST TWO PIECES OF TINY ARTWORK" blog posts/tweets

i agree w/ lj and johnny that there should be a "middle option" between the download and deluxe "newspaper album" (lol) box set. but i get why they would delay the standard cd edition. big radiohead fans who want a physical product asap will be more likely to order the box without a lower-priced physical option to trade down to. smart business move imo

also, this drawing from the radiohead blog should be the album cover imo

http://cdn.sandbag.uk.com/RH/thankyou2.jpg

They'll make enough money off selling t-shirts with that album cover on them. It seems designed to have the maximum possible appeal to teenage goths.

"12:51 (ondes martenot outtakes)"

here for it

first In Rainbows sessions were with Spike Stent.. Wonder what they were looking for

iirc even that was just because nigel was busy with something else at the time

I agree that In Rainbows sounds amazing… just saying it would have been interesting to hear it under a “warmer” producer. Maybe it would have been for the worse, we will never know.

Everyone has their own definition of what “dry” or “wet” in production means I guess. Iirc “dry” usually means very clean on effects and recorded without reverb or echo in the room and “wet” is the opposite.

I’m aware Radiohead’s songs are filled with effects but imho they sound “dry” because it’s usually very clear, specially on the first segments on their songs. Radiohead seem to love doing buildups for most of the song and releasing tension in the last minute - They’ve been doing it since “Creep” and refining it ever since - They need that “dry” cleaner sound otherwise when you keep adding layers later on it’s will sound way too saturated and they’ll end up sounding like a shoegaze band.

I can see why the Strokes thought they didn’t make a good match with Nigel. They tend to play very straight songs that can be translated live effortlessly, you need a “wet” sound if you’re not adding layers /as the song advances.

Maybe I’m not making sense. It’s been an exhausting day.

What I mean is that the strokes will make a song structure that goes:

Intro: vocals and lead guitar
Verse: enters bass and drums
Chorus: enter second guitar

And Radiohead will be more like

Intro: electronic drum loop and vocals
Verse: enter guitar 1 and some ambient effect
Verse 2: enter bass, guitar 2 and drums
Chorus: drop 1 of those and add a spooky moog
Bridge: leave random 3 of the above of your choice
Chorus 2: bring everything back but add the london symphony orchestra and start screaming

Maybe I'm in the minority for generally liking Godrich's production. Even on Terror Twilight. Always find it really warm and sparkly

Love Pavement and many of Godrich's productions with Radiohead, but Terror Twilight does nothing for me

It's just interesting to think about stuff like why the Strokes would've wanted to work with him, then. And in the end they put out the famously same-as-their-debut sounding "Room On Fire"... but in my memory it had a much bigger range of sounds than their first.

"i was thinking of doing this keyboard thing ..." "Get Radiohead's guy on the phone!"

I actually love how TKOL sounds, can’t agree with HTTT hate how thin and crisp everything sounds in that one.

Weird, to me HttT sounds the most like a big modern rock album to me...lots of bass, very compressed, some bigger drum sounds. I really like how it sounds, but it feels like they reacted against it on IR (lots of very dry '70s type drum sounds, like not a lot of room sound or compression-for-effect, with the exception of certain tunes or moments).

not a lot of room sound

I think this is a production problem with both IR and TKOL, though it's more pronounced on the latter. They're both quite "airless" sounding to my ears and it drives me a little nuts. Even on the most outre Kid A/Amnesiac tracks there's a sense of space which grounds the music and makes it feel "live." I think they rectified this a little bit on AMSP. I don't know what exact production techniques contribute to this besides reverb and mixing, but it's interesting to me how different their recordings sound from album to album.

Yeah, I always think of the drum sound on IR as being super home record-y and dry, but I guess it leaves room for the lush Ondes & string parts, and the guitars.

But then there's Reckoner, the only one with really bold choices on the drum sound (very compressed and roomy with the drum kit all on the right channel, and that incredibly recorded + verb-ed out tambourine in the left).

When I think of Terror Twilight, I think of The Hexx and how spacey and trippy it sounds. I wouldn't change the production on that at all.