Radiohead LP9 Anticipation, Fangirling and random Cheesecake Thread (Do not read if you hate Radiohead or us)

It's like Jonny Greenwood did to Penderecki what Radiohead did to the fringes of electronic dance music. He cleaned all the rough edges off, gave it a pop sensibility and a good choon, and made it listenable.

I think the interesting thing about it is that in the process he created something that's quite unique? I listen to a lot Penderecki & friends and a lot of classical music in general and there really isn't anyone else who's carved out this weird space between Polymorphia and something far more lush and Romantic.

This is where I just don't have enough knowledge of classical music (Romantic era or contemporary) to respond in any kind of meaningful way except "I like the way it sounds." He occasionally touches on that terrifying atonal noize that Penderecki excels at bringing, but he seems to fill in around the edges with these soft, fluttering, harmonious bits. That there are passages of reassuring beauty, as opposed to Penderecki's full on DOOM DOOM EVERYTHING IS TERRIFYING all bold all caps sans serif text. Jonny's music is a serif font.

Oh god this makes no sense at all to anyone but me.

Things Radiohead fans say: "Dear Jonny Greenwood, your compositions are in a serif font."

SHOOT ME. NOW.

You should listen to Doghouse. I think it's my favorite piece by him by far.

Is it anything like "In A Doghouse"? Otherwise I'm not having it.

Anyway, stop trying to make me listen to Greenwood. You know I'm a Yorkist. I feel all disloyal. I might have to go and sack St Albans.

Oh, and I'm going to answer here to that artsdesk review that you posted on The Other Place.

I mean, the reviewer played his cards in the first paragraph of the piece - whenever anyone says "I like my genre X x-ish and my genre Y y-ish and NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET" you know you are in the presence of someone so small minded that they probably also say things like "I don't know much about art but I know what I like" which means it's perfectly OK to just go ahead and not read the rest of the review.

I find theartsdesk often baffling because they have one or two really good critics/writers, and then seem to make up the rest of the team with people who stubbornly fold their arms across their chest and refuse to have their preconceptions challenged - and the editorial team goes for it because they know that nothing brings the pageviews like challops.

We get it! You don't like synthesis, homage or genre-fusion. We got it from the first paragraph. We continued to get it over the pageview-grabbing two-page split to double advertising revenue on what was a really boring and tedious 1-note review. And we continue to get it. Now fuck off back to Covent Garden you Britney-loving rebel you.

Sorry I couldn't have responded in The Other Place. I still feel awkward and unhappy about how things went down over there.

smdh at that Arts Desk critic. You're right - the first paragraph makes the rest of the review redundant.

It's also a very common anti-middlebrow pose dressed up as if it were iconoclasm. Like critics who say they only like Iranian arthouse and Transformers 3 and nothing in between.

Have to say that I thoroughly agree with both MB and DL here. And also with Owen Pallett on another thread who said that the Worst 200 Songs Project was redolent of the kind of book-burning “THIS IS SHIT” English mentality that made him sick. It really gets my goat too (but then I’m not an Englishman).

You see it all over the place; Ian Martin’s Guardian column today, the Popdose website (don’t waste your time; I look at these things so you don’t have to), too many other places – the underlying message being “Don’t bother with that awful new music that is so difficult to listen to, stick with what you know, let’s all like the same things and that will simplify our demographic reach, make our lives easier.”

Fair enough, Mr Petridis tries to readdress this issue in today’s edition (with the substantial aid of his daughter). The difference being that when young Richard Williams was making his way as a music writer in the late sixties, he already knew about Ligeti and Stockhausen, but I recognise that these are different times.

But when you have someone say, in today’s paper, that “we want to turn our readers into a resource,” then it’s a revolver-reaching-for situation, I’m afraid.

Sorry MB, I didn't notice this was your thread, feel free to delete and I'll go off and have a moan elsewhere

*exits sheepishly, stage left*

The only ownership that I assert over this thread is that it is specifically ~for fangirling~ - i.e. one should only post on it if one is actually a fangirl or else if one is prepared to put up with, support, condone or otherwise just not-be-awful-and-negative-about fangirling as a mentality. Anyone who is prepared to do that, is welcome. Anyone who isn't won't be deleted, they'll just be squealed at, loudly, until they go away.
;-)

But yeah, the whole schtick of that article was just so distasteful. In point of fact, what it screamed was I DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT ART, BUT I KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!

Like, I understand the appeal of hating. It's very comforting, in a way. I know I do it myself, that there are artists I just *take against* and it becomes almost part of my identity that I hate Artist X. Because it's easier to establish one's identity in opposition to something, rather than by positive qualities. Maybe also lazier, and avoids actually ever putting oneself out there emotionally by committing to something as ~uncool~ as love. Because loving something or someone, really renders one quite vulnerable.

But, for me, Hating An Artist is kind of an active process, it's something I'm often testing. Like, I will, every year or so, go and listen to artists I actively hate, to test myself, to test my preconceptions. Sometimes I listen to something I hate for about 30 seconds, and go "yup, so relieved, still hate that" and sometimes it will blindside me and take me by surprise and I'll have to evaluate, has this artist changed, or have my tastes changed, and it's this process of give and take, defining and redefining boundaries. (Relieved I still don't like Penderecki, but have had to adjust my opinions on Autechre and Neil Young in the past few years after being ambushed by unexpected emotion.)

But to go to a show by an artist you know in advance you hate, you have already decided to hate, and then just spend the whole article just missing the point of what other people actually *like* about said artist. There's just something so... *lazy* about that.

And I think DL is right about that, that it's kneejerk anti-middlebrow. That it's actually been established and accepted that to enjoy only highbrow material is limiting, snobby and perhaps even vaguely classist. But if you add in "oh, but I also like complete trash, look at how much I'm enjoying this lowbrow art (with a side order of condescension and lashings of irony)" then somehow that balances it out? No it doesn't! That's not Poptimism, that's inverse snobbery.

hahahah OK, I guess I don't have a choice in this Dogwood matter.

I just wanted to say...

http://mercphotos.slideshowpro.com/albums/044/363/album-321248/cache/ecct0413radiohead09.sJPG_900_540_0_95_1_50_50.sJPG?1334233284

Red trousers. Sigh.

http://mercphotos.slideshowpro.com/albums/044/363/album-321248/cache/ecct0413radiohead06.sJPG_900_540_0_95_1_50_50.sJPG?1334296190

^^^^what's so tantalising is that my father is also a photographer for this paper. If only he could have got the passes instead.

(hey, Thom and my dad could have exchanged ponytail tips.)

http://i.imgur.com/oUWPa.jpg

OK, I hate it, hate it, hate it, when people do this about women, and I'm well aware of how offensive I'm about to be, and yet, I cannot stop myself from shouting out...

JESUS CHRIST THOM YORKE EAT A SANDWICH.

I miss your belly. Your belly was super cute. Please grow it back for me? I will force feed you Cornish blue cheese until you comply.

wow, he looks really rough.

<img src="http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0dij1VUmo1robhpjo1_1280.jpg";>
<img src="http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1scp3ihzY1qa641uo1_1280.jpg";>

Just a weird angle on his face in the other one.

http://26.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m0dij1VUmo1robhpjo1_1280.jpg
http://27.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m1scp3ihzY1qa641uo1_1280.jpg

Am I gonna be thrown out of the Thomosexuals if I admit I'm not crazy about the stuff he does with Modeselektor? (Though I'm not actually sure I like Modeselektor that much without Apparat to pretty them up.)

I love Shipwreck, but This and The White Flash are a bit on the dull side. I like the Burial/Four Tet singles with Thom from last year a lot more.

Too much creaky voice on Shipwreck.

Let's just bump this thread every time Thom exposes his abdomen.

http://distilleryimage9.instagram.com/45d94c628d7111e1be6a12313820455d_7.jpg

BELLYBELLYBELLYEBELLYBELLY

(I mean we could talk about Nigel's and Thom's clicky clacky bleepbloopfest, too, but it's still doing my head in.)

Knowing that shot was from the LA DJ MOCA thing they did, this just comes to mind:

And if the world does turn
And if London burns I'll be standing on the beach with my guitar
I wanna be in a band when I get to heaven
Anyone can play guitar
And they won't be a nothing anymore

Grow my hair, grow my hair
I am Jim Morrison

At least his hair now is all his own. Unlike when he wrote those lyrics.

I wonder if some of those AFP tracks are remixes rather than the eventual album tracks. The first one sounds like proper Thom, but the rest sound a lot like they've been reworked by others.

I was under the impression that they were live remixing on the fly? (Though that's only based on listening, it's hard to tell if Thom is actually doing something or just dancing and checking twitter in the videos.)

I hope that they're not changed too much from the album versions as I like the clicky bleepbloops.

(All these DJ-ing videos that keep popping up do amuse me, though, to find out that for all Thom's talk of DJing and DJ culture, he can't actually beatmatch to save his life.)

Could be. It just struck me how untouched that first track sounded compared to the others.

Think the first track is just a song-y bone to throw the ateasers howling for "proper songs" and "less bleeps and bloops" before the album jumps off into the pure "electronic dance music" album he keeps telling people he's going to release.

I want the album to be 12 versions of the long version of Twist just to piss people off, but I would.

So this summer, Mr Yorke will be DJ-ing RIGHT ACROSS THE ROAD from where I used to live.

Real life is no fair

block parties were less anticipated when you lived there.

The building had been under construction for so long we thought it was abandoned when I lived there. Now it's a massive posh art gallery.

that stinks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyF9MehdOTg

Love this so much.

I'm on a bus and can't watch it, but I assume that's Full Stop? Love the skittering drums on that now.

How is this song so good.

I don't know! (There's a better sound quality version of it, though, I swear I've heard one, even though the camera work was sick-makingly drunken)

Also, how is his ponytail so cute?

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4xp8gbB7J1qb0bt9o3_500.jpg

:3

Have we had the sun shining out of his behind yet?

http://i.imgur.com/KBsHI.jpg

Jesus Christ you take a man who is already sex incarnate, and then you make him play the sexiest of all instruments and the power of sexiness just increases exponentially.

i don't see anyone playing accordion

I didn't know there were bass accordions?

Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan: 'I'll piss on Radiohead'

"pompous"

A minute later, Corgan, still probing, finally finds the key to Thayil’s heart: “I hate how in magazine pictures, they always stick me somewhere in the back.”

Kim Thayil explodes: “What do you mean? You write all the songs, and you do all the interviews. You play the instruments on the album. You control the band to the extent that most people think of Smashing Pumpkins as the Billy Corgan Experience, and all you care about is some photograph?”

“But I hate it,” Corgan says, “it means they don’t think I’m the cute one.”

“Ooh,” Thayil says a little too loudly as Corgan walks away, “I’ll bet he’s going to call his therapist in Chicago, wake her up at four in the morning, and tell her about that big, mean bear who made fun of him.”

The next day at the Big Day Out festival, Thayil is talking to Kim and Kelley Deal in the Breeders’ dressing room when Corgan walks past wearing a long-sleeved Superman T-shirt like the one your four-year-old nephew probably owns.

“You hurt me deeply,” Corgan says, touching the giant S on his chest and pouting. “You hurt me deeply in my heart."

How many times do you think I can listen to Full Stop? Or Ful Stop, which I refuse to accept.

All these new songs are so good. Have they played Skirting on the Surface lately?

"Ful Stop" ???

::puts on very best Felicity Kendall in The Good Life voice::

OH, THOM.

p.s. I haven't cared about what that hideous, arrogant, talentless slaphead thinks since... wait, I have never cared about what that hideous, arrogant, talentless slaphead Corgan thinks. Ever.

Please do not besmirch our good and pure Radiohead thread of love with his idiocy.

True, I'm sorry. I just thought it was hilarious.