Screamadelica vs Kid A

Kid A is a sitting in your room listening to it on headphones album, which is good and necessary, and I like headphones albums, but it misses the point of dance music, and almost seems to have a kind of contempt for clubbing as an activity, even as it's adopting the sounds and signifiers of "dance" music.

― They have fangs, They have teeth! (White Chocolate Cheesecake)

something off about this. agree that kid a is a loner/introvert headphones album, but i don't think it "misses the point of dance music". it simply has different aims. and i really don't understand the sense in which it might be said to have "contempt for clubbing as an activity".

my world of ravers

Not that I'm particularly in the mood to stan for Kid A but the "oh it's just this lazy swiping of ideas from IDM" line that people trot out constantly really shits me to tears. It always feels like the person saying it imagines themselves as standing in a pulpit addressing a congregation unaware that Autechre or Aphex Twin or Oval exist.

Also contenderizer is correct, by 2000 1970 non-dancing electronic music was well entrenched enough that you could be influenced by it without necessarily adopting any stance at all vis a vis clubbing.

i am not qualified to talk about this particular discussion (i've never heard screamadelica) but i'm just going to throw this in for, hopefully, tim f to pick up: when kid a came out and got its rapturous plaudits, at the time what made me gnash my teeth was that to my ears tori amos's to venus and back had done the alt-musician-goes-electronic thing with so much more life and invention and ideas.

I mentally replaced To Venus and Back with From the Choirgirl Hotel and decided not to call you out on it because that's a pretty good album and stuff even if I disagree with you totally. And then I noticed that it in fact said To Venus and Back and I just stared at what you said in shock for like 4 minutes.

I don't think their approaches to electronic music are particular similar.

I couldn't even say what electronic music Tori was listening to in order to come up with her arrangements, which is one of those actually-neutral-in-itself facts that can be framed as a positive or negative depending on yr aim - either she "got electronic music wrong" or she "got electronic music wrong in a way that was right, or at least more interesting."

Whereas Radiohead offered a very competent, very thoughtful integration of contemporary electronic music mores. So it's either more competent or more predictable, depending on how you frame it. The problem I have with "oh it's just IDM DO YOU SEE" stance is not that it's wrong but that it's just an obvious criticism, it's really only one step away from "OH BUT IT HAS GUITARS." As music listeners (and occasionally music crit writers) we are better than this, or should be.

My experience of the reception to Kid A was that it was rather negative, Brett D at pitchfork aside. There's been a lot of retrospective upgrading of its rep.

I remember a guy at the cinema where I worked smugly announcing to me at the beginning of 2001 that the next Radiohead album would be a return to the sound of OK Computer and was the album that they'd meant to release all along and Kid A would be wiped from popular consciousness.

Would have loved to watch his face the first time he listened to Amnesiac.

Haha I did the same thing as Melissa initially. I obv. like To Venus and Back but I don't think it moves beyond From The Choirgirl Hotel arrangements-wise.

FTR "Higher Than The Sun" is the best thing on either album and more than anything else suggests an awesome parallel universe where The Orb produced a raft of dance-pop crossover tunes.

(either album being Kid A and Screamadelica)

i think FTCH has better songs but TVAB is way more invested in electronic production, which is why i used that example

One thing that I think would be interesting to talk about is the waves of electronic music influence that lapped over the (for want of a better word) alternative music world throughout the nineties and early 00s, like ripples in a pond.

For instance I tend to think that Tori was part of more of a mid-nineties moment of musicians reacting to trip hop and even taking their cues from U2 - sorry Lex! but in truth both those Tori albums sound like her imagining working with Flood (maybe to make it more palatable sub in "A Perfect Day Elise" where I refer to U2).

Radiohead were obv drawing on a different sonic palette and if there's a female musician that beat them to that particular punch it's Bjork with Homogenic - as you'd expect.

Also I wonder if Tori had listened to Ruby's Salt Peter. OMG Lex did you ever hear that album?

Oh I just checked the relevant thread and you very much did. Of course!

yeah Is This Desire? and Salt Peter both sounded way more innovative and strange than Kid A, too - Salt Peter and TVAB have been almost totally written out of history though

I couldn't even say what electronic music Tori was listening to in order to come up with her arrangements, which is one of those actually-neutral-in-itself facts that can be framed as a positive or negative depending on yr aim - either she "got electronic music wrong" or she "got electronic music wrong in a way that was right, or at least more interesting."

me neither! apart from obviously BT and Armand Van H?

literally unbelievable that apparently no one actually asked her this at the time.

xpost Historical developments very much in character.

Actually a sonically and historically plausible explanation is The Downward Spiral?

My sense from the time is that anyone who tried to do use looped drums and electronic textures was boxed by the media as ripping from Portishead and Tricky regardless of whether they sounded even remotely similar..

Again, same thing as saying Kid A is "just" a rock band ripping ideas from IDM.

It's an unfortunate feature of rock crit that rock band influences are allowed in all their subtlety and nuance and infinitesimal degrees of individuation but any attempt to incorporate electronic music sees everyone leaping for the laziest analogies possible.

But then I guess this is expressive of that general truth of music reception, that the less familiar you are with a particular style then the more examples of it will appear alike to the point of redundancy.

Oh god, so many x-posts which I won't read but this was in response to Tim F's first 2 posts.

Firstly, thank you very much but I'm very well aware of the history of non-dancing electronic music. But my opinions have also been formed by reading a lot of interviews with Thom Yorke and his own particular history with music, and dance music in particular (stuff like, he was a DJ while at college, and he used to incessantly play "house records" to the great annoyance of his housemates/future bandmates while they were trying to listen to Pale Saints. Another interview where Jonny was taking the piss out of Thom and saying "Thom basically wants to be Madonna" and Thom not understanding why this might even be considered to be an insult, because he would actually love to be Madonna) There has been a tension, within Radiohead, between Thom's love of club music and other members of the band (and a large segment of their fanbase!) who do have a contempt towards dance music, and would have preferred that they remain a more traditional rock group - or would prefer to be the BBC Radiophonic Workshop in Jonny's case. That's part of what makes them interesting, to me, the ways that they tried to resolve this tension before they just went off in the end and diverted those conflicting impulses to solo work/collaborations.

It's ironic, because the dialogue over that "standing in a pulpit" argument was exactly what triggered my bout of trolling.

It's always kind of a shock going on a Radiohead forum, because I'm used to discussing music in an atmosphere like ILM, where most people have a pretty good comprehensive knowledge of the history of music, even if they have prejudices or just concentrate on their own particular branch of expertise. This is a group of music obsessives. And when someone tries the "it's lazy swiping ideas from IDM' argument here, they will get called on it, as I have been doing since late 2000.

But a forum for a band like Radiohead will contain a core group of music obsessives with an ILM-like musical library, and also contain a huge number of, well... I get called a snob if I refer to them as "12 CD people" but people for whom Radiohead really are the *most* out-there band they know. When you have a band that are that popular, you will get a large proportion of fans who are not music obsessives. It happens. Which is fine, people like what they like. But there *are* some people in that group of people who have, literally, never heard an Autechre record, and insist that Radiohead are somehow groundbreaking or experimental or even avant-garde. This is not straw-manning, these people exist and one of those threads happens like clockwork every few months.

And I would hate to take that pulpit-y attitude because bands like Radiohead are doing something different and equally valid - they are popularisers of ideas, rather than innovators. I think it's actually much harder to take ideas *from* the cutting edge and get them to have the kind of mass popular appeal and exposure that RH have. But they didn't invent those ideas, and the claim that they did (as people do) is just ludicrous.

I get really wound up by the idea of "innovation" obsession. I basically stopped reading the Aphex Twin vs Autechre thread because of that obsession with "innovation" and newness, I find it just perplexing and totally alien. Yes, I recognise that being overly derivative in music is a bad thing, but it doesn't seem like the solution is that constant churning search for "newness" - that race to be "FIRST!" Because that innovation obsession is just treating music like a race, and whoever happens to be the first to stumble into a new technique or piece of technology is often random, and the person who does it first is not always going to be the first. That the artist who refines or popularises or mutates the innovative idea has as much to contribute as the very first person that discovers what happens if you flick that particular switch.

So all these kinds of jumbled thoughts were what triggered the question, and it's quite irritating, Tim, to feel like you're putting words in my mouth stating the exact opposite of the line of thought that got me to asking the question.

n.b. that Ruby album was amazing and I was just listening to Tiny Meat yesterday!

I picked Primal Scream to rile Radiohead fans because they've been going long enough for 12-CD people to be aware of them, and their current reputation for awfulness.

But the conversation about overlapping waves of embarrassing indie-rock / club music crossover could go back further, to Jesus Jones and EMF but I don't think that anyone there would have heard of them to wince over.

Or further still to New Order, who did probably actually invent the whole thing, but the argument of "rock band suddenly switches to club music" would only work if you included Joy Division as part of New Order, because New Order pretty much seem to have been conceived from inception to ~include a dance element~.

I mean, the whole "there's always been a dance element to our music" joke of ageing dinosaur bands who suddenly got a remix and a makeover, when did that cliche date to?

Also, Lex, you will HATE Screamadelica, and Primal Scream will just make you gnash your teeth in general, but I do urge you to go to the top of this thread and listen to Don't Fight It Feel It, which I posted at the beginning of the thread, to get an idea of exactly how much of a deviation Screamadelica was from what was ~expected~ of a regulation Creation Revival-Rock band.

I was agreeing with you against Dog Latin re Radiohead's use of IDM.

But whatever members of the band may have personally thought, I can't listen to Kid A and think "hmm, this smacks of contempt of club culture", and I'm curious as to what musical cues you think suggest that.

Clearly there's a tension between operating as a traditional band and not, but to me it doesn't feel like club culture is at one end of that tension. Definitely more like a modern equiv of a mid to late 70s Eno record (which, similarly, had nothing to say one way or another about disco culture).

Radiohead-fans having contempt of club-culture is a different matter and I'm sure everything you say in that regard is correct.

Oh, OK, I thought that was to me and got defensive. Fair enough.

I think it's being aware that members of Radiohead themselves had contempt for club culture - and listening to Idioteque with that filter in mind. I mean, even calling the song Idioteque seems to drip with a kind of snide contempt, though Yorke's contempt is often so scattershot it's hard to tell where it's aimed at. I am probably interpreting it completely wrongly, but that song, the contrast between the music and the lyrics just seems to have this undercurrent of "how can you fuckwits be dancing round your mobiles when the polar caps are melting."

(Basically, the best way for me to actually enjoy RH is to not listen to or attempt to understand the lyrics at all, because I always get them wrong.)

Ha ha, googling "there's always been a dance element to our music" the first result is Freaky Trigger and the second is an ILX thread. It was the Soup Dragons. (Ironically on the Screamadelica poll.)

I think if I read about Radiohead (and particularly "Idioteque") I'd agree with that line.

Yorke seemed so full of contempt for everything in that era that I suspect that the more club-like the album sounded the more it would have seemed contemptuous of that culture.

Yeah, it was probably a mistake to interpret it as contemptuous as contemptuous of club culture when the record is much more contempt of everything-culture.

Got another hit on "there's always been a dance element to..." linking to discussion of U2's Zooropa. Everything on ILX is circular.

Idioteque to me always (musically) reads more to me like deliberate electronic primitivism. More Silver Apples than IDM. I suspect the title is just one of Thom's random neologisms rather than any particular criticism/commentary on any form of music. Or perhaps it's even more self-deprecating than critical. x-post

With that drumbeat? No, it's Jonny wanting to be Silver Apples with Thom wanting a BANGERZ drumbeat over the top. I guess that's what I always forget about Thom, that as contemptuous as he is, he always includes himself in his contempt, that many, many times, what reads as arrogance is actually extreme self depreciation twisted around.

Trying to figure out where The Shamen fit in all this.

But that beat is all Jonny. It was all based on a drum machine that he built from scratch.

Or perhaps it's even more self-deprecating than critical.

this is how I read it as well. A kind of preemptive self-dismissal before anyone accused them of failing to make a danceable tune.

...there *are* some people in that group of people who have, literally, never heard an Autechre record, and insist that Radiohead are somehow groundbreaking or experimental or even avant-garde. This is not straw-manning, these people exist and one of those threads happens like clockwork every few months.

And I would hate to take that pulpit-y attitude because bands like Radiohead are doing something different and equally valid - they are popularisers of ideas, rather than innovators. I think it's actually much harder to take ideas *from* the cutting edge and get them to have the kind of mass popular appeal and exposure that RH have. But they didn't invent those ideas, and the claim that they did (as people do) is just ludicrous.

― They have fangs, They have teeth! (White Chocolate Cheesecake), Sunday, May 13, 2012 1:29 AM (23 minutes ago)

i have problems with the "innovators" vs "popularizers" construction here. synthesis can be innovative, can be avant-garde. i'm sure that autechre were influenced by other artists just as radiohead were influenced in turn. i credit radiohead not for inventing their music out of whole cloth, but for the ways in which they used their influences to express their own ideas - ideas that would go on in turn to influence others. that strikes me as sufficiently innovative to earn the descriptor.

That surprises me, Melissa. But Silver Apples didn't use that kind of drumbeat at all, they had a live drummer who played very busy, shuffly jazz influenced stuff, which it what I'd expect from Jonny. It's not even an early electronica kind of drumbeat, and TBF it's the distortion on it that reminds me of early Classics-era Aphex Twin specifically.

I just want Lex to come back and listen to Don't Fight It Feel It. And watch the perplexed struggle across his face. I'm really curious as to what he would make of it.

I didn't say that the Silver Apples used that kind of drumbeat? It's just that between the Paul Lansky sample and building a primitive drum machine from scratch out of white noise, I think what they were going for there was considerably older than people seem to think. People comparing Idioteque to IDM always seem way off the mark to me. And obviously it is dance music influenced, but not I think in such a way where it's coming from anywhere but their attempt to make a paranoid dance-y track out of analogue elements.

xxpost trying to find the ground zero of these sounds is basically trying to follow an infinitely receding horizon.

I'm just making stuff up now but arguably it's tempting to over-credit 90s IDM acts like Aphex Twin and Autechre because their general sound-design (as opposed to - or at least as distinct from and in addition to - actual ideas) proved so influential in a more general "sound of now" sense.

Cont, that's right back to the beginning of this thread. Someone was trying to argue that Radiohead were "innovators" because they mixed krautrock with club music, and that that was somehow such an original synthesis that it qualified them as innovators. And my argument was that Primal Scream were singing Can lyrics over the top of club music as far back as Screamadelica, so that particular synthesis was just not indicative of ~innovation~ at all.

Innovation is not the same thing as quality. Not being particularly innovative does not make something *bad*. It's only this worship of novelty and "race to FIRST!" obsession that makes people think that innovation is so inherently good, that if something is good, it must therefore be innovative. And it's just not the case.

Though I would certainly argue that finding a new/different angle on a pre-existing synthesis can be innovative in and of itself, though I'm not sure I'd ever even argue that Radiohead's innovation (whether or not it exists) hinges on synthesis of krautrock and club music specifically (in fact, I definitely wouldn't).

i guess my point is that innovation doesn't have to be so a+b obvious as "they mixed krautrock with club music". i think radiohead's notable innovation was the way that they mixed a great many things together (including but not limited to krautrock and club music) in order to articulate a musical, philosophical and aesthetic "vision" that was distinctly their own, perfectly suited to its moment, and hugely influential. tim is right, though, that bjork had paved the way with homogenic.

I would argue that Radiohead are hugely innovative - when it comes to marketing strategies, packaging, presentation, promotion, how they present themselves. I'm not being facetious at all, I think they're absolutely brilliant at that, through their hatred/distrust of traditional media, they raised different forms of promotion, especially through technology, and interaction with their fans to a kind of artwork. Which is really innovative and creative.

But I do genuinely believe that anyone who thinks that their *music* is actually innovative just hasn't had a very wide exposure to enough music, whether that's Aphex Twin *or* the obscure early electronic composers that Jonny likes to namedrop in the same way that he likes to pretend he's never been influenced by Pink Floyd, oh no, not at all, ever.

But I think that's an incredibly narrow definition of music innovation, then? I mean, for better or worse, I think what I would give Radiohead the most credit for is hitching all of those influences both structurally and sonically to plain old pretty songs in a way that actually worked.

I suppose the broader problem is the attempt to locate definitive firsts.

I'm sure someone will come up with some evidence to make me look like a hypocrite but I don't really think of music in these terms anymore.

If an artist's aesthetic is worth grasping then it's worth grasping in its totality as opposed to the sum aggregate of influences.

(the above directed at the hypothetical fans WCC talks about rather than people ITT)

eh, i've listened to a lot of aphex twin, early electronic composers and pink floyd. kid a still strikes me as one of the most successfully and satisfyingly "innovative" big rock albums of the last quarter century, with little competition. i suppose framing it as rock is a cheat in certain respects, but i don't think they ever fully escaped that context.

this all seems like eye of the beholder stuff, tbh

I mean, obviously Radiohead have a lot of fans who think they invented music in general. Their fanbase is enormous, so obviously there are a ton of 12-cd types and a ton of actual teenagers who have yet to be exposed to much music. But I don't think that that means you have to take what they say and run in the total opposite direction, either. Or feel like you have to apologize for being a fan of Radiohead because some of their fans aren't particularly musically knowledgeable and might make ridiculous claims about them. They also have a ton of fans who have a deep knowledge of music who still think that Radiohead put a new or interesting spin on things. I don't think claiming that nothing they have done is remotely innovative is particularly perceptive either, and it just reads as apologism or shame at being a Radiohead fan to me.

Oh quite a lot of discussion since my earlier post. WCC - I don't hear In Rainbows as a rawk album per se; I mean 15 Step is still very much electronic and only Bodysnatchers feels like a return to rock traditionalism. The rest is ambient mixed with songwriting, but assimilated well whereas Kid A sounds like a clunky experiment at times.

The only thing this thread is telling me is that I really ought to give XTRMNTR a better chance. Always thought Vanishing Point was their true masterpiece.

Also this whole 'calling out Radiohead for ripping off IDM is bad and wrong' thing - well I can see how it's an argument that's been driven into the ground, but Kid A really IS MAJORLY influenced by Autechre et al. There's no denying it. In retrospect though, there is a lot more going on in there than mere warpmania as I'd originally thought back when I first heard it. It's easier to recognise this nowadays because Warp and the IDM sound is generally less pervasive whereas back in 2001, Aphex was releasing 'Druqks', Autechre 'Confield', Plaid 'Double Figure' etc, so Radiohead, this big rock band, coming in and saying 'look at us, we can do this too' (and arguably doing it worse) felt like tokenism at the time. In that way it's aged considerably better for me, now I cAn stand back and appreciate it for more than the sum of its parts.

I think it's a mistake to equate stated influence with being an attempt to actually BE that thing. Autechre certainly influenced their direction but I hardly think that's equivalent to them trying to transliterate LP5 into being a rock record and somehow failing or somehow only creating a weak copy or only pasting the influence on.

There's little of Kid A that actually reminds me of the IDM that people often compare it to. It's an ingredient, but far from the only one. I think people took Radiohead speaking openly about their influences as a convenient opportunity to tear down the album by comparing it unfavorably to music it honestly sounded very little like. Songs like "The National Anthem," "How to Disappear Completely," "Morning Bell," & "In Limbo" are emblematic of the record's sound, but obviously couldn't be remotely compared to AFX or Autechre.

Agree with this. There's more to it than that yes. Although when I walked into the record shop that October morning and heard the track 'Kid A' playing over the tannoy (it being my first impression of their hailed new direction), my immediate reaction was one of suspicion, and it took a good while to shake it off. As I say, it wasn't until I dug it out again many years later that I was able to appreciate it outside of that zeitgeisty context.

I think what I would give Radiohead the most credit for is hitching all of those influences both structurally and sonically to plain old pretty songs in a way that actually worked.

I would completely agree with this. It's the fundamental basis for creating good quality music.

But that is not "innovation" in any understanding of the word.

And if it *does* count as innovation, then, quite frankly, Primal Scream qualify as just as innovative as Radiohead, and that's just crazy talk.

...

...

But I'm kind of curious as to why Radiohead continue to get so much credit for "innovation" when anyone who suggested that Primal Scream were innovative would get laughed out of the room. Is it because of the wider audience, that the majority of people who listen to Primal Scream are already familiar with Can and club music and free jazz? I don't think that Radiohead hide their thefts better - Thom pretty much admits flat out that when he's stuck for a melody he goes to REM or U2 - is it that the things they nick are more or less cool or naff (depending on who you ask)? Thom Yorke spouts easily as dodgy political views as Bobbie Gillespie, but Bobby gets called on it, while Thom gets made a spokesman? I guess with Primal Scream it's the drugs and the steady run of terrible albums. While Radiohead avoided drugs like the nice middle class boys they were, and had the middle-management-shake-hands-and-unit-shift approach to cracking the States?

I know it's kind of random to "compare and contrast" the careers of any two bands or two albums in that way, but it's just this sense that these two albums did similar things, yet one band ended up canonised and the other ended up a laughing stock - even thought the laughing stock's album, to my prejudiced ears, is the better album. But I guess that's it. Primal Scream's reputation almost entirely hangs on Screamadelica, while Radiohead have not put out a dodgy album since their debut.

I dunno. I don't feel like I'm being apologetic. It's just that sometimes loving a band means accepting their limitations and not over-romanticising them.

Was it this thread that suggested I dig out the Apparat DJ Kicks? He seems to have such a high hitrate for picking out sparkly bobbins I will like. Or perhaps he just sparkles everything up. I wish I liked his albums as much as his collabs and DJ sets. I should dig out Walls again. But I listened to his last one and it just sounded entirely too much like U2 in places.

(I know everyone has been saying how much it sounds like Radiohead but it sounds like the bits of RH I don't like.)

I know this is wrong, but I voted for Screamadelica despite not having heard Kid A. But there are so few records I prefer to Screamadelica, what are the odds Kid A would be one of them?

Voted option 3 by using Firebug.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Come on Screamadelica.

Sounds like you enjoyed it too much.

Or he's having a Harry Hill moment

I just don't feel that way about Radiohead...

C'mon Thommy! Don't fight it, feel it!

http://i.imgur.com/KYkY3.jpg

WOO! HEY!

Whoops, sorry, I voted for the other one. ;_;

We're gonna have a good time! We're gonna have a party!

http://www.hipsterrunoff.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/800/thom-yorke-djs-coachella-2-608x608.jpg

We wanna be FREE to DO what we wanna DO.

And we wanna be free to ride our MACHINES without being HASSLED by THE MAN!!!

http://i.imgur.com/q317F.gif

(Shit, I always forget. That line's in the film, but it's not in the song, is it?)

It's that bit at about 3:25 where, after the "I'm gonna get deep down, deep down, woo, hey" spoken bit, and then there's this groovy bit of house piano and then suddenly THE BIGGEST MOST REVERBED OUT GUITAR CHORD IN THE WORLD COMES IN about twice as loud as anything else on the track, and everything else is silent but the bongos and the kick drum, and I have heard that a million times over the past 20 years and it still scares the shit out of me every time. Such a spine-tingling moment.

I used to think that 'just what is it you want to do" and all that was from that episode of Star Trek where the enterprise got 'invaded' by hippies.

like, "We're gonna have a pardee.." was Kirk being sarcastic and getting some bongos out.

Not Knowing the film, obv.

Still, when I hear that dude say "and that's what we're gonna do" etc, and the kid in the background gets all keen..

It always sounds like it's gonna end really badly!

I have no idea if that's what happens in the film or what.

That would be an understatement.

But, still, Nancy Sinatra's hair stays amazing through the whole thing.

Oh, is that where she's called "Mike"?

I just read about the 'influences' of 69 love songs, it mentions her on the "Papa was a rodeo" song page.

Wow! Close!

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

i voted for the winner with literally 1 minute left in the poll

thank you, some dude

closer than i expected. Wrong, but I figured on a Kid A rout.

Solipsism wins on the Internet. Who would have thought.

i voted Screamadelica but know deep down that Kid A is a better record. just have better memories for the former, fair results.

I did not expect it to be that close! Neither did I expect that winner!

I do actually think Screamadelica is the better record, but I think it's probably an age thing, that both Kid A and RH are more fresh in ppl's minds.

It's good to be surprised by a poll you thought was a lock-in though!