Radiohead - The King of Limbs

Oh for Christ's sake

hahahaaaa

incredible website

Interesting to see the production on In Rainbows being described as "dry" when huge parts of it are soaked in reverb.

the drums are super dry (except for, like, the tambourine on 'Reckoner')

Also, I don't think The King of Limbs was a "band all playing together at the same time" record in the sense that In Rainbows was. 'Bloom', 'Morning Mr Magpie', 'Little By Little' and 'Feral' in particular sound very much like they were pieced together digitally. A lot of cutting/pasting/chopping up/digital re-stitching and massaging going on there, which is why the live versions sound completely different - they're "re-arranged" so they can played as a band.

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They're not dry, though. If anything, the drums on stuff like 'Nude' sound very closely miked. I like that sound, though.

"Dry" to me is Metallica's ...And Justice For All.

the king of limbs was largely pieced together from loops they made i think

I suppose In Rainbows would sound incredible with a cavernous Bryan Adams power ballad snare sound, though. I mean, really.

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Yeah, it's definitely a heavily computerized record for the most part. Aside from things like 'Give Up The Ghost' and 'Codex', which sound like live takes which have then had the effects added later.

the drums on say 'Weird Fishes' sound so home studio-y to me, very exposed and unadorned, like if i just threw up some 57s and left it at that. they used similar drum sounds on other albums/songs, but compare it to like anything on HttT where there's a much wider, more compressed, expensive-sounding snare.

I can see why they didn't go for overkill on reverb on the drums, though. It allows for more space in the mix for reverbs elsewhere, such as on the vocals etc.

decent new song! it'll be interesting to hear it in the context of the rest of the album.

i am always really surprised that Separator doesn't ever get a shout out when it comes to KoL. i guess people are just kind of burned out by the end of the album (even though it's relatively short) but that song TOWERS over the rest of the album

I like it.

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I love that part in 'Separator' when the high guitar part comes in. I think the studio version could have been better though - there's a great song there that I don't think they got the best out of.

sad for the old radiohead messageboard people (i was a regular there from 2000-04ish), it looks like the board was erased along with everything else. but it's probably just temporary, and having your favorite msgboard taken away from you is probably beneficial for mental health anyway

Also having Radiohead taken away from you, or indeed everyone

darraghmorbs

Gimme fifty years I'll be a lot worse than he is now

Separator and Bloom are awesome. I might be one of the few Radiohead fans who loved KoL. The bass and drums throughout make the album, also the calm songs like Codex or GUTG have some beautiful harmonies and subtle details as they progress.

super psyched the dude survived the fire btw, i was getting anxious

They really fucked up not adding Staircase and Supercollider as part of the album tho

Wow, this new song is epic.

This new song is making me very excited for the new album. It's that steve reich-kraut-repetitive crescendo trick they've done many times before but it sounds great with the string orchestration substituting the synths/guitars.

'Codex' has grown into a big favourite of mine, actually... it's such a beautiful melody, and I love the piano sound on it.

yeah 'Codex' and 'Give Up the Ghost' are actually my favorites on that. not a big fan of how the drums and percussion samples are deployed on the early tracks, so the stripped down tracks work best.

I find Tomorrow's Modern Boxes really rewarding actually. Not much in the way of hooks but I think of it more as an instrumental record, love the piano/synth/electronic percussion sound palette.

i liked TMB, but it seemed to exemplify yorke's increasingly common practice of moaning "oooooooooooooooooohs" over things that would otherwise be instrumental. he's always done that to some degree, of course, but at this rate his 2026 solo album will just be called "ooooooooooooooooh" and will feature nearly 100 different tracks of him going "oooooooooooooooooh", lovingly layered over a backing track of him going "ooooooooooooooooooh"

Essence of Yorke, right there.

lol Karl

song is rad

i like yorke's practice of moaning "oooooooooooh"

i do too, in moderation! but its presence seems to be increasing and it seems like a crutch sometimes, in place of a more detailed instrumental passage, or real lyrics, or an interesting shift to the song structure.

I mean Sigur Ros made a career out of singing uuuuuuuu's

But yeah, Jonny is the real main man behind Radiohead. His arrangements have been moving the band forward since the days of OKC.

anyway, no reason to moan about it here (ooooooooooooooh), but i'm hoping it won't be plastered all over the album

i wonder if they stuck with the 2-drummer setup for this one?

colin's great on the bass on this one, as usual

Ed is the most underrated member of the band, IMO.

no your mom is.

The strings still sound sinister, and Colin Greenwood's bass gets a cortisone injection, but because I've never cared what Thom Yorke mewls about or the mewl itself I'm dismissing it as another example of Radiohead's facile paranoia, their projecting portent into a cliché or slogan that can't support it.

idk the lyrics struck me as blunter than usual but so is humanity's death spiral in 2016.

all the more reason to stop the mewling!

stop it with ur thom yorke witch hunt

i'm glad they're doing what they do and this song is a decent version of it. i'll probably like and/or love the new album and listen to it in some kind of weird way, like exclusively for a month then never again, or strictly for running only. i'll definitely avoid talking about it on the internet or in public because of this band's tendency to bring out the most excruciatingly inane commentary from otherwise pleasant (or not) people, myself included.

Musically I rather like this but Thom Yorke is pretty much a caricature of himself vocally now. I can get past it though.

Never liked TKOL myself so if this better than that it's good enough for me I guess

slightly terrified that fgti's revulsion upthread is directed not at this song but at my comments :/ if so, sorry

everyone who took issue with my mischaracterization of tkol upthread: you're right, a lot of that album is sculpted from loops, i just sometimes confuse the better live versions for the actual album

never be sorry hon xp

i'm also a fan of tkol, i like how casual it sounds.

no imago! I like everything about RH except their fanbase and singer, and I think the score for The Master is the best modern score, and obv this is not a ripoff it's more like "we both enjoy The Desert Music and Cluster"