The new Radiohead release

[Mr MidFi]

In case you didn't hear, they're apparently done tweaking the new album and it will be made available for download on their web site this Saturday. Unlike last time, there are actual prices...

$9 gets you a 320 kps MP3.

$14 for full-on WAV files.

$50 or so (I forget the exact number) to order a special edition w/ 2 ten-inch vinyl records, CD, digital copy, extensive artwork and "newspaper" (?)

Or, wait a few weeks until the eventual store release, and pay whatever your local retailer wants.

Or... say "screw it, I've got enough Radiohead" and buy something else instead.


Me? I'll probably spring for the WAV files.

[Slosh]

$14 for full-on WAV files.
Do you know if this is standard 16/44.1 or hi-rez?

[Swish]

Do you know if this is standard 16/44.1 or hi-rez?

I also checked the Radiohead website and came up empty.

[Mr MidFi]

Do you know if this is standard 16/44.1 or hi-rez?

I do not know the answer to this question. But now I'm curious, too. I'll look around and see what I can find out.

[Swish]

Viceland Music

NEW RADIOHEAD ALBUM: THE FIRST REVIEW

Good news for robots who are scared of crossing the road and catching Spanish flu; your poets laureate have returned. Yesterday Radiohead announced they were releasing their new album, The King of Limbs on Saturday. Of course it’ll be heralded as a triumph, but no-one has actually heard it yet. No-one except us that is.

Vice are extraordinarily lucky; thanks to Ed O’Brien’s abiding fondness for our Behind The Music column, the Oxford quintet have agreed to offer us sole, unprecedented access to the record – access obtained deep within the bowels of XL’s Ladbroke Grove headquarters, where the only existing promo copy is presently under firm lock and key.

Below, we’ve written up a complete track-by-track guide to give you a foretaste of this most salivated-over cultural obelisk.

1. INTRO 1
Johnny Greenwood’s lush orchestral opener contains virtually no words, except for a brief refrain at the end, where Thom intones over and over in his most morose vocal: “War. Killed. Me. I. Died. In. A. Big. War.”

2. INTRO 2 (INTO THE BATTERY FARM)
“Babies’ eyes/Babies’ eyes/cancer, flies, thyroid pies,” laments Thom, on this beastly overture, reminiscent of “The National Anthem”, or perhaps “Killer Cars”, while Johnny Greenwood plays a timpani with a zither as though the planet’s alternative fuel options depended on it.

3. P£T£R P£PP£R
The first of the tracks that Radiohead composed by riffing over whatever was playing on Fearne Cotton’s Live Lounge during that day then erasing the original track, “P£T£R P£PP£R” is Thom’s deeply personal reaction to the events of the banking crisis. It is an angry rant at the 12% per annum depreciation in the value of his Oxford mansion over the past three years, for which he holds Sir Fred Goodwin personally responsible, juxtaposing the dramatic collapse of RBS and a local tableau of his house-selling circumstances.
Key lyric: “Cardboard boxes/Files for the shredder/Did Foxtons call, hon?/End of my tether.”

4. THE OBSERVER
Where would the ‘world’s first newspaper album’ be without the ‘world’s first newspaper song’? An interlude similar to “Fitter, Happier…” in which Victoria Coren’s Observer columns are read chronologically by the late WWI Tommy, Harry Patch, over a nine minute slice of “Bieber 800%”.

5. TAILBACK ON THE LUNAR EXPRESS
Radiohead’s most challenging composition yet. Consisting in its totality of a single note on an acoustic guitar played in a metronomic four beats to the bar, it reputedly took the group two years just to build the studio set-up that would allow them to create the perfect take, during which time Nigel Godrich had three nervous breakdowns and began hallucinating that he was a tick on the rump of Aztec king Montezuma.

6. RAPE ALARM
Like “Nude” on In Rainbows, this is Radiohead stripped bare: a song that will send goose-shivers up your spine, down your aorta, straight into your left ventricle, killing you. Only play if you’re on statins and have a BMI of less than 25.

7. CREEP II
A Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps-style updating of the material that first won them fame, “Creep II” is a tender ballad that finds the same character approaching middle-age, reflecting on his traumatic unrequited love, looking her up on Facebook, then expressing a high degree of schadenfreude in finding out that she’s fat, newly divorced from her jock ******* high school sweetheart, working in a call centre for EDF Energy in Stratford, and lists Amy McDonald and The Beatles as her favourite musicians.

8. CALLS WILL COST £1 PLUS STANDARD RATE. CALLS FROM MOBILES MAY BE CONSIDERABLY MORE
A hurricane scree of “Idioteque” electronic noise and acid jazz with a bassline sampled from the Fat Albert theme-tune and replayed on a baguette, over which Thom spits his most barbed lyrical darts yet.
Key lyric: “Louis/Liar. Cheryl/Chernobyl. Dannii/Dachau. Simon/Srebrenica. Pouty face/Cross face. Backstory/Sob story. Red tops/Top off. Best bits/Montage. Black one/Gay one/Old one/Comedy one. Vote me off/Lead me on/Put. Me. Down.”

9. FML
A clear marker that the Oxford quintet have been keeping pace with the most cutting-edge music of the Twentieth Century, this is a gloopy, ethereal noisespace that sounds like Burial jamming with M Ward in a nightbus at the bottom of the Thames on a mixing desk made of ennui and marmalade. Lyrically, the Iraq Inquiry comes under Thom’s microscope as he contrasts Tony Blair’s testimony with the sex scenes glimpsed in his memoir, A Journey, and directly addresses Cheri Blair.
Key lyric: “Mrs, how did your huge mouth kiss his lips that lied?/Did you moan as the Iraqi children cried?”

10. OUTRO II (INTRO)
As a stuttering, almost tango beat builds from wafts of diaphanous electronic noise in the background, three minor chords ring out insistently on a grand piano, and a single cello etches a heartbreakingly rich, redolent tattoo of warm, regretful passions, over which Thom Yorke sings about how much he loves...women.

Instant verdict?
Another classic: one that marries the taut electronica of Pablo Honey with the anthemic Britpop belters of Kid A and the complex prog of The Bends. A radical reinvention that fuses timeless langour with post-modern darkness over towering ziggurat electronica. It is a quantum leap; in the sense that it transplants you inside the body of a West Virginia stripper in 1967 who has to solve her brother’s murder with the help of a computer called Ziggy. Innovative use of physical product… saving record industry… blah… reluctant stars… contrarians… pioneers… Godrich, their fifth Beatle… still ahead of the curve… blah shellfish… Glastonbury… picnic… shoes… bus… car crashes… Global warning… more than just an album… etc.

GAVIN HAYNES

[Mr MidFi]

Sweet mother of god.

I made it nearly halfway through that review before I realized...

[bobsticks]

Sweet mother of god.

I made it nearly halfway through that review before I realized...


...that Gavin Haynes plays cricket?

[Swish]

...that Gavin Haynes plays cricket?

My coffee just traveled through my nose after reading that. Just so Mr. Midfi doesn't get too hysterical, I edited my post after realizing the content got a little...risque near the end. I hadn't bothered to read the entire review hence the transgression. Mea culpa. :eek:

[Mr MidFi]

For the record, that 'review' is one of the funniest farking things I've read in a while.

Also... The download just went LIVE this morning, a day early. For realzies. I'm listening to it right now.

It sounds like Radiohead.

[Davey]

I hadn't bothered to read the entire review hence the transgression.

I guess they must be supplying the downloads now since the 320 MP3 is up at all of the free sites today. Just downloaded a demo to check out, but wasn't a big fan of the last one, and this sounds kinda the same, with the big new-agey soundscape. But then again, I haven't gotten to that big cunning outro yet :)

[Swish]

For the record, that 'review' is one of the funniest farking things I've read in a while.

Also... The download just went LIVE this morning, a day early. For realzies. I'm listening to it right now.

It sounds like Radiohead.

I copied and pasted it before finishing it, and you know the rest of the story...

[ForeverAutumn]

That's just hilarious! I'm not a big fan so I wasn't even going to read it until you all piqued my curiousity. :D