In the wake of their grunge-y breakout hit
"Creep" and the success of sophomore record
The Bends, Thom Yorke and the rest of
Radiohead were under pressure to deliver once more.
So they shut themselves away inside the echoing halls of
a secluded 16th century manor and got to work.
What emerged from that crumbling Elizabethan castle fifteen years ago today was a shockingly ambitious masterpiece of progressive rock, a visionary concept album that explored
the "fridge buzz" of modernity -- alienation, social disconnection, existential dread,
the impersonal hum of technology -- through a mosaic of
challenging,
innovative,
eerily beautiful music unlike anything else at the time.
Tentatively called
Ones and Zeroes, then
Your Home May Be at Risk If You Do Not Keep Up Payments, the band finally settled on
OK Computer, an appropriately enigmatic title for this
acclaimed harbinger of millennial angst. For more, you can watch the retrospective
OK Computer: A Classic Album Under Review for a track-by-track rundown, or the unsettling documentary
Meeting People is Easy for a look at how the album's whirlwind tour nearly gave Yorke
a nervous breakdown. Or look inside for more details and cool interpretations of all the tracks -- including
an upcoming MeFi Music Challenge! [more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Jun 16, 2012 -
66 comments
By day,
Phideaux Xavier directs soap operas such as General Hospital and Days of Our Lives. By night, alongside singer Valerie Gracious, sax player Johnny Unicorn, the rest of his 10-piece band, and accompanied by his "pesky orchestra", Phideaux creates funny, serious, doomy, derivative, innovative, pretentious, goth-tinged space folk "prog" rock. Witness —
Part 1: Micro Softdeathstar.
Part 2: Microdeath Softstar
posted by Khalad
on Feb 14, 2011 -
9 comments
Let's dust off our turntable, and the
hash pipe and break out the
C.O.B., which is
Clive's Own Band, Clive being
Clive Palmer, one of the founders of The Incredible String Band, who left after the success of their first album, took his money, and left England to live in alone in India. Later, in the early seventies, living off porridge and crackers in a caravan with Mick Bennett and John Bidwell, he released two 'progressive folk' albums,
Spirit of Love and
Moyshe McStiff and the Tartan Lancers of the Sacred Heart, which some have called the best folk albums to have ever come out of Britain. Produced with
Ralph McTell.
posted by puny human
on Oct 8, 2010 -
12 comments
Progressive rock was kicked off American radio circa 1985 (not so much fired as
pressured into
resigning); today, there's virtually nothing on mainstream radio in an odd meter (5/4, 7/8, etc.). At Odd Time Obsessed, though,
everything is.
[more inside]
posted by kurumi
on Jan 19, 2009 -
73 comments
Anglo-Finnish artist
Sanna Annukka's vibrant, flat design work (especially her
Icons series) got me curious about her, well, iconography.
She mentioned
The Kalevala previously, the Finnish national epic poem (
in Finnish here), a tale of creation and heroism that arguably spurred the Finns to independence from the Russians.
Like so much else epic and awesome, it spawned a '70s prog band, with
three albums.
posted by klangklangston
on Feb 25, 2008 -
23 comments
