Jon Brion gets around. As a composer, he scored some of the best movies of last decade and change –
Punch-Drunk Love,
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,
Synecdoche, New York, and
I ♥ Huckabees. As a producer, he's worked with
Fiona Apple,
Kanye West,
Aimee Mann, and the excellent bluegrass outfit
Punch Brothers. He writes pop music like the best of them – witness
Meaningless,
Knock Yourself Out,
Here We Go, or
Didn't Think It Would Turn Out Bad for a nice sampler of his style and range. His live shows are notoriously whimsical and eccentric – he's apt to perform
Radiohead's "Creep" in the style of Tom Waits, or cover
Stairway to Heaven as a one-man band, recreating all the parts to its climax on the fly.
posted by Rory Marinich
on Mar 9, 2013 -
20 comments
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
In the last decade, no organ of music criticism has wielded as much influence as Pitchfork. It is the only publication, online or print, that can have a decisive effect on a musician or band’s career.... [W]hatever attracts people to Pitchfork, it isn’t the writing. Even writers who admire the site’s reviews almost always feel obliged to describe the prose as “uneven,” and that’s charitable. Pitchfork has a very specific scoring system that grades albums on a scale from 0.0 to 10.0, and that accounts for some of the site’s appeal, but it can’t just be the scores.... How has Pitchfork succeeded where so many other websites and magazines have not? And why is that success depressing? A lengthy history and review of
Pitchfork [Media], from an inexpensive online alternative to a music zine, to "indie" music kingmaker, and thoughts on pop music (criticism).
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Jan 24, 2012 -
109 comments
Intergalactic Beastie Rock,
Deadmau5,
Depache Mode,
Bruno Mars,
Ke$ha,
The Beatles,
Queen,
Stardust,
Radiohead,
Madonna,
Chemical Brothers
posted by rebent
on Nov 5, 2011 -
32 comments
One day in 1984 character actor
Stephen Tobolowsky (
Groundhog Day, the original, unaired pilot of
Buffy The Vampire Slayer) was walking down the street when
Jonathan Demme pulled up and asked if he wanted to see a movie he was finishing. Tobolowsky accepted: taking his girlfriend
Beth Henley, they went to the
Academy Linwood Dunn Theatre to watch the rough cut of the movie,
Stop Making Sense. The audience in the otherwise empty theatre consisted of
Tobolowsky, Henley, and Demme, along with members of
Talking Heads, including
David Byrne and
Tina Weymouth. Later,
Byrne passed
Tobolowsky on his
bike and asked if he wanted to work on a
new movie. Interest sparked again, and during the ensuing collaboration Tobolowsky shared his past experience of psychic phenomena. Inspired, Byrne went on to write
Radio Head. The song was heard by
Thom Yorke and became the name of his
band. All of this is a true story, based on
puzzling evidence.
[more inside]
posted by Bora Horza Gobuchul
on Jul 17, 2011 -
46 comments
Four weeks ago,
the video for Radiohead's Lotus Flower went up on YouTube. It's a simple thing, black and white, starting off with a silhouetted dancer who turns out to be Thom Yorke. The formerly "
very shy and uncertain" fellow has since turned into
a back-up dancer for Beyonce,
makes Window Licker a bit less creepy*, and
is a dancing queen. There's
a step-by-step graphic break-down of Thom's dance (descriptions in French,
auto-translated by Babelfish and
alternate descriotion in English),
a detailed break-down of Yorke's influences,
a tumblr of 150 dancing Thom video edits and mash-ups, and
a Know Your Meme page.
[more inside]
posted by filthy light thief
on Mar 9, 2011 -
27 comments
Once again, Radiohead give the music industry a monkey rub by announcing today that
their next record - 'The King of Limbs' - is complete and will be available for download in less than 1 week's time. This time with Prix Fixe pre-order.
posted by robself
on Feb 14, 2011 -
253 comments
Omaha rockers Cursive are selling their new album for just $1... No wait, it's $2... $3... $4... WTF?? In yet another twist on the whole, name-your-price (
Radiohead), fan-financed (
Jill Sobule), take-shrooms-and-cruise-hollywood (
Josh Freese) tiered pricing experiment being carried out by what's left of the music industry, Cursive are increasing the price of their new record by $1 each day until its "official" release. Given the popularity of sites like
Did it Leak (and the corresponding file-sharing forums that I won't link to here) it seems to me like this is a pretty good way to reward well-intentioned but impatient fans who might otherwise resort to less honorable means of getting the latest stuff from their favorite bands. Or maybe it's just another hare-brained scheme that will only hasten the end of record labels as we know them. Either way, they got my $1... And that was after I already got my hands on the mp3s!
posted by idontlikewords
on Mar 2, 2009 -
23 comments
More business innovation from Radiohead Radiohead, iTunes and GarageBand are giving you the opportunity to remix the band's new single "Nude". To make remixing easy, the separate 'stems'* from the song are available to purchase from iTunes
_here_. The 'stems' available are bass, voice, guitar, strings/fx and drums. You can mix them in any way you like, either by adding your own beats and instrumentation, or just remixing the original parts.
posted by psmealey
on Apr 2, 2008 -
69 comments
When
Maurice Martenot met
Lev Sergeivich Termen in the early 1920's and heard his revolutionary new musical instrument the
Theremin, he was
inspired to create
his own electroacoustic
instrument , which he christened
Ondes Martenot. Next year will mark the 80th anniversary of the first performance of this remarkable hybrid keyboard which, aside from its lovely and ethereal sound, is also
aesthetically pleasing visually, with its handsome
collection of
multiple speakers. See and hear the instrument being played and explained in this
video interview and demonstration by Jean Laurendeau, which closes with a lovely rendition of the theme from Star Trek. And, here's the instrument in use, live, alongside who else?
Radiohead.
[more inside]
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Dec 25, 2007 -
20 comments
Name your own Paste price. Paste Magazine, arguably one of the best music magazines available today, is taking a page from the Radiohead playbook by letting subscribers pay whatever they want for a 12-issue/12-CD subscription (minimum $1).
posted by jbickers
on Nov 6, 2007 -
22 comments
OK X - Radiohead's
OK Computer covered by 12 modern artists. Free download.
posted by puddleglum
on Jul 11, 2007 -
50 comments
Merry Christmas, Metafilter! In the spirit of the holiday, my gift for the Radiohead fans among you is
this entire Radiohead concert (Google Vid), a non-bootleg produced for MTV originally recording from the OK Computer tour back in 1997. For the non-Radiohead fans, my gift is that I forgive you your imperfections. And finally, for those who don't celebrate Christmas, my gift is that I made you a cookie...
but then I eated it.
posted by jonson
on Dec 24, 2006 -
39 comments
