Kid a

After the commercial success of OK Computer in 1997, Radiohead members experienced a creative downturn, and band leader Tom York suffered severe mental and mental disorders. Later, he explained his condition in the British daily The Guardian ^[13] .

York believed that his music had become, in a way, part of a constant background noise, which he called the "humming of the refrigerator" and at the same time became even more hostile to the music media. He also said that he became even more disappointed in the “mythology” of rock music, feeling that the genre itself had become obsolete. Based on his claims, York began to listen exclusively to electronic music by artists such as Aphex Twin and Autechre : “It was a breath of fresh air for me. The structure of this music had no human voice at all. But I also felt emotionally, since I never felt listening exclusively to guitar music. ” York bought a house in Cornwall , devoting his free time to climbing and drawing, limiting his musical activity playing only on his piano. “Everything in Its Right Place '' is the first composition that he composed on it, and immediately after that he wrote“ Pyramid Song ”(released in 2001 on the Amnesiac album ( Russian: Amnesiac )) ^[14] .

Drummer Phil Selway admitted that Radiohead was worried that OK Computer’s success “turned them into a single stunt group”, which supposedly hinted that they would not be able to repeat such success if they didn’t resort to the next trick or trick. The bassist Colin Greenwood said the following: “We felt that we had to change everything“ from “and“ to “”. There were other guitar bands trying to make similar music every time, but we had to move on. " ^[15] . Guitarist Ed O'Brien hoped the band’s fourth album included fast, yet melodic guitar songs but Tom York, in turn, insisted that all the songs should have a rhythm section in the foreground rather than melodies, explaining that all melodies would be “utter disappointment.” York liked the idea to use your voice as a separate tool without of the usual leading role as in the previous group of records that supposedly "off pushed» Radiohead from the traditional way of writing songs, more than focusing on the musicians composing textures and sounds.

Radiohead began work on their new album in Paris in January 1999, once again gaining the support of its producer Nigel Godrich (who has worked with the band previously on OK Computer ). The recording of the album did not have a deadline. Tom York, who had the most control in the group, was still faced with a creative crisis. His new songs were incomplete, and some of them consisted of something more than just ordinary sounds and drum parts. Also, in the repertoire of York, there were several songs that have distinct couplets and choruses. Instead of working in their usual style, the band members experimented with instruments, including modular synthesizers and Marteno waves (in addition to this instrument, the group began to use various software such as Pro Tools and Steinberg Cubase to edit their records and manipulating them).

The musicians had a hard time adjusting to the change in musical direction that York had insisted on all the time. The guitarist Johnny Greenwood was worried that "a sharp transition to electronics and digital experiments could end up seeming too unreasonable." And his brother Colin was afraid: “some terribly delusional art rock just for fun. At the same time, it looks as if you are trying to injure part of your face just in spite of yourself. ” According to Tom York, Godrich “did not understand why, if we were strong in one thing, we wanted to do something else. But at the same time, he trusted me to have an idea of ​​what I wanted ” ^[14] . The musicians had to accept the fact that not every member of the group had the opportunity to participate in the recording of each song, which initially became the cause of conflicts. In March, the group moved to Medley Studios in Copenhagen for two weeks. According to O'Brien, about 50 rolls of recording tapes were produced at the sessions, each of which contained about 15 minutes of music, while none of them were completed. In April, Radiohead resumed recording at Gloucestershire's mansion. The lack of deadlines and the number of unrealized ideas did not allow the group to completely concentrate on recording the album and they agreed to stop recording for a while while still not deciding that the album was worth releasing.

At the beginning of 2000, Johnny Greenwood, being the only Radiohead member fully trained in musical theory, composed a string arrangement for the song “How to Dissapear Completely” using multi-tracking his Marteno waves. The string part was performed by the orchestra of St. John and recorded at Dorchester Abbey in Oxfordshire. Greenwood chose this orchestra because he had previously participated in the creation of the plays of Krzysztof Penderetsky - one of his favorite composers. He also confirmed that the leader of the orchestra, John Lubbock, encouraged his musicians to experiment and “confidently use their naive ideas.”

Tom York, in turn, recorded “Motion Picture Soundtrack” with the help of harmonium , being influenced by Tom Waits , while Greenwood added harp samples to the song, trying to recreate the atmosphere of Disney films of the 50s. Later, using the templates of his drum machine and modular synthesizers, Greenwood built the main part of the song “Idiotique”, which later became widely recognized as the most defining composition of the “new sound” of the group. Feeling a certain “need of chaos” in composition, Johnny began to experiment more with the sounds and samples found ^[16] . He provided York with an unfinished 50-minute record, from which he took only a short section for recording a song. Greenwood could not remember where exactly he got that four-chord phrase from the synthesizer, but later he realized that he borrowed this sample from “Mild und Leise” - a musical composition recorded by Paul Lansky and released in 1976 on the collection '' First recordings - Electronic Music Winners " ^[17] . Lansky allowed Radiohead to use the sample after Greenwood sent him a copy of the song.

York used a demo of the song “The National Anthem” when recording an album that he wrote back in school. Radiohead drums and bass parts were written in 1997, intending to make them a bi-side for OK Computer tracks, but ultimately saved them for recording their next album.

Sound experiments, which OK Computer humbly hinted at, have gained a dominant character in Kid A. A minimum of guitars, a maximum of electronic sound. Drum machines , wind instruments, computer effects, and Marteno waves, which became a kind of trademark of Johnny Greenwood, are far from the entire list of new musical details that complemented Radiohead's musical style at that time.

During the recording period of Kid A, the group also worked on several songs that were never completed before the beginning of the recordings of subsequent albums, among them: “I Will” and “Wolf at the Door” (for Hail to the Thief ), “Nude ”(For In Rainbows ),“ Burn the Witch ”and“ True Love Waits ”(for A Moon Shaped Pool ).

On April 19, 2000, York wrote on the band’s official website: “Yesterday we finished recording. I am free and happy, and now I am going for a walk in the park ” ^[18] . After completing work on more than twenty songs, the group began to consider their release in the format of a double album, struggling to find a suitable track list. Instead, they retained most of their material for the Amnesiac album, released eight months later than their predecessor. Kid A was completely modeled by Chris Blair at Abbey Road Studios in London.

Songs for Kid A were influenced by music by artists such as Aphex Twin and Autechre, who mostly play IDM , as well as other artists on Warp Records . Among them was also the Icelandic singer Björk , whose song “Unravel” from the album Homogenic ( Russian Homogenous ) was one of York's favorites and was sometimes performed as an introduction to “Everything in Its Right Place”. During the recording period, Radiohead drew inspiration from the Talking Heads Remain in Light album ( Rus. Stay in the light ), while participating in the Underworld concert, which helped renew the enthusiasm of the Oxfordshire musicians in a difficult moment for them. They also listened to abstract hip-hop artists from the label Mo 'Wax , in particular DJ Krush and Blackalicious .

Kid A is sometimes referred to as the post-rock genre, due to its minimalist style and emphasis on texture. In addition, the record is also referred to as electronics and experimental rock . Johnny Greenwood 's guitar solos are less visible than the band’s previous albums. However, the guitar parts were still present on several tracks, including “How to Dissapear Completely”, “Optimistic” and “In Limbo”.

• Everything in Its Right Place ( Rus. Everything in its place ) is the first "truly" electronic track Radiohead, released in landscape format. The voice of York is sampled in the composition, pronouncing “Everything in its right place” and “Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon” (Russian “Yesterday I woke up with a sour mine”). Execution of a live track, as a rule, ends with a programmatic effect on York's voice, consisting in the abundant use of analog effects, and creating a sense of tonal and rhythmic multidimensionality of what is happening. The song opens the soundtrack of the 2001 film “ Vanilla Sky ” by Cameron Crowe .
• Kid A ( Rus. Baby Hey ) - a typical example of a composition in the style of IDM . The track is as “electrified" as possible (not a single “live” instrument is present, at least not distorted), keyboards that give an “icy” effect sound interesting, vocals are passed through Marteno waves, which gives the effect of an unusual vocoder . Tom explains that this was done in order to "distance" from the narration of a song, the content of which (apparently, for some intimate reasons) he finds painful for himself.
• The National Anthem ( Rus. The national anthem ) sounds on the album with a lot of "fuzz." The voice in the song is almost “dry” (without any effects), the Marteno waves were used again, just repeating the melody of the voice. In the final part of the song, wind instruments enter, creating the effect of solemn chaos, which was called in one article the sound of a “brass band entering a brick wall” ^[19] . Despite the randomness of the performance, a score was written for winds by Johnny Greenwood , who, along with Tom, also “conducted” the musicians in the studio, the “conducting” consisted of the twitches and jumps of Johnny and Tom ^[20] , which apparently still conveyed the performance desired degree of expression. The “live” part of wind chaos is performed by Tom on his guitar, and her part has nothing to do with the wind parts on the album, and yet, the so-called “solemn chaos” of the code is preserved.
• How to Disappear Completely ( Rus. How to disappear completely ) was written in July 1997 after a concert at the Glastonbury Festival . Then the lighting stopped working, and then the monitors, Tom did not hear himself and did not get into the rhythm, and only the rest of the band persuaded him not to leave the stage. After the concert, Tom was very tired and reluctant to continue; he called his friend Michael Stype for advice, and he advised him: “ Lock the doors; back curtains; calmly and quietly repeat to yourself: it's not me - I'm not here - this is not happening ... ”, and so another song came into being. On the record, Tom limited his participation, giving the arrangement at the mercy of Johnny, and he limited himself to singing and an acoustic guitar. Greenwood composed music for a chorus of dissonant violins placed as “white noise” in the background. The studio version is recorded in the abbey with the St. John Orchestra.
• Treefingers ( Rus. Fingers of trees ) - actually not a song, but a composition - slow electronics, inside of which fragments of the edgy guitar melody of Ed O'Brien float.
• Optimistic ( Rus. Optimistic ) - the least electronic and most guitar track on the entire disc. The studio version is slower and longer than live. The key phrase of the song is “If you try the best you can, the best you can is good enough” ( Russian “If you try your best, then that's enough.” ). This phrase is one of Rachel's favorite phrases of Tom's girlfriend. Together with 'Idioteque' this track (despite the group’s refusal to release singles for the new album) was chosen by the record company to release the single, exclusively for radio stations, for promotional purposes. The members of the group were disappointed by the fact that they chose “something simpler” for the broadcast. “ What can you do ,” Tom sighs. - Probably we were wrong, refusing to release singles. So they themselves have chosen . ”
• In Limbo ( Rus. In the unknown ) is one of the first songs to be decided on the new album. From the diary of Ed about the creation of the song, it became known that the first version was already recorded in Paris , and then had the working title of 'Lost at Sea'. Tom recorded a vocal part on a tape recorder, sitting behind the wheel of his car. Work on the song continued in England under a different name. Colin said that Godrich also participated in the recording, but not in the usual capacity of a sound engineer; he joined as a performer on a tambourine, the part of which seemed to the group absolutely necessary for this song.
• Idioteque ( Rus. Idioteka ) - the most unnatural, innovative, unexpected song for a guitar, in the not-so-distant past, of the band: Tom York performs the vocals in the techno-style Aphex Twin . The organ’s sample was used in the song, but apart from it, there is nothing more in “Idiotique” except for drums and torn vocals of York.
• The text of the song Morning Bell ( Rus. Morning bell ) was written by Tom according to the Dadaist method: the scraps of lines that have accumulated in the brain and transferred to paper are put in a hat, mixed, then randomly extracted and form a figurative row. The line “Cut the kids in half” ( Rus. “Cut the children in half” ) - suggests that the song is about divorce, the destruction of the family; but - this is just one of the lines. Tom himself said that the song was about his old house. In an interview on MTV, he told (about the house) a lot of interesting things. For example, that a ghost lived in its walls: “It's a pity, but we finished it off by updating the plaster.”
• The last song of the fourth album - Motion Picture Soundtrack ( Rus. The soundtrack to the movie ) - one of the oldest, written earlier than "Creep" . Very slow and smooth; Tom played the organ, and Johnny recorded harp samples for this composition.

The name "Kid A" comes from the name of one of the group's sequencers - a hardware-software device for recording in real time. York admitted that in the title of the album he was not attracted at all by its meaning: "If you name the album anything specific, then this allows you to record in a certain way."

The design and packaging of the album was invented by Tom York and artist Stanley Donwood , who had previously worked with the group since the release of their second album in 1995. While working on the album's artwork, Donwood and York were literally obsessed with the Worldwatch Institute website ^[21] , which, according to York, “was full of scary statistics about melting polar glaciers, as well as changing weather patterns.” This inspired them to use the cover image of the ridge. Donwood claimed that he saw the mountains "as if some landscapes were dominated by some disastrous force existing in them."

The cover was also inspired by a photograph taken during the war in Kosovo . Donwood painted with large canvases with knives and canes, and after that he edited the pictures of his paintings in Photoshop .

The red pool on the back of the disk was created by the artist under the influence of a 1998 graphic novel written by Alan Moore and Bill Senkevich, in which the death toll from state terrorism was measured at 50 gallons of swimming pools filled with blood. Donwood said that this image “haunted” him while the band was recording the album, calling it “a symbol of impending danger and shattered expectations” ^[22] .

The excitement before the release of the album was very high. Spin magazine described this phenomenon as: "the most anticipated rock record since In Utero Nirvana ." After the public promotion of OK Computer led the group leader Tom York to "emotional devastation" ^[23] , other members of the group decided to minimize their participation in the marketing of the album by conducting only a few photo shoots and interviews. Radiohead wanted to present their new album as a “cohesive work” without releasing either singles or video clips, which was their first time. The tactics of promoting the album was the absence of any promotion (in its traditional sense). Radiohead limited themselves to producing short animations with a duration of no more than 30 seconds, in the spirit of expressionist minimalism, bordering on punk, thrash and schizophrenia, which for a short time showed on MTV as screensavers, but mostly were freely available on the Internet.

Роб Гордон, вице-президент по маркетингу в Capitol Records (американской дочерней компании лейбла EMI ), высоко оценил альбом, но при этом отметил, что продвижение альбома стало, в своем роде, настоящим «бизнес-испытанием» для группы. MTV, KROQ и WBMP проигрывали альбом во всей его полноте. Никакие другие предварительные копии альбома не были распространены, но несмотря на это, играли при контролируемых условиях для критиков и поклонников. По словам одного из наблюдателей, один критик назвал альбом «коммерческой предсмертной запиской» ^[24] .

В начале 2000 года Radiohead гастролировали по Средиземному морю, впервые исполняя песни с Kid A и Amnesiac ^[25] . К тому времени, название альбома было оглашено в середине 2000 года. Поклонники группы стали обмениваться концертными бутлегами с помощью службы равноправных узлов Napster . Колин Гринвуд говорил: «Мы играли в Барселоне и на следующий день всё наше выступление было опубликовано в Napster . Три недели спустя, когда мы приехали в Израиль, чтобы отыграть очередной концерт, зрители знали наизусть слова всех наших новых песен, и это было замечательно». Альбом был выложен в Napster за три недели до релиза. Том Йорк отреагировал на это с небольшим контрастом в своих словах: «Napster поддерживает энтузиазм к музыке, в том виде, который музыкальная индустрия уже давно забыла» ^[26] . В конце 2000 года Radiohead гастролировали по Европе без корпоративных логотипов, всё также играя новые песни. Группа также дала три концерта в североамериканских залах впервые за три года. В октябре группа выступила на Saturday Night Live . Зрители были потрясены, ожидая увидеть в основном исполнение традиционных для группы рок-песен, получив вместо этого играющего на электронных инструментах Джонни Гринвуда и хаотично танцующего под «Idiotique» Тома Йорка ^{[27] [28]} . В ноябре 2001 года Radiohead выпустили концертный мини-альбом I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings , содержащий концертные записи с выступлений группы в поддержку альбомов Kid A и Amnesiac ^[29] .

Kid A очень удивил многих слушателей, которые ожидали услышать больше гитарного звучания в исполнении группы. За несколько месяцев до его выпуска в Melody Maker писали: «Если есть одна группа, которая обещает вернуть нам рок, то это Radiohead». После того, как новый альбом был представлен критикам, в газете The Guardian написали следующее: «Когда вы слушаете Kid A в первый раз…вы чешете свой затылок и думаете: Хм? О чём это они вообще? Во-первых, почему гитары присутствуют только на трёх песнях? Что происходит со всеми этими электронными гудениями и пульсациями? И почему голос Тома Йорка совершенно неразличим большую часть времени?» ^[43]

Первые рецензии имели смешанный характер. В Mojo писали, что «при первом прослушивании Kid A звучит просто невыносимо», а нью-йоркский романист Ник Хорнби критиковал слишком «затемнённый» вокал и отсутствие гитар: «Альбом является болезненным доказательством того, что есть своего рода результатом, потакающим собственным слабостям в странном виде анонимности, скорее, чем каким-нибудь оригинальным и самобытным». Критик из Melody Maker Марк Бомонт в своей негативной рецензии назвал альбом «упитанным и показным», добавив: «Неужели они пытаются протолкнуть экспериментальный рок, не зная о том, что до них, это всё уже было вспахано и вырыто DJ Shadow и Брайаном Ино ?» ^[44] .

Allmusic дал альбому благоприятную оценку, отметив, что «он не является ни настолько же дальновидным и потрясающим как OK Computer , ни в состоянии того, чтобы убить время, стоящего того, чтобы в него погрузиться». New Musical Express также дали альбому весьма положительную оценку, но при этом охарактеризовав некоторые песни как слишком «извилистые» и «разочаровывающие».

Дэвид Фрике , из Rolling Stone , назвал Kid A «намеренно чернильным, часто раздражающим и навязчивым произведением», но при этом отметив: «это популярная музыка…музыка сверкающая лукавством и честной болью, которая будет хорошо чувствовать себя под вашей кожей, как только вы ей позволите попасть туда» ^{[45] [46] [47]} . The Village Voice назвали альбом «косым», но в то же время «невероятно красивым». Spin и вовсе признали альбом «самым лучшим и смелым из всех альбомов Radiohead» ^[48] , а Pitchfork дали альбому наивысший бал.

Kid A был признан одним из лучших музыкальных альбомов в период с 2000 по 2009 годы, по версии многих публикаций, включая Los Angeles Times , Spin , Melody Maker , Mojo , NME , Pitchfork , Q Magazine , Uncut и The Times . В 2001 году, альбом удостоился номинации на премию Грэмми в категории «Альбом года» и «Лучший альтернативный альбом». Последняя номинация позволила участникам группы стать обладателями статуэтки.

Слова и музыка всех песен (за исключением некоторых случаев) написаны группой Radiohead (Томом Йорком, Джонни Гринвудом, Колином Гринвудом, Эдвардом О'Брайеном и Филом Сэлуэем).

Radiohead

• Tom York - vocals , guitar , keyboards , programming , bass (3), organ (10)
• Johnny Greenwood - Guitar, Keyboards, Marteno Waves , Sampling , Programming
• Ed O'Brien - Guitar
• Colin Greenwood - Bass
• Phil Selway - drums , percussion

Additional musicians

• Andy Bush - Trumpet (3)
• Andy Hamilton - Tenor Saxophone (3)
• Steve Hamilton - Alto Saxophone (3)
• Stan Harrison - Baritone Saxophone (3)
• Martin Hathaway - Alto Saxophone (3)
• Mike Kirsley - Bass Trombone (3)
• Liam Kirkman - Trombone (3)
• Mark Lockhart - Tenor Saxophone (3)
• St. John's Orchestra - strings (4)

Technical staff

• John Lubbock - Conductor
• Paul Lansky - Mild und Leise sample (8)
• Arthur Kraeger - sample “Short Piece” (8)
• Nigel Godrich - producer , engineering , mixing , tambourine (7)
• Henry Binns - rhythm sampling (3)
• Chris Blair - Mastering
• Grammy Stewart - Engineering
• Gerard Navarro - Engineering

Production

• Stanley Donwood - decoration, packaging

Commercial Efficiency

The album reached number one in Amazon's sales ranking, with over 10,000 pre-orders ^[50] . In the UK, the album was sold in a print run of 55,000 copies on the first day of release, ^[51] making the album the best-selling album in the early days of the release, among the rest of the chart's albums combined. The album debuted at the top of the charts in the UK, USA, France, Ireland, New Zealand and Canada ^[52] . This was the first time in three years that a British artist or band had taken the first place in the American Billboard 200 chart ^[53] . European album sales slowed down on October 2, 2000, on release day, when 150,000 defective copies of the disc were recalled by EMI ^[51] .