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Atoms for Peace
It seems nobody else has the guts to say what we’re all thinking, so here we go: Amok, the debut album by Thom Yorke’s new supergroup side project, is substantially better than Radiohead’s last release. Longtime producer Nigel Godrich is actually a formal band member this time around, exquisitely tweaking the same sorts of subtle […]
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POP IS DEAD
Four years after forming, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea, and the rest of the electronica group Atoms for Peace finally released their debut album, Amok, last month, revealing not so much a collection of nine songs, but a mood, a feeling, an image. Over the course of 45 minutes, the collective […]
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Nat Baldwin
The strongest bits from the solo outings by the Dirty Projectors bassist sometimes sound a little like a Thom Yorke devotee struggling to muster enough aggression to blend in with a St. Vincent track, accidentally striking a fine balance in the end. Elsewhere he’s still liable to lapse into the same aimless warbling melisma that […]
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Zomby Returns In Pixel Vision
A couple of things have happened in the two years that the pseudonymous English producer Zomby spent between major releases. (Yes, he contributed a track to Ninja Tune XX, and no, it doesn’t count.) Let’s see. The DJ-mix podcast established itself as dance culture’s truest exponent—cheap, disposable, in constant turnover—and helped enable an accelerated amount […]
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OK JONNY
Radiohead fanatics not busying themselves with YouTube clips of Thom Yorke’s recent appearance at L.A.’s Low End Theory will undoubtedly flock this weekend to the American premiere of Jonny Greenwood‘s “Doghouse”, a typically foreboding orchestral piece commissioned last year by the BBC. It’s one part of the latest concert in the classical-outreach Wordless Music series. […]
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SURE STEP
As soon as Nigel Godrich jumped from behind his boards and spaz-danced with Thom Yorke in Atoms for Peace, we knew we were in a brave new world of producers crossing into performers—and it seems that Daniel Lanois has the chops to deliver on both fronts. U2’s longtime collaborator (for The Unforgettable Fire, The Joshua […]
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‘Wordless Music Series Presents Flying Lotus & Kode9’
For a man obsessed with a whiplash breakbeat style he deems “retro-futurism,” the present looks pretty sweet for Flying Lotus. After a debut that slotted him firmly in the Madlib/J. Dilla camp, Fly-Lo elevated to the Warp label for his breakout Los Angeles, even getting love up in The New Yorker. Come May, he’s set […]
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ERASER HEADS LIVE
It was fun while it lasted; Thom Yorke’s new side project was originally called “????” (perhaps acknowledging the general reaction to current Radiohead endeavors) but is now dubbed Atoms for Peace, after President Eisenhower’s pro-nuclear energy speech to the United Nations in 1953. Thom Yorke, ever the optimist. His new outfit is comprised of longtime […]
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DON’T RESIST
For those of you who would like to slag Muse as simply a dollar-bin Radiohead, ask thyself: Has Thom Yorke ever been awarded an honorary doctorate, by anyone besides the magical woodland nymphs living in his electrical outlets? Well, Muse’s Matthew Bellamy (vocals), Christopher Wolstenholme (bass), and Dominic Howard (percussion) were awarded degrees from Plymouth […]
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Forro in the Dark
If you’ve been in the mood for some authentic Brazilian music, here’s a good place to start. The Forro boys moved from there to Gotham, making friends with David Byrne and Thom Yorke along the way, among others. Though they’re bolstered by no less than three percussionists and Tom Waits’s sideman Smokey Hormel, it’s Jorge […]