Kid A
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"How to Disappear Completely" redirects here. For the book, see How to Disappear Completely and Never Be Found.
Kid A
Mountains and their reflections against a sea
Studio album by Radiohead
Released 2 October 2000
Recorded January 1999 – April 2000
Studio Guillaume Tell, ParisMedley, CopenhagenUnnamed studio, Oxford, England
Genre Electronicaexperimental rockambientpost-rock
Length 49:56
Label ParlophoneCapitol
Producer Nigel GodrichRadiohead
Kid A is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 2 October 2000 by Parlophone. It was recorded with producer Nigel Godrich in Paris, Copenhagen, Gloucestershire and their hometown Oxford, England.
After the stress of promoting Radiohead's acclaimed 1997 album OK Computer, songwriter Thom Yorke wanted to diverge from rock music. Drawing influence from electronic music, ambient music, krautrock, jazz, and 20th-century classical music, Radiohead used instruments such as modular synthesisers, ondes Martenot, brass and strings. They processed guitar sounds, incorporated samples and loops, and manipulated their recordings with software such as Pro Tools and Cubase. Yorke wrote many lyrics by cutting up words and phrases and assembling them at random. Radiohead considered releasing the material as a double album, but decided it was too dense; a second album of material from the sessions, Amnesiac, was released the following year.
Kid A was widely anticipated. In a departure from industry practice, Radiohead released no singles or music videos and conducted few interviews and photoshoots. Instead, they became one of the first major acts to use the internet as a promotional tool; Kid A was made available to stream and was promoted with short animated films featuring music and artwork. Bootlegs of early performances were shared on filesharing services, and the album was leaked before release. In 2000, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos.
Kid A debuted at the top of the UK Albums Chart, and became Radiohead's first number-one album in the United States, where it sold over 207,000 copies in its first week. It has been certified platinum in Australia, Canada, France, Japan, the US and the UK. Like OK Computer, it won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Its departure from Radiohead's earlier sound divided fans and critics, and some dismissed it as pretentious, deliberately obscure, or derivative. However, it later attracted wide acclaim; at the turn of the decade, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and the Times ranked Kid A the greatest album of the 2000s. In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked it number 20 on its updated list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
Tracks
Jonny Greenwood described the first track, "Everything in its Right Place", as a turning point for the album recording: "We knew it had to be the first song, and everything just followed after it."[21] It was recorded on a Prophet 5 synthesiser,[22] with vocals processed using a scrubbing tool in Pro Tools.[21]
Yorke wrote an early version of "The National Anthem" when the band was still in school.[23] For Kid A, Greenwood added ondes Martenot and sounds sampled from radio stations,[23] and Yorke's vocals were processed with a ring modulator.[24] In November 1999,[24] Radiohead recorded a brass section inspired by the "organised chaos" of Town Hall Concert by the jazz musician Charles Mingus, instructing the musicians to sound like a "traffic jam".[25]
The strings on "How To Disappear Completely" were performed by the Orchestra of St John's and recorded in Dorchester Abbey, a 12th-century church about five miles from Radiohead's Oxfordshire studio.[26][27] Radiohead chose the orchestra as they had performed pieces by Penderecki and Messiaen.[25] Jonny Greenwood, the only Radiohead member trained in music theory, composed the string arrangement by multitracking his ondes Martenot.[23] According to Godrich, when the musicians saw Greenwood's score "they all just sort of burst into giggles, because they couldn't do what he'd written, because it was impossible – or impossible for them, anyway".[28] The orchestra leader John Lubbock encouraged the musicians to experiment and work with Greenwood's ideas.[29] Concerts director Alison Atkinson said the session was "more experimental" than the orchestra's usual bookings.[26]
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Radiohead sampled this portion of "Mild und Leise", a 1973 computer music composition by Paul Lansky, for "Idioteque".
"Idioteque" was built from a drum machine pattern Jonny Greenwood created with a modular synthesiser and a sample from "Mild und Leise", a 1973 computer music piece by Paul Lansky.[23][30] He gave the 50-minute recording to Yorke, who took a short section of it and used it to write the song.[30]
Yorke had recorded a version of "Motion Picture Soundtrack" on piano during the OK Computer sessions.[31] For Kid A, he recorded it on a harmonium pedal organ, influenced by songwriter Tom Waits; Greenwood added samples of harps, attempting to recreate the atmosphere of 1950s Disney films.[23][32] Radiohead also worked on several songs that were not completed until recording sessions for future albums, including "Nude",[33] "Burn the Witch"[34] and "True Love Waits".[35]
General
Complete name : Radiohead\Kid A\01 Everything In Its Right Place.mp3
Format : MPEG Audio
File size : 3.83 MiB
Duration : 4 min 10 s
Overall bit rate mode : Constant
Overall bit rate : 128 kb/s
Album : Kid A
Album/Performer : Radiohead
Track name : Everything In Its Right Place
Track name/Position : 1
Performer : Radiohead
Publisher : Parlophone
Genre : Rock
Recorded date : 2000
Audio
Format : MPEG Audio
Format version : Version 1
Format profile : Layer 3
Format settings : Joint stereo
Duration : 4 min 10 s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 128 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 44.1 kHz
Frame rate : 38.281 FPS (1152 SPF)
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 3.83 MiB (100%)
