Radiohead - An Ongoing Experiment - Part 2
An anagram of the words 'In Rainbows OK Computer' is 'Combination Super-work'.
Human beings have minds which are designed to interpret patterns. We can't help it: present anybody with two dots and a line in a particular pattern and we will perceive it as a face. It's why theories like a synchronicity between a film and an album, or a connection between two albums recorded ten years apart, or even thirty years apart, sound so plausible. Show me three moments where the music does something appropriate as Dorothy Gale goes to Oz, and I will have to concentrate hard and be quite clear-headed to ignore the five hundred times where there is no such correlation. Which is why this Radiohead experiment is quite curious. It's similar to the 'Dark Side of the Rainbow', but different in important ways. And in order to approach this with something considering fairness, I'll need to try to pick it apart at every level, to avoid that moment where I listen to the playlist, hear three working moments and disregard all the problems.
The difference between this project and 'Dark Side of the Rainbow' is that whereas the latter is a case of synchronicity between two different objects, played simultaneously, this experiment is about a reconstruction. In other words, the scope for 'moments where it works' is much greater as, short of total discord, almost every track could work in tandem with the one that precedes it.
Here's the playlist, as compiled by puddlegum.net:
1) Airbag (OK Computer, track 1)
2) 15 Step (In Rainbows, track 1)
3) Paranoid Android (O, 2)
4) Bodysnatchers (I, 2)
5) Subterranean Homesick Alien (O, 3)
6) Nude (I, 3)
7) Exit Music (For a Film) (O, 4)
8) Weird Fishes/Arpeggi (I, 4)
9) Let Down (O, 5)
10) All I Need (I, 5)
11) Karma Police (O, 6)
12) Fitter Happier (O, 7)
13) Faust Arp (I, 6)
14) Electioneering (O, 8)
15) Reckoner (I, 7)
16) Climbing Up the Walls (O, 9)
17) House of Cards (I, 8)
18) No Surprises (O, 10)
19) Jigsaw Falling Into Place (I, 9)
20) Lucky (O, 11)
21) Videotape (I, 10)
22) The Tourist (O, 12)
I just noticed that the initials of the two albums are effectively 1 and 0. See, it's starting already.
Now, I could probably concede that the playlist starts with a good kind of structure: alternate between albums, starting with OK Computer as the first to be released. And, if I had a gun to my head, I could probably see the logic behind stopping this pattern at number ten, especially with all the appearances of the number up until that point. It also allows us to divide In Rainbows neatly in half; five and five. What the problem created by this course of action is, though, is that it makes those pesky two songs in the middle stick out like a sore thumb. The playlist begins and ends with OK Computer tracks, because for some reason we start each half with a track from different albums. What the playlist effectively is is two halves of songs, each half beginning and ending with OK Computer, but each half is eleven songs, not ten. The whole arrangement seems arbitrary, and it's because OK Computer has twelve tracks. There doesn't seem to be the same amount of logic as there would be if each album were an even ten tracks long.
Maybe there's something in the songs themselves. I'll need a lazy afternoon and a few cups of tea - the tenth message that Radiohead left before the release of In Rainbows was a photo of the band in the studio drinking tea.
Human beings have minds which are designed to interpret patterns. We can't help it: present anybody with two dots and a line in a particular pattern and we will perceive it as a face. It's why theories like a synchronicity between a film and an album, or a connection between two albums recorded ten years apart, or even thirty years apart, sound so plausible. Show me three moments where the music does something appropriate as Dorothy Gale goes to Oz, and I will have to concentrate hard and be quite clear-headed to ignore the five hundred times where there is no such correlation. Which is why this Radiohead experiment is quite curious. It's similar to the 'Dark Side of the Rainbow', but different in important ways. And in order to approach this with something considering fairness, I'll need to try to pick it apart at every level, to avoid that moment where I listen to the playlist, hear three working moments and disregard all the problems.
The difference between this project and 'Dark Side of the Rainbow' is that whereas the latter is a case of synchronicity between two different objects, played simultaneously, this experiment is about a reconstruction. In other words, the scope for 'moments where it works' is much greater as, short of total discord, almost every track could work in tandem with the one that precedes it.
Here's the playlist, as compiled by puddlegum.net:
1) Airbag (OK Computer, track 1)
2) 15 Step (In Rainbows, track 1)
3) Paranoid Android (O, 2)
4) Bodysnatchers (I, 2)
5) Subterranean Homesick Alien (O, 3)
6) Nude (I, 3)
7) Exit Music (For a Film) (O, 4)
8) Weird Fishes/Arpeggi (I, 4)
9) Let Down (O, 5)
10) All I Need (I, 5)
11) Karma Police (O, 6)
12) Fitter Happier (O, 7)
13) Faust Arp (I, 6)
14) Electioneering (O, 8)
15) Reckoner (I, 7)
16) Climbing Up the Walls (O, 9)
17) House of Cards (I, 8)
18) No Surprises (O, 10)
19) Jigsaw Falling Into Place (I, 9)
20) Lucky (O, 11)
21) Videotape (I, 10)
22) The Tourist (O, 12)
I just noticed that the initials of the two albums are effectively 1 and 0. See, it's starting already.
Now, I could probably concede that the playlist starts with a good kind of structure: alternate between albums, starting with OK Computer as the first to be released. And, if I had a gun to my head, I could probably see the logic behind stopping this pattern at number ten, especially with all the appearances of the number up until that point. It also allows us to divide In Rainbows neatly in half; five and five. What the problem created by this course of action is, though, is that it makes those pesky two songs in the middle stick out like a sore thumb. The playlist begins and ends with OK Computer tracks, because for some reason we start each half with a track from different albums. What the playlist effectively is is two halves of songs, each half beginning and ending with OK Computer, but each half is eleven songs, not ten. The whole arrangement seems arbitrary, and it's because OK Computer has twelve tracks. There doesn't seem to be the same amount of logic as there would be if each album were an even ten tracks long.
Maybe there's something in the songs themselves. I'll need a lazy afternoon and a few cups of tea - the tenth message that Radiohead left before the release of In Rainbows was a photo of the band in the studio drinking tea.