Author: joseph

A post on Metafilter on tilt-shift videos. Tilt-shift is the technique used in the “Harrowdown Hill” video. More here and here.

Thom Yorke explains on Dead Air Space that the new video for “Reckoner” is not new,

it’s the result of somebody entering a competition to make an animation to one of the tunes on IN RAINbows.
on aniboom. …
so we asked them whether it was ok to make it the official one we use as it goes with the song so well. they said yes.

The video:
Radiohead – Reckoner – by Clement Picon

Radiohead is giving fans the change to remix Reckoner, much like they did for Nude. Some Reckoner remixes are, dare I say, better than the original.

Colin Greenwood: “We’ve finished the main bulk of it and we’re off to Japan in a couple of weeks to finish it off.” Read more.

Via greenplastic.com and ateaseweb.com.

Thanks to Andy Bezbozhny: the August 28 webcast of Radiohead’s Santa Barbara concert is available.

Quotation:

The movie opens with a shot of dry, bare Western hills. Then we see a man prospecting for silver at the bottom of a shaft. He blasts the hole deeper with dynamite, falls and breaks his leg, and, with a titanic struggle, draws himself back up. Finally, we see him lying on the floor of an assay office, his leg in a splint, signing for the earnings that will enable him to drill for oil. The sequence is almost entirely wordless, but it is framed by music, much of it dense and dissonant. At the very beginning, you hear a chord of twelve notes played by a smoldering mass of string instruments. After seven measures, the strings begin sliding along various trajectories toward the note F-sharp. This music comes from a Greenwood piece called “Popcorn Superhet Receiver,” and, although it wasn’t composed for the film, it supplies a precise metaphor for the central character. The coalescence of a wide range of notes into a monomaniacal unison may tell us most of what we need to know about the crushed soul of the future tycoon Daniel Plainview.

End quotation. Read more.

In 2004 Radiohead released The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth of All Time, Twenty-four short films with music by Radiohead. The DVD, almost two-hours long, contains music videos directed by the likes of Sophie Muller, stunning video-shorts contributed by fans, an instructional but fascinating video on how to create a chickenbomb, mock interviews, odd interludes, et cetera, et cetera. Early in the DVD, a fake, comic interview titled “My showbiz life: THOM YORKE OUT OF RADIOHEAD,” Yorke gets asked all the uncomfortable questions he’s regularly asked. As it begins, Yorke quickly clarifies for the off-screen interviewer that, “This is the stupidest thing you’ve ever done.”

Though the questions delve into Yorke’s celebrity status, they get more at how that status affects money: the free, expensive gifts and shopping sprees celebrity entails. Yorke admits to accepting “a Russian egg” (likely a nested matryoshka doll rather than a Fabergé egg) from “some big fish at Microsoft” and admits to using his celebrity to get free petrol. When asked: “What’s the most money you’ve blown in a single day?” Yorke immediately emits an interjectional and embarrassed, baritone “ew” followed by a quick edit to a revealing “uh.” Yorke then stares for a long four-seconds into the camera with a pasted-on, uncomfortable grin then answers: “Six fluffy wee rabbits.” Watching Yorke become uncomfortable is discomforting. Ew, uh, and paused fake grin add up to: next question, please.

Watch. Plus an early, live studio performance of “There There.”

Piecing together the lyrics for Dollars & Cents is not easy. The sites greenplastic.com and ateaseweb.com, have incomplete or incorrect lyrics here and here. So far, this has been compiled:

there are better things to talk about
be constructive
bear witness
there are weapons we can use
be constructive
with yer blues
even when he (it?) turn the water blue
even when he (it?) turn the water green

oh won’t you quiet down?
oh won’t you quiet down?
oh won’t you quiet down?
why won’t you quiet down?
quiet down

(There are unclear background lyrics here)

you don’t live in a business world
he never goes and you never stay
with all our goals in a liberal world
living in times when I could stand it, babe

[ ??? ]
I could see out of here
all over, the planet’s dead
all over, the planet [ ??? ]
so let me out of here

all over, all over, all over, all over

quiet down (etc. backs the the following lyrics)
we are the dollars and cents and the pounds and pence and the mark and the yen, the yen
we’re gonna crack your little souls
we’re gonna crack your little soul
we are the dollars and cents and the pounds and pence and yeah
we’re gonna crack your little souls
crack your little souls
we are the dollars and cents

Please do add corrections in the comments.

Paul Lansky, whose mild und leise is sampled on “Idioteque,” is now interested in making music with objects “carved from trees or stamped from metal sheets.”

Mr. Lansky has written a new chapter, or at least a fat footnote, in the annals of artistic reinvention. A professor at Princeton, he was a pioneering figure in the computer music field and wrote one of its important programs, Cmix. (He also earned a place of honor with Radiohead fans when the band used an excerpt from an early piece.) But Mr. Lansky has abandoned the art form that made his name and has turned to more traditional composition.

Read more. Via ArtsJournal.

Quoted in full from Vernie Yeung’s video short appearing on The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth of All Time:

Checklist:
01 A Whole Chicken
For better result, get discounted chicken from any local supermarkets.
02 An Air Tight Glass Jar.
Make sure the glass jar is 100% airtight, and is big enough to to fit the chicken.
03 A Water Tank.
The Water tank must be bigger than the glass jar.
04 Plenty of Milk.
Get Discounted Milk. Make sure you have enough milk to fill up the tank.
05 A Gas Mask.
This is optional. Not necessary during the process.

[Next]
01 Place the chicken into the air-tight jar, leaving the lid off.
02 Fill up the water tank with milk.
03 Place the jar into the milk, ensuring the jar is completely coverd.
04 Put the jar carefully in a warm place for six days. During this time the rotten chicken will slowly expand, and the milk will turn green/grey.
05. Place the jar in a hidden corner near Camden Town tube station. Leave the area immediately, the jar will crack at any moment, spreading a harmless foul stench into the air, causing the public to evacuate the surrounding area. If you have prepared a gasmask you can now wander around Camden Town freely on your own.