ADP #2 Kid A by Radiohead - Music - Forums : Best Ever Albums

Sometype

Gender: Male
Age: 27

StreetSpirit wrote:

Sorry but that is kind of a stoned thought. There are numerous examples of artists trying new styles. Kid A is one of the most radical departures an artist has taken with one album. Modern Sounds in Country and Western, Sandinista, Tiny Music: Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop, Pet Sounds, Euphoria Morning, and Disintegration also come to mind and all made pre-Kid A. But for the most part, artists who change their style do so gradually.

AfterHours wrote:

Quote:

This may be a stupid stoned thought im having but in some ways you could say Kid A was one of the first albums to really highlight that a band doesn't have to stick to one style of music and can venture forward without being confined to stylistic barriers.

On this point, I have to agree with StreetSpirit. Kid A is also very far from the most dramatic shift of an artist/band's style.

Yeah i just read that back and it was a completely stupid stoned thought haha. Especially considering I'm familiar with a lot of the artists and albums that you listed, my bad. I guess i kind of meant in more of a niche sense like the band going from sounding quite organic to a more electronic sound. Like i cant think of an artist before them that made such a big shift from a solid alternative rock sound to this new electronic "IDM" influence. Again, this may just be me being foolish and not thinking about things. Brick wall

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AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

Sometype wrote:

On this point, I have to agree with StreetSpirit. Kid A is also very far from the most dramatic shift of an artist/band's style.

Quote:

Yeah i just read that back and it was a completely stupid stoned thought haha. Especially considering I'm familiar with a lot of the artists and albums that you listed, my bad. I guess i kind of meant in more of a niche sense like the band going from sounding quite organic to a more electronic sound. Like i cant think of an artist before them that made such a big shift from a solid alternative rock sound to this new electronic "IDM" influence. Again, this may just be me being foolish and not thinking about things.

No worries, I'm sure if you posted my entire internet message board history (please don't lol), you'd have more than a few tomatoes to throw at some of the impulsive or reactionary posts I've dropped the ball on from time to time.

Eno and Bowie, particularly, come close to the sort of change you're describing, but not truly the same I guess. Or, as a similar example: Pink Floyd is comparable in ways, in terms of the intent and resulting sound of their music, if not the means applied. For instance, parts of Saucerful of Secrets inspired and "sound" similar to such genres even if not technically the same means or technically a part of them. Those come to mind. I'm sure there are others if I put my mind to it, but the technical nuances between genres of music aren't really that important to me outside of the result -- in particular the resulting expression of emotions and/or concepts. So it's not something I'm interested enough to invest time thinking about much further, but maybe someone else will.[/quote]
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CA Dreamin

Gender: Male
Location: LA

Ha, I think most have us have posted something impulsively we wish we could take back.

Anyway, I forgot about the change between Blowin' Your Mind and Astral Weeks, probably because Blowin' Your Mind is such a forgettable album. Question about NIN: Is the change between PHM and DS that dramatic considering Broken came in between them? Except for the song Wish, I haven't listened to Broken so I really don't know. Does Broken sound like a bridge between the two albums?

AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

You might have a great point there about Broken. It's been 10+ years since I've listened to it and forgot about it until you said that, but yeah, you're probably right that this makes it less dramatic and may be arguable as to whether it's more or less dramatic shift than Ok Computer-to-Kid A. Still, Downward Spiral is far far superior to Broken and a much more stunning, elaborate display of its style.
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CA Dreamin

Gender: Male
Location: LA

AfterHours wrote:

You might have a great point there about Broken. It's been 10+ years since I've listened to it and forgot about it until you said that, but yeah, you're probably right that this makes it less dramatic and may be arguable as to whether it's more or less dramatic shift than Ok Computer-to-Kid A. Still, Downward Spiral is far far superior to Broken and a much more stunning, elaborate display of its style.

Lol, I'm not right about anything cause I haven't listened to Broken so I don't know. When I got into NIN, my friends told me I can skip Broken cause apparently it isn't very good. But now that I've listened to and enjoyed PHM, DS, and Fragile, I think it's a good time to give Broken a try. Will it sound like PHM, DS, a blend of the two, or totally different? I'll find out.

Anyway this thread is supposed to be about Kid A, so who else has something to say about it? Does anyone have a response to my earlier idea that maybe Kid A was partially driven by a desire to sound totally different from what was popular in the rock/alternative world of 2000?

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Gender: Female
Age: 38

I think it's not so important about being "first" in this sort of thing, like this isn't something we only need to happen once. I'd have to think on this for a bit but I think there's something with the mid to late 90s where there's all these specific styles giving the listener so much diverse choice, but within those choices things were actually kinda conservative and if you wanted something different you needed to go to a different style. And then the artists who were known for changing things up like Bowie or U2, they were just trendhopping and putting fashionable clothes on their music. And so the mainstream needed something like Kid A that changed things up by drawing from multiple influences in a way that made something that felt apart from them. I dunno, I'm no expert but this really does seem like something that was needed in the moment.

AfterHours

Gender: Male
Location: originally from scaruffi.com ;-)

StreetSpirit wrote:

Lol, I'm not right about anything cause I haven't listened to Broken so I don't know. When I got into NIN, my friends told me I can skip Broken cause apparently it isn't very good. But now that I've listened to and enjoyed PHM, DS, and Fragile, I think it's a good time to give Broken a try. Will it sound like PHM, DS, a blend of the two, or totally different? I'll find out.

Anyway this thread is supposed to be about Kid A, so who else has something to say about it? Does anyone have a response to my earlier idea that maybe Kid A was partially driven by a desire to sound totally different from what was popular in the rock/alternative world of 2000?

I'd have to give it another spin because it's been so long but I remember it as being fairly close to Downward Spiral's style -- just not as maniacally intense or abrasive. Also, not as personal or self-destructive -- without the desperate unrelenting charge into the bowels of hell, towards self-immolation/self-crucifixion that Downward Spiral seems to descend (and "ascend") to.
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RoundTheBend
I miss the comfort in being sad

Location: Ground Control

Tap wrote:

I think it's not so important about being "first" in this sort of thing, like this isn't something we only need to happen once. I'd have to think on this for a bit but I think there's something with the mid to late 90s where there's all these specific styles giving the listener so much diverse choice, but within those choices things were actually kinda conservative and if you wanted something different you needed to go to a different style. And then the artists who were known for changing things up like Bowie or U2, they were just trendhopping and putting fashionable clothes on their music. And so the mainstream needed something like Kid A that changed things up by drawing from multiple influences in a way that made something that felt apart from them. I dunno, I'm no expert but this really does seem like something that was needed in the moment.

I agree, but in the instance of U2, it was trend running away? In the 80s they were wearing ripped jeans and flannel when the trend was to be flock of seagulls or twisted sister, and then in the 90s when the trend was ripped jeans and flannel, they were mocking glamour rock stars (macphisto and the fly look) and even further with cartoonish features of themselves in Pop (I mean the whole concept of the Pop album was mocking, yet an attempt at pop music).

I don't know that much about the history of bowie though.

Still overall agree with what you said.

TheHutts

Gender: Male

StreetSpirit wrote:

Anyway this thread is supposed to be about Kid A, so who else has something to say about it? Does anyone have a response to my earlier idea that maybe Kid A was partially driven by a desire to sound totally different from what was popular in the rock/alternative world of 2000?

On Wikipedia it says "[Yorke was] troubled by new acts he felt were imitating Radiohead."

RoundTheBend
I miss the comfort in being sad

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TheHutts wrote:

On Wikipedia it says "[Yorke was] troubled by new acts he felt were imitating Radiohead."

I wanted to know more about the quote, so here's more of the context and probably helps understand the shift away from loud electric guitar music:

Troubled by new acts he felt were imitating Radiohead,[2] Yorke believed his music had become part of a constant background noise he described as "fridge buzz",[3] and became openly hostile to the music media.[1][4] He began to suffer from writer's block, and said: "Every time I picked up a guitar I just got the horrors. I would start writing a song, stop after 16 bars, hide it away in a drawer, look at it again, tear it up, destroy it."[5] He said he had become disillusioned with the "mythology" of rock music, feeling the genre had "run its course".