Radiohead kid a mnesia exhibition map5/29/2023 ![]() ![]() The constraints opened doors: Not only did the band discover new ways of working (and, by extension, refresh their passion for music after years of unyielding pressure), but, in doing so, they shifted the template for what we think of when we think of a rock band, mixing the acoustic and the electronic (“Everything in Its Right Place,” “Like Spinning Plates”) and relatively straightforward tracks (“Optimistic,” “Pyramid Song”) with fragmentary, discursive ones (“Kid A,” “Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors”). As guitarist Ed O’Brien once put it, he was a guitarist faced with a bunch of tracks that had no guitar.Īt one point, producer Nigel Godrich split the band into two groups: one working with instruments in the main recording area, the other in a programming room processing sounds from next door, all under the condition that no acoustic instruments-guitars, drums, etc.-be used. Recording sessions were tough: Thom Yorke had writer’s block, and his new commitment to electronic music-or, at least, a turn away from conventional rock-left some of his bandmates wondering about their function and purpose. What we have made is… it’s something like a mutant re-engineering of Kid A and Amnesiac.KID A MNESIA isn’t just an occasion to revisit a pair of groundbreaking albums (2000’s Kid A and 2001’s Amnesiac), but a chance to hear a little of how Radiohead got there. This ain’t ever gonna happen’Īnd the other shoulder sat another saying ‘Oh yes. Unreal in every sense of the word, especially within the months of almost total human isolation.Ī small Minotaur sat on one shoulder saying ‘This is too mad. Working on something as strange as this over long Zoom calls with a large team of technicians all around the world has been one of the strangest experiences we have ever had. ![]() We worked with Sean Evans, a genius video/computer artist who directed it all with awe inspiring dedication and energy, theatre set designer Christine Jones and the game developers and Arbitrarily Good Productions.Īnd finally persuading Epic Games to help us put it out to the world.Įverything that we built came directly from what we made 20 years ago, in one way or another.Īnd we had all the multitrack recordings from the albums so we were able to rebuild the audio from the original elements in a new controlled space which wasn’t just stereo. With Nigel Godrich we have been working on this for about two years, through lockdowns, self-isolations and many very long intermittent Zoom calls. It would be way better if it didn’t actually exist.īecause then it didn’t have to conform to any normal rules of an exhibition. So we changed location – now it would look as if it had crashed into the side of the Royal Albert Hall.īut Westminster council didn’t like the idea one little bit.Īnd then Covid delivered the final annihilation. And then – being constructed from shipping containers – we could ship it around the world… New York, Tokyo, Paris…īut then we couldn’t fit it at the Victoria & Albert without parts of the museum building collapsing. ![]() This astounding steel carapace would be inserted into the urban fabric of London like an ice pick into Trotsky. ![]() It was going to be a huge red construction made by welding shipping containers together, constructed so that it looked as if a brutalist spacecraft had crash-landed into the classical architecture of the Victoria & Albert Museum in Kensington. To start with, when we first started thinking about it, we intended to build a physical exhibition/installation in a central London location. To mark a period of 21 years since the expulsion of Kid A and Amnesiac from a converted barn in the Oxfordshire countryside into an unsuspecting world we’ve built… something. ![]()
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