Radiohead - Kid Amnesiac

Radiohead – Kid Amnesiac

(soniclovenoize Kid A/Amnesiac single-album reimagining)

1.  Optimistic

2.  Morning Bell

3.  How to Disappear Completely

4.  The National Anthem

5.  In Limbo

6.  Dollars and Cents

7.  Kid A

8.  Knives Out

9.  You and Whose Army?

10.  Everything In Its Right Place

11.  Pyramid Song

In light of recent events with the coronavirus, it seems I have a lot of spare time as I dwindle in my self-imposed quarantine; I assume you all need something new to listen to during yours.  So during this crisis, I will try to upload a new album reconstruction or reimagining every week until it’s safe to go outside again.  We will get through this together and hopefully these album reconstructions and reimagings will be just another little thing to help during our social distancing to stop the spread of COVID-19. 

Starting with the perfect soundtrack to social distancing… is Radiohead!  This is a reimagining of Radiohead’s 2000 album Kid A and 2001 album Amnesiac as a singular album.  Recorded during the same recording sessions between 1999-2000 and resulting in a double-album’s worth of original material, the band chose to instead release two separate albums from the sessions instead of releasing a singular or double-album release.  Since then, many fans have wondered how a singular album, using “the best” from both Kid A and Amnesiac, would sound and many fans have constructed their own playlists.  For my own reconstruction, we will use the specific eleven songs Radiohead debuted in concert during their Summer 2000 tour after the completion of the sessions, but before Kid A was released.  In theory, this could represent Radiohead’s intent of a singular album sourced from the entirety of the sessions.  Furthermore, the songs will be sequenced in a similar fashion to the order of which the songs were actually performed during that tour, with my own unique edits and crossfades used to make the sequence flow. 

After their majestic 1995 album The Bends and awe-inspiring 1997 album OK Computer, Radiohead was literally the biggest rock band in the world.  Unwittingly hailed has the modern successor to Pink Floyd in their fusion of art-rock, pop, mastery of atmosphere, creative instrumentation and their ability to connect to the audience, Radiohead’s every move was compulsively under watch by the music media and obsessive fans hungry for any second of new Radiohead music.  No strangers to road-testing new material, the band began composing new songs for OK Computer’s follow-up, arranging them during soundchecks for the OK Computer tour in the summer of 1997.  Songs such as “Life in a Glasshouse”, “How To Disappear Completely”, “Follow Me Around” and “Nude” were woodshedded during the OK Computer tour throughout 1997 and 1998, and were captured on film for Grant Gee’s documentary on Radiohead’s world tour, Meeting People Is Easy. 

Upon the conclusion of the OK Computer Tour in April 1998, Radiohead took a much needed rest, while front man Thom Yorke attempted to write new songs for the album’s follow-up.  This was not an easy task, as Yorke faced two challenges...  Firstly, Yorke had grown tired of the band’s sonic signature, feeling that Radiohead had become Alt Rock trend-setters after the sudden emergence of a number of “copy-cat” bands that sounded very similar to Radiohead.  The only way to keep themselves ahead of the curve and to challenge themselves artistically was an intentional and radical departure from Radiohead’s established sound.  Unfortunately, Yorke’s second challenge was a bad case of writer’s block, leaving Yorke with only unfinished song sketches by the time the band reconvened in January 1999, instead focusing on rhythm, influenced by the artists of Warp Records 

Formal rehearsals and recordings begin at Studio Guillaume Tell in Paris with producer Nigel Godrich, with EMI Records allowing Radiohead complete artistic freedom and no deadline to finish the album.  While it was fortunate the rest of the band shared Yorke’s desire to drastically change their musical direction, this also allowed for an extended period of musical soul-searching, for better or for worse.  Although the song “In Limbo” was completed at this time, the majority of the sessions proved unproductive and the band relocated to Copenhagen’s Medley Studios in March 1999.  Influenced by Krautrock legends Can, Radiohead experimented with hypnotic jam sessions which were later edited into a song structure, resulting in the basis of the song “Dollars and Cents”.  Otherwise, the sessions were again deemed unproductive, with the entire band second-guessing their working methods of playing live, together in a room, as a standard rock band. 

Once again relocating in April to a mansion fitted with recording gear in Gloucester called Batsford House, the band chipped away at several small musical breakthroughs.  In order to reinvent themselves as a musical entity, each member had to reevaluate their roles in the band as not necessarily playing their chosen instruments specifically, but contributing sounds or ideas to York’s experiments.  This was exemplified in “Everything In Its Right Place”, which simply revolved around the chords played on a Prophet-5 synthesizer and Yorke’s vocal being digitally “scrubbed” by Godrich.  Additionally, the band made progress adding sound elements to an unfinished backing track, originally recorded in November 1997 during a b-side session: “The National Anthem”, based on a bass riff Yorke wrote when he was 16!

After picking up some much needed momentum, Radiohead relocated once again in July to their own Oxford recording studio Canned Applause, which would remain their home base for the remainder of the recording sessions, sporadically detailed by guitarist Ed O’Brien’s daily journal posted to Radiohead’s website.  Sessions dragged on throughout the remainder of 1999 with a number of ideas attempted and abandoned, rearranged and discarded.  After successfully tracking several more ‘live band’ songs such as “Optimistic”, “You and Whose Army?” and “Pyramid Song”, Radiohead once again hit a creative wall with Yorke’s desire to move beyond the sound of a rock band.  By January 2000, Goodrich made a bold suggestion: all five members of the band abandon their acoustic instruments for all digital instruments, synths and programs, forcing Radiohead to completely rethink arrangements.  This reinvigorated the band, allowing them to create new, experimental compositions such as “Kid A” and “Idioteque”.  Sessions carried on into the spring, with “Knives Out” being completed in March after a year of work!  The album was finally finished in April 2000 with over 20 completed song, enough material for a double album.

To road-test the new material, Radiohead played a brief summer tour in June and July, performing eleven of the new songs: “Optimistic”, “Morning Bell”, “Dollars and Cents”, “The National Anthem”, “In Limbo”, “Everything In Its Right Place”, “Knives Out”, “How To Disappear Completely”, “Pyramid Song”, “Kid A”, and “You and Whose Army?”.  Yorke additionally performed “I Might be Wrong” and “Fog” acoustically during encores, although only once each.  Predictably, Radiohead fans clamored to hear the mysterious new material, and bootlegs of their live recordings were traded on file sharing networks. 

Finally, Radiohead’s culmination of the 18-month long sessions was released in October: Kid A, a singular, concise album of ten songs, that only occasionally featured the Radiohead fans had grown to love.  Although “Optimistic” and “How To Disappear Completely” seemed to be ‘classic Radiohead’, other songs seemed far-removed from their intelligent anthem rock.  The album often seemed cold and distant, sometimes clinical.  And the album lacked some of the fans’ favorites that had already been debuted live several months before: “Dollars and Cents”, “You and Whose Army?”, “Knives Out” and “Pyramid Song.”  Regardless, Kid A was a successful artistic statement, perfect in its execution as a singular, cohesive album.  Although some-old school Radiohead fans were turned off by it, many more were turned on, accepting the band’s radical departure and willing to go along with Radiohead’s ride.  Kid A became one of the more influential and groundbreaking modern ‘rock’ albums, signaling the start of popular music in the twenty first century. 

But what about the remainder of the music Radiohead recorded throughout the Kid A sessions, which did not seem to fit within its artistic vision?  As Radiohead began touring to promote Kid A, they indeed continued to perform those ‘lost Kid A songs’, much to fans’ delight, with “Knives Out” and “Pyramid Song” specifically being fan favorites.  After suggesting a series of EPs to release the material, Radiohead instead assembled a second album for a June 2001 release, entitled Amnesiac.  It included not only the four aforementioned fan-favorite ‘lost Kid A songs’, but an additional seven that spanned from the highly experimental “Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors” to the jazzy paranoia of “Life in a Glasshouse”, a song fans have been crying for since originally witnessed in the Meeting People is Easy documentary.  Despite this, Radiohead insisted that Amnesiac was not a Kid A outtakes album, but a separate album in its own right.  While not as much as a critical success as Kid A, it was as much a cherished album among Radiohead fans, with many often debating which album was better.  There were also a set of fans who wondered “What if the sessions amounted to one album with the best of Kid A and Amnesiac, rather than two separate albums?” 

The answer to this question varied wildly from one fan to another depending on their tastes, as clearly Radiohead have never given any official word what an album of that caliber would have sounded like.  For this reimagining, we will simply assume Radiohead did give an official word of what songs would have made the cut for a singular album from these sessions: those eleven songs initially performed after the sessions concluded but before Kid A was sequenced and released.  Additionally, we will attempt to sequence our album similarly to the general order in which the songs were performed.  Although that varied from show to show, we can observe general trends in set order and attempt to replicate it.  We are also excluding “I Might Be Wrong” and “Fog” as they seemed to be one-off performances.

Focusing solely on the Kid A-era songs, Radiohead always opened with “Optimistic”, followed by “Morning Bell”; here I created a new segue between the two songs.  Earlier in the tour, they would then follow with “How To Disappear Completely”, although it was moved to the end of the set later in the tour; here we will retain its initial position.  Next they always followed with “The National Anthem”, often itself followed by “In Limbo.”  This five-song sequence was most often played in the first half of the tour (with occasional minor variations), and becomes our Side A to this album reimagining. 

Most often, “Dollars and Cents” was the mid-point song that followed “In Limbo”, so we will use that to begin our theoretical Side B.  From here on, there is no real pattern to follow, as every date had a different song to follow “Dollars and Cents”.  For the sake of flow and album continuity, I am choosing “Kid A”, “Knives Out” and “You and Whose Army” to follow in that order, as well as for a reason that will be explained later.  Nearing the end, Radiohead almost always closed their main set with “Everything In Its Right Place” and often performed “Pyramid Song” in their encore; my album reimagining concludes the same way. 

The resulting album is less experimental than either Kid A or Amnesiac and seems to be a solid middle ground for the Radiohead fans craving an artistic reinvention and the fans who wanted more of the moody anthems of OK Computer.  It's beginning with "Optimistic" encourages the faithful listener, rather than challenging them with "Everything In Its Right Place" and "Kid A" immediately!  Also, this track sequence seems to follow a specific narrative—especially Side B—although I’ll allow you to interpret it however you wish.  My Kid Amnesiac is best experienced as its own entity, and I urge you to listen without the knowledge of Kid A nor Amnesiac; imagine you are first hearing it after only listening to The Bends and OK Computer for context.  And with that, everything is in its right place.

Sources used:

Amnesiac (original 2001 master)

Kid A (original 2000 master)

flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR Pro and Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8
*md5, artwork and tracknotes included

Pink Floyd - Zabriskie Point Soundtrack (UPGRADE)

Pink Floyd – Soundtrack To The Film ‘Zabriskie Point‘

(soniclovenoize reconstruction)

March 2020 UPGRADE

Side A:

1.  Heart Beat, Pig Meat

2.  Country Song

3.  The Violent Sequence

4.  Fingal’s Cave

5.  Crumbling Land

6.  Love Scene

Side B:

7.  Alan’s Blues

8.  Oenone

9.  Rain In The Country

10.  Come In Number 51, Your Time Is Up

Long time/no post!  Here is a long-threatened update to one of my favorite reconstructions, the unreleased 1970 Pink Floyd soundtrack to the film Zabriskie Point.  A specific cycle of music written for the film and allegedly intended as the band's own release, the film’s director Michelangelo Antonioni scrapped most of Pink Floyd’s work in favor of a collection of songs also featuring Grateful Dead, Kaleidoscope and The Youngbloods.  With only three of the band’s intended songs making the cut, the rest trickled out over the years on bootlegs, remaster bonus discs and box sets.  This reconstruction attempts to collect the final takes of the primary compositions for the film and presents it in a cohesive, all-Pink Floyd collection, akin to More and Obscured By Clouds.  Many tracks feature my own unique edits and have all been volume adjusted for coherency. 

Upgrades to this March 2020 edition are:

• “Rain in the Country” upgraded source from The Early Years
• New edit of “Fingal’s Cave” from upgraded source, The Early Years
• New edits of “Oenone” and “Alan’s Blues”
• Addition of “The Violent Sequence” and “Love Scene”

1969 was a hit and miss year for Pink Floyd.  Obviously searching for a signature sound beyond Syd Barrett’s psychedelic pop, the band spent the year touring and composing conceptual sound experiments, including the live presentation The Man and The Journey (which was also reconstructed on this blog).  Some of this music appeared on the soundtrack to the film More, a collection of pieces Pink Floyd recorded specifically for the Barbet Schroeder film, released in August.  A few other Man and The Journey tracks appeared on the band’s own release Ummagumma in November, a double LP that featured solo studio recordings from each individual member of Pink Floyd and a live disc which featured fantastic recordings from that spring, including a dynamic version of their 1968 b-side, “Careful With That Axe, Eugene”. 

It was that specific b-side which spurred on Pink Floyd’s creation of their next studio soundtrack project, recorded the very month of Ummagumma’s release.  Director Michelangelo Antonioni was so moved by “Careful With That Axe, Eugene”, he requested not only for Pink Floyd to record a new version of it for his upcoming film Zabriskie Point, but to score it’s entirety!  The band gathered into International Recording Studio in Roma in November 1969 to compose and record music specifically for the film, with more work in December at Abbey Road.   In the end, Pink Floyd recorded original music for seven different scenes throughout those two months: 

The opening credits featured an experimental piece called “Heart Beat, Pig Meat”, which was sometimes performed within The Man and The Journey as "Doing It!" throughout 1969.  Driven by a heartbeat-like loop of a microphone tap, Richard Wright’s meandering organ and dialog sound samples from the film and elsewhere, the song opened the officially released soundtrack.  

Pink Floyd recorded several variations of a song called “Country Song”, meant for the scene in which protagonist Daria is driving and looking at a map.  While it was one of the only two songs of the cycle with actual lyrics, they also recorded several shorter, instrumental versions, including “Auto Scene 2”, “Auto Scene 3” and “Looking At Map”. Despite being a solid song that could have been a highlight on Atom Heart Mother, "Country Song" didn't make the cut and Antonioni instead used “Brother Mary” by Kaleidoscope for the scene.  

Wright composed a beautiful piano piece for the riot scene, which the band called “The Violent Sequence”.  Antonioni again decided not to use it, but the band rewrote it into the magnificent “Us and Them” on Darkside of The Moon.  

For the scene in which the airplane takes off and flies, Pink Floyd composed several heavy rock pieces, including “Take Off 1” and “Take Off 2”.  A third variation of “Take Off” was dubbed “Fingal’s Cave” by the band, and was considered the master for their own soundtrack album, had it been released.  Antonioni did not use any of these, and instead used an edit of Grateful Dead’s “Dark Star” from Live/Dead.  

A second ‘driving on the highway’ scene featured variations of a rollicking folkish song called “Crumbling Land”, the second to contain actual lyrics and was eventually featured in both the film and official soundtrack.  A shorter version called “On The Highway” was also recorded.  

The love scene between Daria and Mark proved to be more difficult to provide, as Pink Floyd recorded several vastly different pieces of music for the love scene.  The band initially tracked a spacey, psychedelic piece featuring Wright’s farfisa organ and David Gilmour’s delayed guitar effects with overdubbed vibraphone, not dissimilar to More’s “Quicksilver”.  After recording three different versions of this arrangement—with the third featuring overdubbed erotic sound effects and called “Oenone”, intended as the master for Pink Floyd’s own soundtrack album—Antonioni suggested a different musical approach.  “Love Scene 4” featured a majestic Wright piano solo, with an overdubbed vibraphone.  This too was rejected, and Pink Floyd simplified it to “Love Scene 5”, a double-tracked vibraphone piece, which was also dismissed.  A complete rethink produced “Love Scene 6”, a slow blues jam, renamed “Alan’s Blues” and meant for the band’s own soundtrack album.  That two was rejected, and Pink Floyd attempted one last arrangement for Antonioni’s love scene: a long, space-folk instrumental (reminiscent of “The Narrow Way, Part 1” and “Baby Blue Shuffle in D Major”) called “Love Scene 7”, which was also called “Rain In The Country” for the band’s own intended soundtrack album.  All five of these variations of the love scene were rejected and Antonioni used a multitracked solo guitar piece by Jerry Garcia instead.  

Pink Floyd’s final contribution was used in both the film and official soundtrack: “Come In Number 51, Your Time Is Up”, the remake of “Careful With That Axe Eugene” featured in the explosion scene.  The band also recorded an alternate take called “Explosion” in a major key.

Ultimately, only “Heart Beat, Pig Meat”, “Crumbling Land” and “Come In Number 51, Your Time Is Up” was used and featured on the soundtrack.  Pink Floyd allegedly compiled their own eight-song, 40-minute master of their original music for a possible release, but it never emerged.  The film’s musical advisor Don Hall played several selections from that master on the radio in late 1969; a recording of that broadcast was used to make the legendary Omayyad bootleg, which gave Pink Floyd collectors a sample of some of the Zabriskie Point music left on the cutting room floor.  “Country Song”, “Love Scene 4”, “Alan’s Blues” and “Rain in the Country” all appeared on the bonus disc of the 1997 remaster of the Zabriskie Point soundtrack, with an additional 70 minutes of studio outtakes from the sessions appearing on the bootleg A Journey Through Time and Space, possibly dubbed on the sly from the mastertapes during the Zabriskie Point remastering process.  Finally, 47 minutes of Zabriskie Point recordings were featured on The Early Years: Devi/ation box set in 2016. 

My reconstruction of the Soundtrack to the Film ‘Zabriskie Point’ collects the master takes of each song meant for each of the seven scenes, additionally using three variants of the love scene, presented in film order.  My intent is to present this reconstruction as a sister album to Pink Floyd’s More, so some tracks have been edited for the sake of release-appropriateness.  Each side is approximately 20 minutes and this reconstruction should be able to slip into Pink Floyd’s official cannon with no musical overlap. 

Side A begins with “Heart Beat, Pig Meat” and “Country Song”, both taken from the 1997 Zabriskie Point remaster.  This is followed by “The Violent Sequence” from The Early Years; note this is the shorter version recorded during the actual Zabriskie Point sessions, as opposed to the longer Richard Wright demo recorded just before Dark Side of The Moon.  Next is my own unique edit of “Fingal’s Cave”, in which “Take Off 1” is hard edited onto the end of “Aeroplane” to make a more complete listening experience, both from The Early Years.  Next is “Crumbling Land”, taken from Zabriskie Point but pitchshifted to be in the correct key.  Side A closes with what I am calling “Love Scene”, which is my own unique edit of the piano/vibes mix of “Love Scene 4” from A Journey Through Space and Time, cutting the over-six minute track down to a manageable three minutes! 

Side A begins with my own edit of “Alan’s Blues” from the 1997 remaster of Zabriskie Point; here I have edited out Gilmour’s first (and embarrassingly clumsy) guitar solo, cutting an entire minute out of its run-time.  Following is “Oenone”, the master take of Pink Floyd’s spacey version of the love scene.  Although their final master is as heard on the Omayyad bootleg, I am instead using the “Full Mix” as found on A Journey Through Time and Space bootleg, as it has superior sound-quality and added sound elements.  I have faded the song out 3:45, excluding the band’s ridiculous erotic noises, as I felt it disrupted the feel and flow of the album as a whole.  Closing the album out is “Rain in the Country” and “Come in Number 51, Your Time is Up”, both from the Zabriskie Point remaster. 

While certainly not the greatest Pink Floyd album—and one can understand why it was never released—the Soundtrack To The Film 'Zabriskie Point' seems to stay close to my heart and holds a lot of air time on my music player.  The album showcases a series of snapshots of Pink Floyd genre-hopping, including individual songs that each play upon their diverse range of strengths and influences: experimental found-sound collage; heavy psychedelic rock; electric blues; atmospheric psychedelia; acoustic folk.  There is a bit of everything thrown in the mix, yet the album works as a whole, more so than their previous and equally-diverse soundtrack album for the film More.  Although largely instrumental, the two song-based gems “Country Song” and “Crumbling Land” are stand-out tracks that could rank as high as any of the Pink Floyd singles from the 1960s.  Soundtrack To The Film 'Zabriskie Point' has something for everyone and shows their essential continuity in between Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother.

Sources used:
Zabriskie Point Soundtrack (1997 TCM Records remaster)
A Journey Through Time and Space (2000 Scorpio Records bootleg)
The Early Years 1970: Devi/ation (2017 Pink Floyd Records)

flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR Pro and Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8
*md5, artwork and tracknotes included