Review Summary: UP^^^^^UP
REIMAGINING
Being straightedge has always been a somewhat prideful feeling for me. I did it mostly for taste purposes and nothing ideological, but was still proud of myself nonetheless. One of the hardest parts of being straightedge, for me, is that I could never feel the "psychedelic experience" that my friends had taking acid and listening to
Dark Side of the Moon. Thus, I have had to look at the technical aspect of psychedelic music to get even a general idea of how the experience feels to the listener. Even now, I don't think I will ever fully understand it until I try it, and that is not happening any time soon.
The King of Limbs is one of the very few Radiohead albums that I have heard cross the proverbial psychedelic line. Tunes like
Lotus Flower contain hard hitting percussion, but include echo-filled vocals of an ethereal quality and synthesizers that provide slow, but calm, ambience.
Codex starts off with a muffled piano that is boosted with an echo modifier, making it envelop the ears in such a brain numbing ecstasy that your head begins to get ASMR triggers just by listening to the tune. In this case, would it be fair to label
TKOL ASMR music？ I jest, but I think you get my point.
Thom Yorke has described this album as the anti-thesis to
In Rainbows, which featured a more mainstream style and distant recording process.
TKOL was designed as an avant-garde transformation, digitally looping sounds and sampling them into recordings, creating what Thom Yorke described as a "mutation". Surely
Give Up the Ghost is a good idea of this mutation, as it samples a guitar loop and certain pieces of Yorke's vocals repeatedly, creating an abstract sound characterized by distant echos and ambient background tunes. Another good example would be
Feral which actually loops a few percussion sequences straight from
In Rainbows and applies them as a fast paced, yet uneven, drum beat that is followed by uneven sound effects and Yorke's creepy moaning that is distorted in serveral different ways over the course of the track.
By far my personal favorite track would lie in
Bloom, an experimental demon that applies heavy synth noises, beeps, and a sampled piano key that is sped up at a pace that creates this loop straight out of Hell. Meanwhile Yorke begins moaning his lyrics, then echo filtering them to the point he sounds as if he is ascending to bloody heaven. In that sense,
Bloom is about ascending, or "blooming" into something new; something beyond what they had been previously. In that perspective, the creepy vibe given off by
TKOL becomes less creepy and much more beautiful, as we are given an album all about ascending from the shackles of what we have already known, and understanding a brand new reality.
