Mike from LA writes to tell me about his multimedia thesis (kids these days...) "I chose to look at the history of music technology through Radiohead's "Everything in its Right Place", attempting to show how Radiohead showcases some of music's most important technologies, then back tracking to show just how these things came to be and how they affected music along the way." The site is K-i-d-a.com* and full of stuff about Kaoss Pads, Prophet 5s, Fender Rhodes' and the like. Nostalgically, the interface reminds me of one of those mid-90s interactive CDs developed by Coldcut or Peter Gabriel and released on CD-i.*Has a tiresome intro screen - if you mouseover the bottom right hand side, you'll find a 'Go' button...
Does the Flash intro end at some point?
ReplyDeleteum...wtf? The link redirects to a very annoying static fiesta. Is it supposed to?
ReplyDeleteJust mouse over the staticy guy and a clickable "Go" will pop up in the lower right.
ReplyDeleteNothing like a rhodes... but that guy really butchered the hell out of the song. Not even close to the correct rhythm.
ReplyDeleteAnd what were all the guitar pedals for... i don't remember any guitar on that recording.
/curmudgeon
yeah a lot of assumed things i dont know. like he may not even have used whammy considering you can do those pitch effects right no the kaosspad. and kaoss pad 2 was out yet?? and ring mod vocals? sounds more like aphex twin style delay reverb glitch patches than a real oscillator.
ReplyDeletei also found it kinda amusing that after the statement "the song has NO bass" you watch the live video (behind the kaoss pad, i think) and the first thing you hear after the rhodes intro is ... bass.
ReplyDeleteHm - a while back when I was looking into this song, I read that they used a kaoss pad to recreate the vocal part live, but the real deal is just scrubbing back and forth in protools.
ReplyDeleteI think silvawhalei and carl are both being unfair and misquoting the site - the guy says the recorded version doesn't have any bass, and he also makes the distinction between live kaoss pad and recorded audio editing perfectly clear...
ReplyDeleteCarl is right... They used a Kaosspad live, but on the album, the weird vocal effect was made by recording theselves scrubbing audio in ProTools.
ReplyDelete"Thesis"?
ReplyDeleteIt's poorly documented, using graphics and audio without crediting each source.
Spelling is poor, and it shows no sign of proofreading or even spell-checking with a computer. How lazy can you get? "Dimention", for example, isn't a word. Even Word's spell-check would have noticed that.
It's biggest flaw is that it claims to be a multimedia piece, but it doesn't make its central point clear in any way except via text.
It's OK for a first draft. Needs revision and correction.
Thrown together in a couple of weeks, is what it looks like.
Frankly, it wasn't proof read or cited as deeply as it should be because of time constraints. I think you are missing the larger point, though. the wildness and roughness is a direct reflection of the KIDA aesthetic. Nobody is perfect, we just do what we do and the generated dialog is equally, if not more important than the content. Think of it more as an art piece, that might ease your brain a little.
ReplyDeleteI tried to make the distinction clear that there are differences between the live recreation of the song and the recorded version. i mean how fun would it be to have a video tutorial on how to use protools??? the Kaoss Pad is much more interesting....besides just stirring you up to think about it differently is my goal....also hopefully someone will learn something about music in general.
AWESOME! AMAZING! Thanks you.
ReplyDelete'one of music's most sonically obscure albums' - what sort of universe does this bloke live in? perhaps not one where warp records existed. you could almost paste 'kid-a' together from their back catologue.
ReplyDeletefrankly, this whole thing about radiohead being great experimenters seems to be either lazy thinking, or just musical myopia. baffling.
I remember those crappy 'interactive' disks from the dawn of CD-ROMs. I had one by Brian Eno called 'Eye Candy' that was completely annoying. It would produce some seizure-inducing visuals for a few moments and then crash my (relatively good at the time) computer every time.
ReplyDeleteKid A is a fabulous album. I remember thinking it was different that anything I had ever heard at the time it came out. And I'd heard a lot.
'one of music's most sonically obscure albums'
ReplyDeleteI'd agree more with 'one of early 2000s rock's most sonically obscure albums'
I like it ! Much more interesting and original than just linear blog posts. And yes, I found it interactive.
ReplyDeleteAnd see the "about" link for the credits.
I can't stop laughing thinking back to those interactive CD's... Mousing over a button and waiting for the CD to spin up and read the roll-over image. I think it's been long enough for the world "multimedia" to pass the Michael Jackson state and get cool again.
ReplyDelete