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therippa
Fluffy-Esque
Kazakhstan
1099 Posts |
 Posted - 03/22/2005 : 1:25:31 PM
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So, what's the news on Radiohead? Everytime I hear Hail to the Thief I get all nostalgic, and I want a new album dammit. But even though they are one of the most popular bands in the world, it's impossible to find any news on them.
So, anyone heard anything about Radiohead recently? |
Aspiring to Be Fluffy-Esque an Alien Abductee! |
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Saint Jude
Alien Abductee
USA
2144 Posts |
Posted - 03/22/2005 : 1:58:21 PM
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Radiohead are rehearsing again
Jonny Greenwood was interviewed in today's Guardian on the upcoming Ether Festival:
Jonny Greenwood is contrite when I first meet him in the studio near Oxford where Radiohead first cut their teeth. "Sorry about my hand," he says. "It's not sweat, it's burn ointment." Radiohead are rehearsing again, working on new material, and Greenwood, their guitarist, is hard at work. Have the fingers on his right hand been burnt by trying to play too hard and too fast? "I only wish I could play faster," he says.
Greenwood, the youngest member of Radiohead, is a musical obsessive. This month, as well as working with the band, he has had time to develop the classical side of his musical enthusiasms. Over the past couple of years, Greenwood has been turning himself into a classical composer. He has already written one work, Smear, for the London Sinfonietta, Britain's most important ensemble for contemporary classical music, and last year he was appointed the BBC Concert Orchestra's composer in residence. And now he has curated a concert as part of the South Bank's Ether festival with the London Sinfonietta. His programme features a revised version of Smear, as well as a new Greenwood work, Piano for Children, and his favourite pieces by classical modernists Gyorgy Ligeti, Penderecki, Henri Dutilleux and Olivier Messiaen.
"I feel embarrassed talking about it," he says. "I'm so patchy. I'll be obsessed with a few composers, and know nothing about the rest." It's hard to agree with his modest assessment. After all, he was an accomplished viola player before the lure of the guitar seduced him. However, his classical obsessions have already found their way into Radiohead albums. "I get these enthusiasms which can drive the band crazy," he explains, "but I just say: listen, French horns are amazing, we've got to find a way of using them. Or I'll say, it would be great if this song sounded like Penderecki, or Alice Coltrane. And it's childish because none of us can play jazz like Alice Coltrane, and none of us can write the kind of music that Penderecki does. We've only got guitars and a basic knowledge of music, but we reach for these things and miss. That's what's cool about it."
With the Ether project, Greenwood is setting himself up in an ostentatiously classical context. However, he has experience behind him: he first worked with the Sinfonietta last year, when he wrote Smear. "They're a great orchestra," he says, "because they're up for radically changing things at the last minute. I cut six minutes out of Smear during rehearsals. I'm really looking forward to hearing the new version; it's a bit shorter and a bit fuller in its orchestration." The new piece, Piano for Children, is scored for strings and John Constable, the Sinfonietta's star pianist. "He has played the part through with me," Greenwood says, "and made some great suggestions. There's something about classical musicians - they tend to be totally without ego, and so enthusiastic, but also just so talented."
Smear reveals another of Greenwood's obsessions: as well as strings and wind players, it's written for two ondes martenot, the weird electronic instrument so beloved of French composer Olivier Messiaen. "I first heard the ondes martenot when a teacher at school played us Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony, and I heard it swooping along with the strings. But I had no idea what it looked like, and then finally, about four or five years ago, when we were doing Kid A, I found one in Paris." Greenwood is now a one-man PR campaign for the ondes martenot. He taught himself how to play it, mastering its keyboard and electronic ribbon, which produces the dizzying whoops and whistles. And he met the instrument's most famous virtuoso, Jeanne Loriod, who was Messiaen's sister-in-law. "Just before she died, I interviewed her, and I was telling her how rubbish I thought synthesizers and keyboards were compared to the ondes martenot, but she was saying, no, synthesizers are great as well: she was in her 70s and she was more broad-minded than me. But I think the ondes martenot is wonderful. It puts you in total control of the pitch and expression, and it's as close to singing as I can get. It's a living thing."
In his Ether concert, he has programmed Messiaen's La Fête des Belles Eaux, a piece for no fewer than six ondes martenots. "It was first done outdoors in Paris in the 1930s," Greenwood says, "and there were speakers hanging on buildings, fountains were illuminated with coloured lights, and there were women dressed in enormous ballgowns dancing to this strange music." Sadly, we're not going to be treated to the spectacle of Greenwood gyrating in a ballgown in the Festival Hall, but there will be visuals accompanying the music. "We built this laser device when we took the ondes martenot on the Kid A tour, which translates the sound of the instrument into a circle that would start to move according to the pitch that's playing."
After the Sinfonietta collaboration, Greenwood has his position as composer in residence with the BBC Concert Orchestra to look forward to. "It's insane," he says, "because I've got a whole orchestra to myself. I still can't believe it. It's that thing of standing in a quiet room, and experiencing the way the air moves when the orchestra start to play. It's so seductive." In the first piece Greenwood wrote for the orchestra, he tried to get the string players to sound like snare drums and high-hats. "Parts of it were really good, and in another part somebody in the orchestra started laughing it was so bad. I know I'm going to drive them crazy with all these ideas."
So are these the first steps towards Greenwood carving out a classical career alongside, or even instead of, his work with Radiohead? "Radiohead is always going to be the centre of what I do," he says. "Everything starts with songs, and with Thom, and with the excitement you can get in the band when you hear new music, and you know you've got the chance to watch it mutate and change. There's nothing like that, nothing as exciting. We're rehearsing at the moment, and again it's fun. We all want to push forward, and when you have five people who are all like that, you couldn't ask for a better thing."
But the influence of Greenwood's experience with classical musicians will inform Radiohead in the future. "I'll be able to bang on with more confidence about whatever instrument happens to be obsessing me at the moment. Yesterday I was trying to explain how we have to get hold of a clavichord." The idea of Radiohead using a delicate, miniaturised baroque keyboard in their next album may seem far-fetched, but it's all part of Greenwood's boundless musical enthusiasm. He may describe his curiosity as childish, but it's what gives his compositions their energy, and what makes him a musician who effortlessly crosses the artificial divisions between pop and classical cultures. |
Remember, turn off your tv. Read. |
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bugman96
Chatterbox
148 Posts |
Posted - 03/22/2005 : 2:48:57 PM
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This was posted on the greenplastic.com news page about 2 weeks ago:
Thom stopped by the Official Message Board earlier and had this to say:
: Have a cookie.
THAT
would be a bad idea
hey weve started work.(speaking of cookies)
no really.
Does this mean the band are starting work on another release? We think so... |
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skyline
Chatterbox
USA
143 Posts |
Posted - 03/22/2005 : 3:43:35 PM
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| I like Radiohead quite a bit, but I enjoy their older more guitar-driven sound. The Bends and OK Computer are probably on the top of my list. I also own Kid A. |
http://www.dmbforums.com |
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Hopeful Rolling Waves
Alien Abductee
South Sandwich Islands
2154 Posts |
Posted - 03/22/2005 : 4:03:30 PM
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How these people re-post is always beyond me.
If you are thursting for all things Radiohead, check out my etree site in my sig, I'll be willing to do B&P for board members only, I have some very good pro-shot Radiohead DVDs. I think they're the best band ever personally...no one else can combine all sorts of musical elements like they do and make it just beautiful every ti-iiii-iiiiiime.
The raindrops. |
http://db.etree.org/hopefulrollingwaves/ < My Trading List |
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Saint Jude
Alien Abductee
USA
2144 Posts |
Posted - 03/22/2005 : 5:29:30 PM
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| Hopefull... you got mail. |
Remember, turn off your tv. Read. |
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Saint Jude
Alien Abductee
USA
2144 Posts |
Posted - 03/28/2005 : 7:05:12 PM
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| Ed O'Brien, attending Jonny & Thom's performance at the Ether Festival, revealed that Radiohead have already spent about four weeks in the studio recording a new album. According to Ed, another small tour, like the band did in Portugal and Spain in 2002 (to try out Hail to the Thief material), could be possible if the recording process takes a long time. Jonny has hinted earlier this week that he would like to do a fanclub tour. *Fingers crossed* |
Remember, turn off your tv. Read. |
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RE: Radiohead
