![]() In order to drown out the late night carrying on, the revving of engines as they left the petrol station, the spirited Latin-tinged music and the general atmosphere of liveliness that comes with living in an urban environment I turned to music. To say it was a lively block would be an understatement. T he first time I heard Radiohead’s Kid A I was 20 years old and living adjacently above a late night fried chicken joint and across the street from an Exxon gas station. The hand cutting off the head in order to facilitate the genesis of the dreamlike, stirring yet emotionally paradoxical music that would come to define Radiohead for the next twenty years. It’s an album by a band eagerly trying to destroy itself in order to be born anew. The album just is, like an island unto itself, ready for the intrepid listener to get lost in its lands. Kid A is expansive yet concise, strange yet oddly familiar, and all notions of “comparison in order to better understand” disappear. Once you find yourself deep inside Kid A’s uncertain and chaotic world, the idea of trying to find some foothold, or an echo of something you’d heard before, becomes less and less feasible. Kid A represented a sea change in terms of focus and inspiration for the band, finding them moving away from the brand of guitar rock that elevated them to stardom and embracing a more rhythm-focused, experimental and heavily electronic album the likes of which had never been heard before. Instead of doing what was expected, following a tried and true formula repeated countless times in the music industry by bands big and small, Radiohead chose to craft an album that was divergent from their previous guitar-heavy sound. Kid A was a natural reaction to the lofty expectations for Radiohead, presumptions seemingly forced upon them by their adoring fans, supporters and rising fame. However, the heightening pressure of these expectations and the physical and mental toll endless cycles of albums and touring took on Radiohead not only threatened to break up the band, but amplified their feelings of self-doubt concerning their future. It’s an album unlike any other, and to compare it to other albums, or Radiohead’s past work, would be like trying to compare Mozart to Doritos.īurnt out after more than a year of touring in support of their remarkable album, 1997s OK Computer, the pressure was on Radiohead to repeat their success, put out another “Radiohead album” in a genre they were already evolving beyond and cement their place as one of the greatest bands in the world. The album represented a major shift in the English rockers sound and has been heralded by some as the “ greatest left turn ” in music history. O n October 2nd 2000, in the waning months of our newborn century, Radiohead released their fourth studio album, Kid A. ![]() Twenty years after its release, Radiohead’s genre-defying Kid A is the anxiety driven yet oddly satisfying album we all need for these lonesome, chaotic times…
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