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A little bit ago, Radiohead released a video for “House of Cards” featuring a 3D image of Thom Yorke’s head. The video was shot using 3D plotting techniques about the shapes and relative distances of objects. The video was created entirely with visualizations of that data. No cameras or lights were used at all. The band released the data used in the video, possibly in hopes that people would recreate the video or do some cool things with it.

Someone went through the data bit by bit and reproduced it painstakingly with Legos. Brick. By. Brick. And then animated it with time lapse photography. Obviously there is a bit of fakery involved here, along with digitally rendered Legos, but otherwise this is a cool bit of ephemera.

Oddly, it looks like the Talking Heads album cover for Remain in the Light. We didn’t stop there though, we’ve rounded up the best Radiohead-Lego mashups for you. MORE »

Seems Thom Yorke, Johnny Greenwood and company have debuted a few new songs whilst on tour in Europe, including one named “Super Collider” and a cover of Portishead’s “The Rip.”  Hypeful has the Mp3s if you want to add them to your collection.  Thanks to Lucas for the heads up.

“Super Collider” was played at both Dublin shows and was only previously soundchecked.

Radiohead - “Super Collider”

Radiohead - “The Rip (Portishead cover)”

(Thanks Lucas!)

Back during the hoopla of Radiohead’s pay-what-you-want craze for In Rainbows the band posted several tracks that made up their song “Nude.” They held a contest for people to remix the song and some of the entries were pretty worthwhile. The problem was the song was in 6/8 time with only about 60 bpm (beats per minute).

The contest wasn’t really fair because most of the submissions clocked in at the standard 4/4 time with layers of the original song thrown in. It wasn’t so much a remix as it was a paste and cut job.

James Houston didn’t get his submission in on time for the contest, but he did create something truly spectacular. Something that works as a recreation of the song on one level and on another level pays homage to Radiohead’s infatuation with technology and computers.

Using obsolete technology like the Sinclair ZX Spectrum for the guitars, HP Scanjet 4c for bass, an array of harddrives for vocals and FX, and Epson LX-86 dot matrix printer as drums, Houston has created a song which is horrible. As he notes, “I grouped together a collection of old redundant hardware, and placed them in a situation where they’re trying their best to do something that they’re not exactly designed to do, and not quite getting there. It doesn’t sound great, as it’s not supposed to.”

Yet, at about the 1:45 mark of the song, when all the instruments coalesce it does sound like something wonderfully strange. A song created in the past with the future in mind.

Also, here is the Radiohead version for comparison’s sake. This was filmed during their Scotch Mist performance.

Could Radiohead have signalled the future zero price point of business?  I know, I know, they actually wanted you to pay something for In Rainbows and most folks did.  However, this was the first time the mainstream took note that something could possibly cost nothing.

Wired examines why $0.00 is the future of business.   It’s a very long article, but a fascinating read, for anyone who is interesting in this sort of thing.  Because of the egalitarian nature of the internet, it’s forced companies to find new ways to market themselves and stand out from the crowded field.

But until recently, practically everything “free” was really just the result of what economists would call a cross-subsidy: You’d get one thing free if you bought another, or you’d get a product free only if you paid for a service.

Over the past decade, however, a different sort of free has emerged. The new model is based not on cross-subsidies — the shifting of costs from one product to another — but on the fact that the cost of products themselves is falling fast. It’s as if the price of steel had dropped so close to zero that King Gillette could give away both razor and blade, and make his money on something else entirely. (Shaving cream?)

You know this freaky land of free as the Web. A decade and a half into the great online experiment, the last debates over free versus pay online are ending. In 2007 The New York Times went free; this year, so will much of The Wall Street Journal.

The NYC multiday festival, that actually takes place in NJ, will be headlined by Radiohead.

The festival is being put on by AEG Live and Goldenvoice, the folks behind Coachella.  The music festival takes place 8/8-8/10 at Liberty State Park.

BTW: Johnny Greenwood’s score for There Will Be Blood is amazing.  Just thought you should know, if you didn’t already.

So by all accounts the Bosstones simply rocked the Middle East and their fans for a good five night stand. I didn’t get a chance to go, seeing as tickets sold out in seven minutes, and I don’t live in Boston anymore and thinking about not being there only really makes me kinda sad.

But fans of The Mighty Mighty Bosstones speak as if this was something that needed to happen, something that was cathartic, an Christmas present you secretly hope for but don’t think you’ll get but then there it is underneath the tree and all in the world is alright.

[CRED]
There are lots of great photos up on Flikr from their run at the Middle East and even some great ones of their NYE show in Providence, R.I. I thought there would be more video of the event, but it’s not great quality and with everyone being so cognizant of YouTube and video these days you wouldn’t think that would be the case. I guess I’d rather have people going to the show who just wanna rock out and enjoy it and aren’t so concerned with getting video.

But here’s a sampling of some of the best I could find.

Cowboy Coffee 12/30

Never Lose My Wallet 12/30

Dr. D 12/30

Simmer Down/Rascal King 12/30

You can almost see the sweat and excitement and joy just emanating from the audience and the band. Can it get much better? Here’s an account from Missmp who was on hand:

So. The Bosstones. I don’t even know what to say! Everyone danced. Everyone sang along. Everyone threw their hands up at the right times–even my husband when they covered Rudie Can’t Fail! (Which was hysterical, because the girl in front of me was clearly there with her scally-capped boyfriend, and she knew the Bosstones songs but looked mighty confused when everyone was singing along to Rudie. Her boyfriend finally went, “It’s an old Clash song!” which nearly made Jay pass out. Sacrilege!)

And that pretty much sums up my feelings on the Mighty Mighty Bosstones: they’re the embodiment of everything I love about my home city–loyalty, attitude, self-deprecation, idealism, work ethic, and a gruff exterior masking a marshmallowy center. All that, plus a beat you can dance, scream, mosh, and drink to. What’s not to love?

Not exactly an in depth review but if you want the ins-and-outs you can by all means head over here or here for an actual review of the show.

On a personal note, it’s good to be back. I spent yesterday working on some changes for the site and we have a few more to come, but it was mighty difficult to just put the baby down for almost two weeks and not stop by and check in on her once. I hope you missed us, I hope you’re excited for year number 2.

It’s amazing being away and realizing we missed so many good things to share with you, but then we almost feel like we didn’t miss that much either, ya know? If you’re lucky maybe I’ll tell you about my flight home from Boston to Portland. Let’s just say one lucky flight attendant got a vomit present from yours truly. Good times, good times.

Unrelatedly, did anyone spend their NYE with Radiohead? We didn’t but we did enjoy watching the program Scotch Mist the next day.

We’ll be back tonight to clean out the closet on movie reviews we watched over the break and then we’ll be back to our regular scheduled programming.

Wired has an exceptionally done interview with Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne.  I can’t think of two musicians I’d rather have sit down to talk about the state of music and the business itself that these two gentleman.  They’re both incredibly intelligent and responsible for two legendary bands.

As a bonus the article also has soundbites of the two talking and Thom York sounds positively ecstatic to be talking with Byrne.  But then again who wouldn’t be?

(Photo by James Day at Radiohead’s Oxford offices)
Byrne: So this bypasses all those reviewers and goes straight to the fans.

Yorke: In a way, yeah. And it was a thrill. We mastered it, and two days later it was on the site being, you know, preordered. That was just a really exciting few weeks to have that direct connection.

Byrne: And letting people choose their own price?

Yorke: That was [manager Chris Hufford's] idea. We all thought he was barmy. As we were putting up the site, we were still saying, “Are you sure about this?” But it was really good. It released us from something. It wasn’t nihilistic, implying that the music’s not worth anything at all. It was the total opposite. And people took it as it was meant. Maybe that’s just people having a little faith in what we’re doing.

Byrne: And that works for you guys. You have an audience ready. Like me — if I hear there’s something new of yours out there, I’ll just go and buy it without poking around about what the reviews say.

Yorke: Well, yeah. The only reason we could even get away with this, the only reason anyone even gives a shit, is the fact that we’ve gone through the whole mill of the business in the first place. It’s not supposed to be a model for anything else. It was simply a response to a situation. We’re out of contract. We have our own studio. We have this new server. What the hell else would we do? This was the obvious thing. But it only works for us because of where we are.

Head over to Wired to read the entire conversation.

Not literally, of course.  But the Beatle legend asked the Radiohead frontman (who’s kind of a legend in his own right, yeah?) if he wanted to cook up a duet with him.  But after listening to “Ebony and Ivory” Yorke was a little skeptical and made up an excuse to not have to work with Paul McCartney.

So what was his excuse?  Simple, he doesn’t like working with other performers unless it’s with his bandmates.   The exchange might have gone something like this.

Paul: So I’m working on this new song, ya know and it goes something like this: scribbledy, hobbidy, booma, bang, bang.  But I couldn’t quite get the bridge and the last verse right, how was in me head ya know.  So I go to ask John to help me out, but John wasn’t around and then me daughter tells me John’s been dead for 30 years.  So I remember this band Radiohead getting all this attention for their latest album, which wasn’t really an album cause I looked for it for me record player.  Anyway, I start thinking maybe Thom Yorke can help me with this part of the song that goes like fluttery, buttery, doo be doo doo.

Thom: I got a call from Paul.  So what?  I told him “fuck the Beatles.  I’m in Radiohead bitch.”

Anyway, good for Thom to sticking to his guns.  Afterall, the duet coulda turned out like this:

Well, that’s what the band was calling it, but anyone who watched this knows this was nothing but thumbs up. Wish I was that eight limbed Indian girl so I could give this eight thumbs up, but we’ll have to settle for two.

Damn… that’s really all there is to say. This was quite a treat for any Radiohead fan. Depending on where you were living, this was either a few hours well spent at night or in the afternoon. We got live renditions of songs, covers of New Order and The Smiths, a Se7en parody, “Faust Arp” played at sunset in a field, Thom spinning M.I.A. and !!! Damn. I mean really.

You can check out Stereogum and Pitchfork’s coverage of this webcast, as they were live blogging this, unfortunately for us we could only watch as we had the film fest to get ready for. They’ve got some nice screencaps and Mp3’s of the performance to download if you are so inclined. And also their play-by-play are quite good. Psst, Pitchfork, don’t hate us be we stole the below screencap from you since they were so pretty.

Here’s the band’s DJing setlist:

Burial: “Near Dark”
M.I.A.: “Pull Up the People”
Tomas Anderson: “Happy Happy”
!!!: “Heart of Hearts”
Kings of Leon: “My Party”
Asian Dub Foundation: “Model Apprentice”
Jorge Ben: “Take It Easy My Brother Charlie”
Les Baxter: “The Ancient Galleon”
The First Edition: “Just Dropped in (To See What Condition My Condition Was in)”
Iggy Pop: “Nightclubbin’”
Squarepusher: “My Red Hot Car”
Bauhaus: “Bella Lugosi’s Dead”
Iron and Wine: “Pagan Angel and a Borrowed Car”
Captain Beefheat: “Sun Zoom Spark”
Bonnie Prince Billy: “Lessons From What’s Poor”
Asian Dub Foundation: “Naxalite”
Ray Charles: “It Should’ve Been Me”
Juana Molina: “Micael”
Fela Kuti & the Africa 70: “Alu Jon Jonki Jon”

Not too shabby. Take the jump for the video highlights. MORE »

Update: So apparantly yesterday’s Radiohead party was nothing more than a lead up to tonight’s planned telecast.  According to NME (I know not exactly the most reliable of sources) the band used last night as a test for tonight’s fun.  Check in sometime between 9 p.m. and 12 a.m. Greenwich time, which is 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. EST and beginning at 1 p.m. on the West Coast… All the fun happens on Radiohead TV.

So yesterday afternoon Radiohead decided to host an internet party over at Deadairspace. The problem was, and I think their music demonstrates their fear of technology, they had server and bandwith problems so plenty of people were turned away at the door. Sadly I was one of them.

Sucks when this sort of thing happens in high school, but even more traumatic when Thom Yorke does it to you. Anyway, by the power of Greyskull, er, YouTube, here’s what all the cool kids got to watch.

Here’s part one: Entanglement, with a remix of “Harrowdown Hill” (off Thom’s solo disc The Eraser). Thom sure can dance, no white man’s overbite here.

After the jump see part 2. MORE »

Every since the hoopla surrounding the “pay what you want” album In Rainbows, one of the big questions was how much did Radiohead fan’s pay for the album and how much did that net the band. There’s no doubt that this was the most important record release this year: prompting everyone to focus on the music, talk about it and it’s relationship to how much you pay for an album. It was really a deft marketing move on the part of Thom Yorke and the guys.

For once, music wasn’t something indisposable that gets thrown away with the next day’s music postings. More than anything the release made music an event again. In fact, along with Stylus closing up shop, Amy Winehouse’s disasterous free fall, OiNk getting shut down, this was probably the biggest music event to happen this year - at least for me.

A study by comScore Inc. reveils that “Some 62 percent of the people who downloaded “In Rainbows” in a four- week period last month opted not to pay the British alt-rockers a cent. But the remaining 38 percent voluntarily paid an average of $6.” So two out of five people didn’t pay for the album? Crazy.

Though this may give us an aproximation to what so many people have been wondering, it looks as if their data sample and numbers might not be entirely accurate.

The results of the study were drawn from data gathered from a few hundred people who are part of comScore’s database of 2 million computer users worldwide. The firm, which has permission to monitor the computer users’ online behavior, did not provide a margin of error for the study’s results.

Between Oct. 1 and Oct. 29, about 1.2 million people visited the Web site the band set up for fans to download the album, comScore said Monday. The research firm did not say how many people in its study actually bought the album.

At the end of the day, however, one has to believe that the fiduciary aspects of this story matter only from a business perspective and not so much a musical one. (Via: HT)

So just to clear the air. We’re doing our best to keep the stories and stuff flowing, but truth be told we’re just kiddy kids on Christmas morning. We downloaded the latest offering from Radiohead last night and we’ve been listening to it pretty much straight through until our eyes are bloodshot. The great news is this album is wonderful.

Beautiful, haunting, lots of soundscapes to try and unfold. Drums, beats, and strings! Holy moly, their are wondrous stings tying the entire album together.

Essentially, it’s a Radiohead album. I would say this one is more refined than everything they’ve put out since Kid A. And that’s saying a lot. Anyway, today is a good day. It sounds like they’ve arrived at a place where they are finally free to stop pushing the envelope musically (which if they kept going where they were going they’d already be over the edge) and just make beautiful music.

And even though it’s cloudy and overcast in Portland, the sun is shining for sure.

Update: Album review after the jump. MORE »

Filter Magazine is reporting that Radiohead, who basically sent Earthquakes throughout the music industry last week, with the announcement of their seventh LP being available for donation on their website, is close to signing a distribution deal to release In Rainbows on CD.

Among those vying for the honor of distributing the disc are Warner Bros, former label EMI and ATO, who are currently seen as the most attractive candidates.

Although there was high speculation that Radiohead would not sign to a label, the band wants to distribute In Rainbows to a mass marketplace and understands that a label partnership is a necessity to achieve such a goal.

The digital release of In Rainbows drops October 10, while the hard copy is slated to hit stores in early 2008.

Good for them. Not likely that too many folks will be buying the cd at a Best Buy or Walmart, seeing as every Radiohead fan already will be downloading it tomorrow! And then once that happens it’ll have already leaked and so and so forth. Not like Radiohead needs the money and I can’t imagine too many people rushing out in 2008 to get this unless there is a banging single on the radio.