October 2007

I’ll save a more verbose review for a later blog entry, but I wanted to get some information ‘out there’.

First off, the new metallic look is pretty nifty. It gives a nice “new” feel to the standard menus and toolbars. The new ‘Coverflow’ is very nice, too. It provides a quick and easy way to scroll through your files to find what you’re looking for.

The new 3D dock is pretty to look at but it’s very hard to see which applications you have running. All you have is a tiny little white arrow (or is it a ball?) underneath the running application.

“Stacks” are fun to play with. I dragged my Application folder into the dock to create a ’stack’. Handy to launch applications without rooting through finder. I can probably remove a lot of infrequently used applications from my dock, now.

Time Machine is very fancy to look at but it has limited usefulness to me. Most of my daily work is web based and versioned using SVN. This makes Time Machine pretty much redundant for day to day work. I also use iBackup to archive my photos and music daily which takes up much less space. For this reason alone, I’ll most likely turn Time Machine off. The two hour backup is slightly distracting when it runs, also.

I’ve not played much with ‘Spaces’ as I have a two monitor set-up but I can see this being very useful for my MacBook.

As with any new OS X release, there are a few teething troubles with existing OS X applications.

The first is with Adium. MSN wouldn’t connect this morning. This post fixed it.

You have to do some jiggery-pokery to get PHP and MySQL running. I usually use the excellent Entropy packages but these don’t work yet with 10.5. You can get the OS X version of PHP running using this post, but it is a bare-bones installation without GD, etc.

I received a warning message when I launched mail about the plugin ‘SpamSieve’ being disabled. If you use this plugin, then read this to get it working again.

So far, so good…

I was flicking through my playlists today and I noticed the ‘On The Go’ playlist for the first time. This is automatically generated by iTunes based on your listening preferences. I was shocked to notice it has been planning to kill me.

Click the picture below…

This review is based on just a few listens. Like most Radiohead songs, you get more from them the more you listen to them. Even though their sound has matured it is still very much a Radiohead album and surprisingly accessible from the very first listen. Is it their best album to date? I’d say that it’s a very close call. Most of the songs grab you from the first few bars and demand your attention.
Stand out tracks for me so far “Nude”, “BodySnatchers”, “All I Need” and “Jigsaw Falling Into Place”. Oh, and “Videotape”.
The sound is very much a continuation from “Kid A / Amnesiac” and “Hail to the Thief” but there is some definite “OK Computer” styling there too.

15 Step
Welcome to In Rainbows. Electronica assaults your eardrums. Thom mumbles and skips through the first verse “How come I end up where I started”. The guitar comes in for “You used to be alright, what happened?”. The guitar flows to the left of the mix. “It comes to us all, it’s as soft as your pillow”. Electronica gets whimsical “Fifteen Steps, Then a sheer drop”. Like Múm on speed. Thom gets more excited for the last verse. A very eclectic and schizophrenic opening for the album.

BodySnatchers
Heavily distorted guitar. Drums. Thoms vocal. It reminds me very heavily of the chorus from “Palo Alto“. Which is a good thing. The track sounds like it could have come from “Kid A“. “I’m trapped in this body and can’t get out”. More health paranoia from Mr Yorke. This track is bursting with energy. Scratchy guitars to the right, drums at the back. Electronic strings wail and then -bang- it all changes. Faster drums, long drawn out guitar notes “Has the lights gone out for you? Cause the lights gone out for me”. “I’m alive”. A wall of noise brings on the last minute then we’re back to more Kid A sonic style noodling before a loud fast finale. Literally breathtaking. This would make a fantastic live song.

Nude
Reversed sound clips. “Don’t get any big ideas, they’re not gonna happen”. Ironically, how long have Radiohead fans waited to hear that on a studio album? Well, it’s finally happened!
It would be lazy to say this track is “Fake Plastic Trees” for 2007 - but it’s so much more than that. If you’ve heard the live versions of ‘Big Ideas’ then you’ll know what I mean when you say that this song has had the ‘Motion Picture Soundtrack‘ treatment. Outstandingly beautiful.
Throughout, the haunting syrupy tones of Thom float dreamlike over a stripped down orchestration for heartbreaking effect. The strings swell packed full of reverb for the chorus. My favourite track from the album.

Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
Classic Radiohead with a guitar heavy track. It appears to be a simple melody but there are many overlapping textures which builds as the song progresses. Like most of the songs on this album, you get a real sense of how Radiohead have matured their sound. The last minute is hazy perfection “Hit the bottom. And Escape”.

All I Need
The first few bars remind me of “How To Disappear Completely” from “Kid A” until the drum machine and bass kick in. “I’m an animal trapped in your hot car” Thom sings. “I’m all the days that you choose to ignore”. Like so many tracks on In Rainbows, it’s a very naked sound. Lots of empty space and echo. “You’re all I need, I’m in the middle of a picture.”. The song concludes on a high literally buzzing with energy. “It’s all wrong…”. Not for me!

Faust Arp
Acoustic guitar. Fast spoken lyrics. Folky undertones with heavy cinematic orchestration. Swelling violins over Thom “Tumbling, tumbling…”. The music takes prominence over Thom so that he’s almost lost in the mix much like some of the earlier “Pablo Honey” tracks. The most un-Radiohead like track on the album.

Reckoner
More echo and reverb. Drum and bass. Picking guitar at the left of the mix; vaguely reminiscent of “Where I End…” from “Hail To The Thief“. Another relaxed track led by Thom’s high octave singing. A very “Radiohead” sound. The last half of the song changes tonally when the orchestra come in.

House of Cards
Guitar; warm and rich greet us at the start of this track. Thoms heavily echod voice carries the song. “Forget about your house of cards, and I’ll deal mine”. The drum line keeps the song ticking along. Even though the lyrics are quite aggressive, the score remains melancholy and almost upbeat in places. Some of the sound effects remind me of “Electioneering” from “OK Computer” for reasons I can’t quite explain.

Jigsaw Falling into Place
Acoustic guitar picking out a complex melody kicks off this track. Lots of chord changes, major, minor, 7th. Thom hums his welcome mimicking the melody. It’s hard to keep your head from nodding in time with the rhythm. Thom beats out the lyrics of the first verse without much emotion. “Close circuit cameras, before you’re comatose”. The music builds for the second verse. “Before you run away from me”. Thom is getting more excited. “Come on and let it out”…. “Dance, Dance, Dance”. The music shifts again through minor and 7th. Heavy strings for “Jigsaws falling into place, there is nothing to explain”. The sheer pace leaves you almost breathless at the end.
I bet this is outstanding live in the same way that “2+2=5” is.

Videotape
We’re slowed down by tender piano and a very raw Thom introduce the song. “When I’m at the pearly gates, this will be on my videotape”. This track is very stripped down. The drums come in a little later as Thom hums a melody above the piano. At about halfway there’s a real sense of building. The drums ricochet as if on a loop. “This is my way of saying goodbye. Because I can’t do it face to face.”. The song noodles out with the drum loop and the repeated piano melody.

I got my download link this morning for Radiohead’s new album and it was on my desktop in seconds. It’s in the format of DRM free 160 kbps MP3 tracks.

I’ve only listened to four songs so far but it’s already a fantastic album. The long awaited “Nude” is nothing short of brilliant. “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” is great too. Despite my fears that the album would sound more like Thom’s Eraser than a Radiohead album (Eraser is a great album, but it’s a slightly different sound to Radiohead) is so far unfounded. This is definitely a Radiohead album!

Ok, sorry for gushing… I’ve been waiting nearly four years for this album…

I’m a huge Radiohead fan and I’ve been keeping an eye on their sites for a while for news of a new album. Rumours were that it would be out early in 2008.

Much to the surprise of everyone, Inrainbows is out on Oct 10.

But you won’t find it in Virgin Megastore or HMV. Radiohead have decided to go it alone and are taking pre-orders for two versions, one ‘discbox’ version which contains two CDs and two LPs as well as some artwork which will be shipped on Dec 3rd. This version contains a digital download pass which is activated on 10th October. You can also purchase the download version on its own. The boxset costs £40 and the download only version costs… well, that’s up to you. They have set no price. You decide how much you want to pay for it — or if you want to pay for it at all. No seriously, it’s true; you can ‘buy’ it for free.

To foil ‘net piracy, there are no promos, no label only copies - nothing. Unless there’s a leak within the studio, you won’t be able to find a copy anywhere.

Naturally, the music labels are shocked:

While many industry observers speculated that Radiohead might go off-label for its seventh album, it was presumed the band would at least rely on Apple’s iTunes or United Kingdom-based online music store 7digital for distribution. Few suspected the band members had the ambition (or the server capacity) to put an album out on their own. The final decision was apparently made just a few weeks ago, and, when informed of the news on Sunday, several record executives admitted that, despite the rumors, they were stunned. “This feels like yet another death knell,” emailed an A&R executive at a major European label. “If the best band in the world doesn’t want a part of us, I’m not sure what’s left for this business.”

Labels can still be influential and profitable by focusing on younger acts that need their muscle to get radio play and placement in record stores — but only if the music itself remains a saleable commodity. “That’s the interesting part of all this,” says a producer who works primarily with American rap artists. “Radiohead is the best band in the world; if you can pay whatever you want for music by the best band in the world, why would you pay $13 dollars or $.99 cents for music by somebody less talented? Once you open that door and start giving music away legally, I’m not sure there’s any going back.”

I’m literally so excited I could burst. I’ve pre-ordered the boxed version and will be ready to download on the 10th. I can’t believe they’re finally releasing a studio version of ‘Nude’!