Radiohead
Radiohead is an alternative rock band that was founded in 1985 in Oxford, England. Occurring at that time still under the name On a Friday in 1989 and 1992 respectively renamed Radiohead, after a song by the Talking Heads called Radiohead.
The band consists of Thom Yorke (vocals, rhythm guitar, piano ), Jonny Greenwood ( lead guitar, keyboards, Ondes Martenot ), Colin Greenwood ( bass guitar, keyboards), Ed O'Brien ( guitar, backing vocals) and Phil Selway ( drums, background vocals ). Worldwide the band has about 30 million records worldwide (as of May 2011).
Band History
The band was founded in 1985 at the Abingdon School in Abingdon near Oxford - at that time still under the name On a Friday because you rehearsed every Friday. In early 1986, followed by the first appearance in the Jericho Tavern in Oxford. 1987 left Yorke, O'Brien, Selway, and Colin Greenwood school to study, nevertheless, the band met regularly at weekends and during the holidays. It was not until 1991, the band became increasingly professional and signed in that year a contract with EMI for six albums. Later was also renamed Radiohead At the suggestion of the record company.
The first commercial release of Radiohead was the Drill EP in May 1992. At the time of recording, the band was still On A Friday, it was renamed but a short time later, so that even Radiohead was on the cover. With the single Creep ( first appeared in September 1992), which stayed on the charts in many countries over a longer period of time, the band had their first major success. Today, the band plays the song only very rarely at concerts. Appeared in 1993 with the debut album Pablo Honey, which reached number 22 in the British charts. However, the following singles Anyone Can Play Guitar and Stop Whispering and later Pop Is Dead did not sell well, just as the 1994 released EP My Iron Lung.
Only with the second album, The Bends, with producer Nigel Godrich the first time it was, which was in time to the " sixth member of the band ", the band managed to jump back into higher chart ranks. Even critics of the album was mostly very well rated.
After two years in which the band was almost exclusively on tour and it was testing new song material such as Airbag, Paranoid Android, Subterranean Homesick Alien, 1997, she released the album OK Computer. Initially it was recorded mostly subdued and did not apply a few critics at a time in the Oasis many as the most important British rock band, was considered overly complex and pretentious. But after a while, OK Computer by critics and audiences became a great success, found in surveys of music magazines still far greater support than The Bends and is now considered one of the best albums of the 1990s. In OK Computer, the band entered a new, unusual for the until then dominant Britpop classic ways, for example by experimenting with surround sound, noise and computer-generated voices.
After a world tour followed in the second half of 1998, a pause in which the band rarely occurred and the public shunned. This reluctance initially continued also on the publication of the fourth album, Kid A in the year 2000. The album was barely promoted, the band were very few interviews, music videos were released exclusively on the Internet. In addition, from Kid A, no singles were released. Nevertheless, the album was certified on which the band greatly expanded their experiments with different styles and unconventional sounds and song structures, No. 1 on the U.S. charts, possibly also because the album before the release was available on the time most popular music sharing platform Napster. Also, Kid A received, as already the two previous albums, mostly very good reviews.
The fifth album Amnesiac was released in the middle of the following year and consisted of additional material of the same recording sessions as Kid A. Both albums are similar in style. Unlike from Kid A singles were released from Amnesiac, however, under which the Pyramid Song is the best known.
After another big tour, the band released their sixth album Hail to the Thief, the less on electronic experiments based than its two predecessors, but still significantly different from the guitar -driven rock of the early days of 2003. The title of the album caused a stir because it was interpreted as an allusion to the controversial outcome of the American presidential election of 2000. Hail to the Thief was available to the annoyance of the band a few months before the official release in a raw -mixed version on the Internet. However, Radiohead appeared annoyed that EMI had equipped the CD release of the album, against the will of the tape with a copy protection in interviews.
With the release of Hail to the Thief Radiohead's contract had expired with EMI. The five musicians showed little interest to extend this, but met no agreement with another record company.
As the first band member Jonny Greenwood 2003 Bodysong released a solo album as a soundtrack to the same documentation of Simon Pummel. Published in 2006 with the album Thom Yorke The Eraser also a solo record with electronically painted pop songs.
After a world tour in 2006 Radiohead worked on the completion of their new album In Rainbows. Since Radiohead had not signed a new record deal, which was released on 10 October 2007 until December 2007 the album was available as a download or Discbox only in self- distribution via the band's website. The customer determined the price for the download itself Meanwhile, the album is also available on iTunes and as a CD.
On 5 August 2009, Radiohead released in honor of the 25 July 2009 Harry Patch, the oldest veterans of the British Army of the First World War, the song Harry Patch ( In Memory Of ) on the Internet.
Published in 2010 fans of the band a live recording of a concert in Prague. 23 August 2009 filmed 50 visitors from different points of an entire concert and released the recordings as a free download. The soundtrack for this has been provided by the band.
In an interview, Ed O'Brien said that the band would release a new album in 2010. He disagreed with singer Thom Yorke, who had declared that the band will release only EPs and singles. On 14 February 2011 Radiohead finally announced their eighth studio album - The King of Limbs - which was released digitally on February 18 and March 25 in physical form.
Style
Radiohead have changed stylistically over time and are hardly related to a single genre.
Early in her career she was associated with the Britpop wave. Not least because of the success of the single Creep they were at that time held by some for a one- hit wonder. Their second album, The Bends was then assessed by most critics as a surprising, consistent development, which " brings the strongest moments of the predecessor Pablo Honey to the Point". While it still has a typical for the early Radiohead - phase catchiness shows in comparison to its predecessor, however, been much more complex and epic.
This tendency continued on their next album, OK Computer, continued. The band combined the sound of The Bends with influences of ambient, avant-garde and electronic music. The result was recorded almost unanimously positive from critics and is considered one of the most influential and important albums of the nineties.
Exhausted from the long trip to OK Computer waited the band with the release of the follow-up album Kid A by the year 2000. Radiohead were their way of continually improving their sound faithfully. The band gave no interviews to Kid A; also singles or videos were not decoupled. The guitar on this album takes a much smaller role than on all previous albums, instead dominate electronic sounds and influences from Krautrock, free jazz and modern classical music.
Like OK Computer, it won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album. With critics and fans Kid A was recorded very differently. Some see the album as " borders border [ ... ] work of art ", some fans have with the new direction of the band but do nothing more. Despite its complexity, however, the album was a commercial success.
The fifth studio album Amnesiac followed only a few months after Kid A and is often compared with this, as the pieces of the two albums have their origin in the same sessions. Also Amnesiac can not describe a genre term alone, but uses elements of different styles, especially jazz is more pronounced here than on any other Radiohead album. Overall, however, it continues its adopted on Kid A direction.
With the two publications Hail to the Thief and In Rainbows Radiohead returned again to a certain extent for guitar music back, but this does not mean that the electronic bonds and broken song structures of the previous albums are gone. Rather form both albums an intersection of all previous albums. For example, writes plate tests online to In Rainbows: "One could even speak of stagnation, because Radiohead apparently no longer necessarily strive forward, but also for - and backwards in order to focus on already developed virtues. "
Artwork
Over time, Thom Yorke has developed ( on the CDs as ' Tchocky ', ' Dr Tchock ', ' The White Chocolate Farm ' etc. mentioned) along with Stanley Donwood a quirky artwork. The collaboration with former fellow students began with The Bends. The artwork developed further and since OK Computer has a very high priority for the band. In Kid A and Amnesiac, it consists mainly of sombre landscapes.
For Hail to the Thief, Yorke and Donwood developed a design that resembles a colorful map that has been provided with various " media " terms. This took Yorke the news, because they triggered certain emotions in him and in his opinion, therefore also targeted stations, companies and politicians were used. In an interview, he refers to the Newspeak ( Newspeak ), one occurring in George Orwell's novel 1984 Language.