Memory Records - Kid A

I love Kid A. I think it's one of the best albums of the 2000s, and it's one of my favourite all time pieces of music. I didn't always feel that way about it, though. In fact, I was kind of disappointed when it came out. I wasn't outraged in the same way others were, I wasn't at all pissed off that there were hardly any guitars on it. If any thing, I was too ready for it, and it sounded too much like it did in my head. This is in part because I'd been following radiohead.com for the various years leading up to the album and I'd adjusted my music tastes in accordance with Thom Yorke's sporadic tastes. I knew about Warp Records, I'd checked out Can, Neu, and Miles Davis. I anticipated the change in direction.

It was also because of the clean, unforgiving production Radiohead records have. Short of Hail to the Thief, the production on which I still don't like, most Radiohead records are pristine to the point of being almost impenetrable. They practically glow when played. This makes them amazing to listen to on excellent speakers but tough if you want to get through to the heart. You have to put a lot of listening time in before you get any thing out. Or, at least, that's how I find them to be.

I don't want to get distracted getting geeky about production, as much fun as that would be. Instead, and in keeping with the theme of this blog, I want to present snap shots from times I've listened Kid A, because I really associate it with certain times and places.

- I'm walking in Aberdeen, Scotland with a friend, and I've just bought the record. I can see the corner of the road, where I'm standing with it. It's at this point whether I'm wondering if my faith in this band has been rewarded or not. Should I succumb to the overwhelming indifference of a collection of the reviews I've read? I know it's not a terrible record, but is it going to turn out to be really good? I can see where I'm standing, the grey bricks in the wall, the grey sky. It's the afternoon. I'm seventeen.

- The funny thing about memory is that we never know how much of it is invented by our minds. When I think about Kid A, I think about new year's eve, 1999, but I know that it wasn't released until April 2000. Still, images revolve around in my head. One is of a big house party in Cults, an upper middle-class area of Aberdeen. The party is being thrown by a girl called Helen I used to sit beside in English class. The sky in Aberdeen frequently has an orange glow about it due to the street lamps. I can see orange and black. I have really strong images of trees in my head. I think that I have this memory for two main reasons, it was round about this time I was getting into Warp Records – I bought Autechre's lp4 on December 31st 1999, and the colours used in the art of Kid A suits the memory I have.

- I can remember the night I realized how powerful this record was. I was in a kitchen, with some friends, and we're fucking around with a ouija board. I was super-intense teenager, and so the ouija board is freaking me out a little bit. There's a stereo on the counter, and we're soundtracking the whole event. “The Sophtware Slump” by Grandaddy goes on at one point, then Kid A. I start to realize how haunted the music sounds. It's cold but I get the impression that it's because the protagonist is trying to give the impression of disappearing, both involuntarily and as a way of escaping. The title track is the least Radiohead-like composition I've heard so far. The two most traditional sounding tracks paint a pretty bleak picture. And yet, even with all this, there's something incredibly moving about it, something that I can't pin down, something that makes me want to listen to it over, and over, and over...