Radiohead
Kid A

THE REVIEW

A winter sun dreamily filtering through the slats of my blinds. A distant and undefined frost. A fog that envelops everything. Heavy eyelids refuse to open, pierced by an obsessive and sharp shadow.

A distant keyboard starting in rhythm with the creeping steps on freshly fallen snow, a distant scream... "Everything In Its Right Place" marries the perpetual darkness with a phrase on the edge of subliminal, repeating almost like a sweet supersonic hymn, traversed by sudden whirlwinds of distorted voices. The revolutionary scream of a world now fallen into an oblivion covered by cold snow.

The crystal tip of a piece that spins like a mad kaleidoscope, like a carousel made of LSD. Waking up sucking on a lemon, I've discovered that in my mind there are only empty colors. Yesterday.

In that whirlpool, in that spiral of perversions, the title-track begins with a snowy and wintry flavor: sounds of the most refined and seductive glitch, like imprints stamped in a spectral white, covering everything. A robotic voice with a heart of gold. The fake sweetness of a sudden percussive opening. A beauty, a freshly carved piece of crystal, formed by ink from centuries ago and "The National Anthem", with that guitar intro hand in hand with an illusory and rock-like rhythm... flocks soaring in the wind against the backdrop of a jazz-blues frenzy that touches the sky, through the usual phenomenal tone of Thom Yorke, aching and lamenting, yet not devoid of strong and tangible emotions. An aneurysm made of music: it explodes after the silence, after a failed attempt to normalize there's the explosion: those jazz brass and winds chasing each other like in a sonic hunt with a thousand faces.

And then all that frenzy crumbles, under the vision of a transparent mountain range, of the most fragile yet mighty ice at the base of a fiery red sky. At times dormant and vermilion. An apocalyptic vision accompanied by a dreamy and romantic acoustic guitar, intertwined with sudden sonic glimpses that depart and flee in a timid winter sigh, prolonged in "Treefingers": atmospheres suspended in a metaphysical limbo, like souls waiting for something they cannot obtain from Dante's inferno.

Point of no return is that "Optimistic" splotched and transcendent, starting like a sort of rock lullaby then waking you from your existential doze with increasingly melodic and apocalyptic wails. Snowfall begins anew like manna from heaven with "In Limbo": the freshly fallen snow covers everything again in white, like a vicious circle, and brings joy. Broken rhythm, sudden sonic clatter. You're just living in a fantasy.

Pum, pam, papum... it hails, it hails hard and it’s "Idioteque", the peak, a precious overseas gem, crackling but not cheerful, devastating just right. It throws itself against the horizon as if it were life against death (or vice versa), shouting until it loses its voice. "Ladies and gentlemen first... the ice age is coming". Chasing rhythms, icy looks, sharp voice. A whistle trying to restore order. Winter approaching. Here comes "Morning Bell", it crawls like dead flesh on an even more resolute, even more funereal rhythm. Love and death.

"Motion Picture Soundtrack": last love at first listen. The film is over. You can return to living. Not without devastated emotions, nor the shyness of once. Sunset.

Sweet pure awakening.