The Section Quartet
Strung Out On OK computer

After having published 2 rather sparse reviews on the content of the album under examination and having accepted this criticism in good conscience, I pause and produce something more "documentary-like" adequate, although the result of yet another sleepless night and therefore prone to emotional-sentimental outbursts, which is unlikely not to be suppressed and pushed back into the hole from which they had emerged, bold, somewhat like the insects in Emidio known as Mimì Clementi's toilet.

Let's talk about The Section, which we will accept as their name, and about whom not even the mother Internet gives us much biographical information, and the Radiohead. Of the latter, musically here on Debaser, everything has been said and it's perhaps not worth further praising the work of our Oxford friends. So as it is right, let's attempt to focus on the former. And let's try to listen to this album as something new, free from its parent creation. But as Doc Emmett Brown would say "we can't! This would cause an anomaly in the space-time continuum!" Indeed, it seems unavoidable to discriminate the product from its source and comment on the quality of the stuff we are about to drink, which, although offered in glasses of different shapes from the digital distortions of our Oxford friends, has the same smell and taste. Even the electric mandolin-like guitar is perfectly imitated in Airbag, however, the piece rendered a bit bland by a perhaps too gloomy cello in the background (excuse me in advance for any nonsense I might say in distinguishing the strings, I will try to not let my prejudices show and proceed as clearly as I can).

Track number 2, Paranoid Android, is a piece that is worth the price of admission or field appropriation, if you allow me this definition. A succession of tingles down the spine, from the very beginning to the end, surrounded by admiration for having managed to transform a beautiful rock-digital android portrait into a Renaissance painting, as if by magic the scenery of a computer adventure game is revisited and transformed into a bucolic vision à la Barry Lyndon. There are pizzicato references and distortions here and there, and even some (purposely) left mistakes, like rough brushstrokes that crudely stain the sea on an impressionist painting to better render it stormy. Track number three is Subterranean Homesick Alien, and in my opinion also misses Johnny and Thom's guitar and voice. Then, as rightly suggested by a newly graceful pizzicato for these melodies, we move away from music and go watch a film, track number 4, get more tingles both annoying and nice. Around the 3rd minute, the final chase of the piece starts with a spectacular tolling start and a choked and distressing finale, marred by the horrible coda that stains its unfathomable faded ending. Track 5 and the intertwining of the strings is still pleasurable.

This review is becoming unreadable, I admit it. I hope I haven't bored you too much so far and that I've already been dismissed for putting on the worthy CD. I continue. Or rather not, because maybe the Karma Police are looking for them with blaring sirens, and rightly so, for the rather random execution of track number 6. But this is evidently a CD that travels as bits, 0 and 1, one good and one poor, and track number 7 (although it was an indispensable operation considering the original piece), seems like a whole new melody, a bonus track posthumously escaped from the soundtrack of Schindler's List. Track 8 is crap then. And yet no. We are, in my opinion, facing the most interesting revisit of the entire tribute to Ok Computer, a spectacular Electioneering, an excellent arrangement that reminds me of the beloved Eleanor Rigby in its propelling flow and languid pauses in the breaks between each phrase of the violin discourse. Rating 5 out of 5 to the album just for this track 8. (I would be curious, after hearing this, if The Section proposed, if they have already done so please let me know, other Brit-pop pieces, at a potential concert without hesitation I would request Parklife or She's Electric... I mean, can you imagine Parklife done this way? Absolute awesomeness...). Track 9 is a piece I never loved even in its original version, so I won't dwell on it. Track 10, No surprises was the logic, was the predictable, and instead much better the celesta of sir Yorke in its original guise. Track 11 and we are fed up with this CD, managing not to spit it out of the player for the bravest, you reach track 12, which among the heartaches for the narrowly avoided nervous breakdown also reveals itself to be an excellent episode, worth the replay.

Having said this, I ask you to be patient for another 13 seconds and pause further for a quick overview of the Radiohead cover universe known to me:

1. C. O'Riley, never heard and just discovered here on Debaser, I will procure something;
2. Rodeohead, to be heard here, famous and if unknown not to be missed;
3. Brad Meldhau, divine on piano with an absolutely innovative and enjoyable reinterpretation;
4. Radiodread (Easy Star All Stars), our reggae version, perhaps indigestible, but on a second listen it will reveal itself to be digestible mainly for the iconographic mania of which we are now possessed, at the fourth imitator-reproducer and secondarily for some version that brings a half-smile, or to them maybe...

Do you know any others? Reinterpretation of the "got-it-missing" Panini album atmosphere to be continued in your eventual kind decommentation...