![]() You knew this wasn’t going to be a cheery experience, right? A little later, three Radiohead bears hold hands on the wall of a grey, industrial building, each wearing t-shirts reading: ‘SEX’, ‘WORK’, ‘DEATH’. ‘NEVER EVER, EVER NEVER PICK IT UP’, one reads, next to a photo of a telephone. As I travel down the lonely and tattered hallways of the never-ending building, phrases from lyrics and promotional posters jump out at me. The lyrics on ‘Kid A’ reflect mistrust of power and feeling at odds with the world, and these themes are splattered all over the exhibition. After melting inside its walls, the throbbing bassline of ‘ The National Anthem’ bursts in right on cue. Then, after entering a room filled with TVs flashing apocalyptic imagery, an arrow on the floor promises ‘DRUM N BASS’ inside a golden column in the middle of the room. When instantly recognisable full portions of songs are used, they’re done so in all the right places: the thudding rush of ‘Kid A’ opener ‘Everything In Its Right Place’ accompanies my first foray down a neon-lit pathway with Radiohead artwork dashing up and down the walls at the speed of light. While travelling through the exhibition feels like crawling inside one of Donwood’s stunning pieces of art, through your headphones you get to interrogate the nuts and bolts of the music itself, deconstructing albums you’ve lived with for 20 years, but are suddenly hearing like never before. Suitably, the best bits of the exhibition are also when images distort themselves beyond recognition in a way only achievable through a screen.Įvery sound heard in the game also appears on ‘Kid A’ or ‘Amnesiac’, but its parts are scattered like shards and stretched apart into new shapes as the music shows itself in dismembered forms. The genius of ‘Kid A’ and ‘Amnesiac’ was in their warping of time and space, and their ability to remove you from the real world. When travelling through the surreal landscapes of the virtual exhibition, it proves a blessing that it ended up this way. KID A MNESIA was originally conceived as a physical installation, before obstacles including the pandemic got in its way, and it moved online. ![]() It was, and still is, viewed as a turning point not only for the band – who were, until that point, a largely formulaic if brilliant rock band – but for the direction of popular music at the start of the 2000s. It’s suitable, really, as ‘Kid A’, Radiohead’s fourth album that dropped at the turn of the millennium, was as far from traditional as they come, as they ditched the guitars for bleeping electronics and swirling soundscapes.
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