Bleep

Originally released in 1997, Radiohead’s third studio album OK Computer is perhaps known as their most accomplished and acclaimed effort. Coming down from the intensity of touring and the stress of trying to land a hit record, they did away with conventions entirely, moving away from the more introspective explorations of The Bends and Pablo Honey and making one of their most widely resonating artistic statements in the process.

Representing a wider remit of what rock and pop have to offer, OK Computer expanded the band’s instrumentation as well as their experiments with electronic processes and abstract lyrical formations of towering ambition. ‘No Surprises’ is a deceptive feat of songwriting, where bright plucks, glockenspiel, and upbeat grooves are met with the friction of sly lyrics fraught with resigning despair, excising the mortal coil of modern life. ‘Karma Police’ moves in a similar fashion, unforgiving words set to alternating passages of jaunty strums and piano chords, and breakdowns of catastrophic calibre.

Radiohead worked intrepidly with complex layers of sound and a more brutish approach to the final product than before, evident in the lurching guitars and turgid drums on the opening ‘Airbag’, torn up in a vortex of editing. Thom Yorke’s haunting falsettos and wails resound throughout ‘Paranoid Android’, while thrashing guitars turn to mediaeval vocals then back to wacked out solos in a dramatic tour of musical expressions. ‘Exit Music (For a Film)’ turns those theatrics up to a ten, created for Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet with a despondent intimacy and pleading vocals that crash into an epic, climactic belt.

OK Computer is a landmark of its time undoubtedly attested to by the classics it boasts, from a band that have not only defined the 90s but the 21st century so far.