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HMCS Sussexvale was a River-class frigate that served with the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World War. She served primarily as a convoy escort in the Battle of the Atlantic. She was named for Sussex, New Brunswick. Her name was altered to prevent confusion with other Allied warships named Sussex. After the war she was converted to a Prestonian-class frigate and served until 1966. She was the last frigate launched by the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World War.Sussexvale was ordered as Valdorian on 1 February 1943 as part of the 1943–1944 River-class building program. She was laid down on 15 November 1943 by Davie Shipbuilding and Repairing Co. Ltd. at Lauzon, Quebec and launched 12 July 1944. At some point during 1944, her name was changed to Sussexvale. She was commissioned into the Royal Canadian Navy on 29 November 1944 at Quebec City.
Background
The River-class frigate was designed by William Reed of Smith's Dock Company of South Bank-on-Tees. Originally called a "twin-screw corvette", its purpose was to improve on the convoy escort classes in service with the Royal Navy at the time, including the Flower-class corvette. The first orders were placed by the Royal Navy in 1940 and the vessels were named for rivers in the United Kingdom, giving name to the class. In Canada they were named for towns and cities though they kept the same designation. The name "frigate" was suggested by Vice-Admiral Percy Nelles of the Royal Canadian Navy and was adopted later that year.Improvements over the corvette design included improved accommodation which was markedly better. The twin engines gave only three more knots of speed but extended the range of the ship to nearly double that of a corvette at 7,200 nautical miles (13,300 km) at 12 knots. Among other lessons applied to the design was an armament package better designed to combat U-boats including a twin 4-inch mount forward and 12-pounder aft. 15 Canadian frigates were initially fitted with a single 4-inch gun forward but with the exception of HMCS Valleyfield, they were all eventually upgraded to the double mount. For underwater targets, the River-class frigate was equipped with a Hedgehog anti-submarine mortar and depth charge rails aft and four side-mounted throwers.River-class frigates were the first Royal Canadian Navy warships to carry the 147B Sword horizontal fan echo sonar transmitter in addition to the irregular ASDIC. This allowed the ship to maintain contact with targets even while firing unless a target was struck. Improved radar and direction-finding equipment improved the RCN's ability to find and track enemy submarines over the previous classes.Canada originally ordered the construction of 33 frigates in October 1941. The design was too big for the shipyards on the Great Lakes so all the frigates built in Canada were built in dockyards along the west coast or along the St. Lawrence River. In all Canada ordered the construction of 60 frigates including ten for the Royal Navy that transferred two to the United States Navy.
Service history
After working up at Bermuda in January 1945, Sussexvale was assigned to escort group EG 28. She joined the group in Derry in March and spent the rest of the war in Europe patrolling the waters around the United Kingdom. From 14 March to 20 April, EG 28 was among the escort groups deployed in the English Channel. In May 1945, she returned to Canada to undergo a tropicalization refit in preparation for service in the southern Pacific Ocean. This meant adding refrigeration and water-cooling capabilities and changing the camouflage. The refit was performed at Shelburne but was never finished, having been cancelled due to the surrender of Japan. She was paid off on 16 November 1945 at Sydney, Nova Scotia and placed in reserve at Shelburne.
Postwar service
Sussexvale was sold to Marine Industries Ltd. after the war. However, with the increasing Soviet submarine threat, the Royal Canadian Navy sought to augment its anti-submarine forces. Sussexvale was reacquired and converted into a Prestonian-class frigate at Halifax. This meant a flush-decked appearance aft, with a larger bridge and taller funnel. Her hull forward was strengthened against ice and the quarterdeck was enclosed to contain two Squid anti-submarine mortars. On 1 January 1955, Sussexvale was assigned to the Second Canadian Escort Squadron of Pacific Command. She emerged from her conversion and was recommissioned on 18 March 1955 with the new pennant number 313. The frigate sailed for the west coast on 17 April arriving at Esquimalt in May.Sussexvale served with the Fourth Canadian Escort Squadron. She served as a training ship, having a deckhouse fitted midships to provide classrooms and mess facilities for officer cadets undergoing sea training. This deckhouse did not affect her combat capabilities. She remained in this role until being paid off 30 November 1966. In January 1960, Sussexvale and three other Prestonian-class ships made a tour of South American ports, visiting San Diego, Balboa, the Galapagos Islands, Callao and Valparaíso, Talara and Long Beach. Sussexvale was a member of the Fourth Canadian Escort Squadron based out of Esquimalt. In June 1960 the Fourth Canadian Escort Squadron performed a training tour of the Pacific, with stops at Yokohama, Japan, Midway Atoll and Pearl Harbor. They returned to Canada in August. From January to March 1961, Sussexvale, New Glasgow and Beacon Hill performed a training cruise to the South Pacific, visiting Hawaii, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia and Samoa. She was sold to Kennedy & Mitsui of Vancouver for breaking up in Japan in 1967.
References
Notes
Sources
Arbuckle, J. Graeme (1987). Badges of the Canadian Navy. Halifax, Nova Scotia: Nimbus Publishing. ISBN 0-920852-49-1.
Macpherson, Ken; Burgess, John. The ships of Canada's naval forces 1910–1981 : a complete pictorial history of Canadian warships. Collins: Toronto, 1981. ISBN 0-00-216856-1
Rohwer, Jürgen (2005). Chronology of the War at Sea 1939–1945: The Naval History of World War Two (Revised & Expanded ed.). Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1-59114-119-2. | manufacturer | {
"answer_start": [
632
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"text": [
"Davie Shipbuilding"
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HMCS Sussexvale was a River-class frigate that served with the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World War. She served primarily as a convoy escort in the Battle of the Atlantic. She was named for Sussex, New Brunswick. Her name was altered to prevent confusion with other Allied warships named Sussex. After the war she was converted to a Prestonian-class frigate and served until 1966. She was the last frigate launched by the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World War.Sussexvale was ordered as Valdorian on 1 February 1943 as part of the 1943–1944 River-class building program. She was laid down on 15 November 1943 by Davie Shipbuilding and Repairing Co. Ltd. at Lauzon, Quebec and launched 12 July 1944. At some point during 1944, her name was changed to Sussexvale. She was commissioned into the Royal Canadian Navy on 29 November 1944 at Quebec City.
Background
The River-class frigate was designed by William Reed of Smith's Dock Company of South Bank-on-Tees. Originally called a "twin-screw corvette", its purpose was to improve on the convoy escort classes in service with the Royal Navy at the time, including the Flower-class corvette. The first orders were placed by the Royal Navy in 1940 and the vessels were named for rivers in the United Kingdom, giving name to the class. In Canada they were named for towns and cities though they kept the same designation. The name "frigate" was suggested by Vice-Admiral Percy Nelles of the Royal Canadian Navy and was adopted later that year.Improvements over the corvette design included improved accommodation which was markedly better. The twin engines gave only three more knots of speed but extended the range of the ship to nearly double that of a corvette at 7,200 nautical miles (13,300 km) at 12 knots. Among other lessons applied to the design was an armament package better designed to combat U-boats including a twin 4-inch mount forward and 12-pounder aft. 15 Canadian frigates were initially fitted with a single 4-inch gun forward but with the exception of HMCS Valleyfield, they were all eventually upgraded to the double mount. For underwater targets, the River-class frigate was equipped with a Hedgehog anti-submarine mortar and depth charge rails aft and four side-mounted throwers.River-class frigates were the first Royal Canadian Navy warships to carry the 147B Sword horizontal fan echo sonar transmitter in addition to the irregular ASDIC. This allowed the ship to maintain contact with targets even while firing unless a target was struck. Improved radar and direction-finding equipment improved the RCN's ability to find and track enemy submarines over the previous classes.Canada originally ordered the construction of 33 frigates in October 1941. The design was too big for the shipyards on the Great Lakes so all the frigates built in Canada were built in dockyards along the west coast or along the St. Lawrence River. In all Canada ordered the construction of 60 frigates including ten for the Royal Navy that transferred two to the United States Navy.
Service history
After working up at Bermuda in January 1945, Sussexvale was assigned to escort group EG 28. She joined the group in Derry in March and spent the rest of the war in Europe patrolling the waters around the United Kingdom. From 14 March to 20 April, EG 28 was among the escort groups deployed in the English Channel. In May 1945, she returned to Canada to undergo a tropicalization refit in preparation for service in the southern Pacific Ocean. This meant adding refrigeration and water-cooling capabilities and changing the camouflage. The refit was performed at Shelburne but was never finished, having been cancelled due to the surrender of Japan. She was paid off on 16 November 1945 at Sydney, Nova Scotia and placed in reserve at Shelburne.
Postwar service
Sussexvale was sold to Marine Industries Ltd. after the war. However, with the increasing Soviet submarine threat, the Royal Canadian Navy sought to augment its anti-submarine forces. Sussexvale was reacquired and converted into a Prestonian-class frigate at Halifax. This meant a flush-decked appearance aft, with a larger bridge and taller funnel. Her hull forward was strengthened against ice and the quarterdeck was enclosed to contain two Squid anti-submarine mortars. On 1 January 1955, Sussexvale was assigned to the Second Canadian Escort Squadron of Pacific Command. She emerged from her conversion and was recommissioned on 18 March 1955 with the new pennant number 313. The frigate sailed for the west coast on 17 April arriving at Esquimalt in May.Sussexvale served with the Fourth Canadian Escort Squadron. She served as a training ship, having a deckhouse fitted midships to provide classrooms and mess facilities for officer cadets undergoing sea training. This deckhouse did not affect her combat capabilities. She remained in this role until being paid off 30 November 1966. In January 1960, Sussexvale and three other Prestonian-class ships made a tour of South American ports, visiting San Diego, Balboa, the Galapagos Islands, Callao and Valparaíso, Talara and Long Beach. Sussexvale was a member of the Fourth Canadian Escort Squadron based out of Esquimalt. In June 1960 the Fourth Canadian Escort Squadron performed a training tour of the Pacific, with stops at Yokohama, Japan, Midway Atoll and Pearl Harbor. They returned to Canada in August. From January to March 1961, Sussexvale, New Glasgow and Beacon Hill performed a training cruise to the South Pacific, visiting Hawaii, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia and Samoa. She was sold to Kennedy & Mitsui of Vancouver for breaking up in Japan in 1967.
References
Notes
Sources
Arbuckle, J. Graeme (1987). Badges of the Canadian Navy. Halifax, Nova Scotia: Nimbus Publishing. ISBN 0-920852-49-1.
Macpherson, Ken; Burgess, John. The ships of Canada's naval forces 1910–1981 : a complete pictorial history of Canadian warships. Collins: Toronto, 1981. ISBN 0-00-216856-1
Rohwer, Jürgen (2005). Chronology of the War at Sea 1939–1945: The Naval History of World War Two (Revised & Expanded ed.). Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1-59114-119-2. | vessel class | {
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HMCS Sussexvale was a River-class frigate that served with the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World War. She served primarily as a convoy escort in the Battle of the Atlantic. She was named for Sussex, New Brunswick. Her name was altered to prevent confusion with other Allied warships named Sussex. After the war she was converted to a Prestonian-class frigate and served until 1966. She was the last frigate launched by the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World War.Sussexvale was ordered as Valdorian on 1 February 1943 as part of the 1943–1944 River-class building program. She was laid down on 15 November 1943 by Davie Shipbuilding and Repairing Co. Ltd. at Lauzon, Quebec and launched 12 July 1944. At some point during 1944, her name was changed to Sussexvale. She was commissioned into the Royal Canadian Navy on 29 November 1944 at Quebec City.
Background
The River-class frigate was designed by William Reed of Smith's Dock Company of South Bank-on-Tees. Originally called a "twin-screw corvette", its purpose was to improve on the convoy escort classes in service with the Royal Navy at the time, including the Flower-class corvette. The first orders were placed by the Royal Navy in 1940 and the vessels were named for rivers in the United Kingdom, giving name to the class. In Canada they were named for towns and cities though they kept the same designation. The name "frigate" was suggested by Vice-Admiral Percy Nelles of the Royal Canadian Navy and was adopted later that year.Improvements over the corvette design included improved accommodation which was markedly better. The twin engines gave only three more knots of speed but extended the range of the ship to nearly double that of a corvette at 7,200 nautical miles (13,300 km) at 12 knots. Among other lessons applied to the design was an armament package better designed to combat U-boats including a twin 4-inch mount forward and 12-pounder aft. 15 Canadian frigates were initially fitted with a single 4-inch gun forward but with the exception of HMCS Valleyfield, they were all eventually upgraded to the double mount. For underwater targets, the River-class frigate was equipped with a Hedgehog anti-submarine mortar and depth charge rails aft and four side-mounted throwers.River-class frigates were the first Royal Canadian Navy warships to carry the 147B Sword horizontal fan echo sonar transmitter in addition to the irregular ASDIC. This allowed the ship to maintain contact with targets even while firing unless a target was struck. Improved radar and direction-finding equipment improved the RCN's ability to find and track enemy submarines over the previous classes.Canada originally ordered the construction of 33 frigates in October 1941. The design was too big for the shipyards on the Great Lakes so all the frigates built in Canada were built in dockyards along the west coast or along the St. Lawrence River. In all Canada ordered the construction of 60 frigates including ten for the Royal Navy that transferred two to the United States Navy.
Service history
After working up at Bermuda in January 1945, Sussexvale was assigned to escort group EG 28. She joined the group in Derry in March and spent the rest of the war in Europe patrolling the waters around the United Kingdom. From 14 March to 20 April, EG 28 was among the escort groups deployed in the English Channel. In May 1945, she returned to Canada to undergo a tropicalization refit in preparation for service in the southern Pacific Ocean. This meant adding refrigeration and water-cooling capabilities and changing the camouflage. The refit was performed at Shelburne but was never finished, having been cancelled due to the surrender of Japan. She was paid off on 16 November 1945 at Sydney, Nova Scotia and placed in reserve at Shelburne.
Postwar service
Sussexvale was sold to Marine Industries Ltd. after the war. However, with the increasing Soviet submarine threat, the Royal Canadian Navy sought to augment its anti-submarine forces. Sussexvale was reacquired and converted into a Prestonian-class frigate at Halifax. This meant a flush-decked appearance aft, with a larger bridge and taller funnel. Her hull forward was strengthened against ice and the quarterdeck was enclosed to contain two Squid anti-submarine mortars. On 1 January 1955, Sussexvale was assigned to the Second Canadian Escort Squadron of Pacific Command. She emerged from her conversion and was recommissioned on 18 March 1955 with the new pennant number 313. The frigate sailed for the west coast on 17 April arriving at Esquimalt in May.Sussexvale served with the Fourth Canadian Escort Squadron. She served as a training ship, having a deckhouse fitted midships to provide classrooms and mess facilities for officer cadets undergoing sea training. This deckhouse did not affect her combat capabilities. She remained in this role until being paid off 30 November 1966. In January 1960, Sussexvale and three other Prestonian-class ships made a tour of South American ports, visiting San Diego, Balboa, the Galapagos Islands, Callao and Valparaíso, Talara and Long Beach. Sussexvale was a member of the Fourth Canadian Escort Squadron based out of Esquimalt. In June 1960 the Fourth Canadian Escort Squadron performed a training tour of the Pacific, with stops at Yokohama, Japan, Midway Atoll and Pearl Harbor. They returned to Canada in August. From January to March 1961, Sussexvale, New Glasgow and Beacon Hill performed a training cruise to the South Pacific, visiting Hawaii, Fiji, New Zealand, Australia and Samoa. She was sold to Kennedy & Mitsui of Vancouver for breaking up in Japan in 1967.
References
Notes
Sources
Arbuckle, J. Graeme (1987). Badges of the Canadian Navy. Halifax, Nova Scotia: Nimbus Publishing. ISBN 0-920852-49-1.
Macpherson, Ken; Burgess, John. The ships of Canada's naval forces 1910–1981 : a complete pictorial history of Canadian warships. Collins: Toronto, 1981. ISBN 0-00-216856-1
Rohwer, Jürgen (2005). Chronology of the War at Sea 1939–1945: The Naval History of World War Two (Revised & Expanded ed.). Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1-59114-119-2. | country of registry | {
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"Canada"
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Rhosddu (Welsh: Rhos-ddu; Welsh pronunciation) is a suburb and community in Wrexham County Borough, Wales, covering the north-western parts of the city of Wrexham and comprises the wards of Grosvenor, Garden Village and Stansty.
At the 2011 Census, the population of the community was 6,840 and 11.8% of people aged 3+ spoke Welsh.
Administration
Rhosddu was formed as a new ecclesiastical parish by an Order in Council in 1886. The parish contained the townships of Acton, Bieston and Gourton (from the parish of Wrexham), the township of Borras Riffri (from the parish of Gresford), and the township of Stansty (from the parish of Gwersyllt). In 1972, Rhosddu reverted to the parish of Wrexham.
The area of Rhosddu was in the civil parish of Stansty, which was part of the old Wrexham Municipal Borough. The administrative structures of the Municipal Borough were abolished in 1974, under the terms of the Local Government Act 1972. Rhosddu was created as one of the communities of Wrexham Maelor after a 1985 boundary review, which brought four new communities into being within the town of Wrexham itself (Rhosddu, Offa, Caia Park, and Acton).
History
The name Rhosddu is formed on the Welsh words rhos, "moor" or "rush pasture", and ddu, "black". The name may derive from the presence of coal and peat below the poorly drained surface as evidenced by old field names in the neighbouring Stansty area which indicate similar features e.g. 'Tirodd Duon' (black lands). It is likely that the area was common land in Medieval times used by tenants of the manor as rough pasture for cattle grazing. Rhosddu Farm (also known as Walnut Tree Farm) was first recorded in 1762 in the possession of the Griffiths family and was located on the site of the Walnut Tree public house on New Road.The first housing developments in the Rhosddu area began from 1856 following the arrival of the railway and the location of associated goods and carriage sheds in the area. The population increased further as a result of the Wrexham and Action Colliery which opened in the late 1860s.St James' church was built in Cefn sandstone to designs by W. Turner of Wrexham. The foundation was laid on 30 September 1874 and it was opened for worship in January 1876, although it was not consecrated until 27 April 1886. The church is now a Grade II Listed building, being considered a good example of a late 19th-century church retaining many original features.Rhosddu School (originally known as Stansty Park Board School) opened in 1877 and moved into its current premises on Price's Lane in 1915.
Grosvenor Road Conservation Area is situated to the north west of the commercial city centre and incorporates Grosvenor Road, Grove Road and parts of Gerald Street, Regent Street, King Street, Grove Park Road, Rhosddu Road and part of the Coleg Cambria Campus.
Dissenters' Burying Ground
The Dissenters' Burying Ground on Rhosddu Road was originally a field of about one acre on land given to the Wrexham Nonconformists during the early 1600s by the Puritan Daniel Lloyd of Pen y Bryn Farm. The graveyard was probably laid out during the 1650s during the Interregnum period. By the mid-18th century, the graveyard was being used and maintained by the Baptist Church and, in 1788, an ongoing ownership dispute of the Ground was resolved allowing Presbyterians to be buried there upon payment of a fee to the Baptist Church. Hay was grown and sold to pay for a grave digger and other expenses. During the night of the Wrexham races, in the mid-1840s, all but one of the brass memorial plates were stolen from the tombs, thus destroying many family histories. The last burial took place in 1901. When the Ground was closed to new burials in 1888, it contained 27 family vaults, a number of brick graves and 920 private family earthen graves. The graveyard was later landscaped and is now a public park.
Many notable people are buried here including the great Puritan Morgan Llwyd (d.1659) and the ironmaster William Wilkinson (d.1808). Margaret Lloyd George unveiled a memorial to Morgan Llwyd in 1912.
Residents
John Godfrey Parry-Thomas, the engineer and motor-racing driver, was the son of the curate of Rhosddu and lived in the area during his childhood.
Sports
Wrexham A.F.C. played their home games in the 1881–82 and 1882–83 seasons at Rhosddu Recreation Ground (changing the club's name to Wrexham Athletic for one season), before moving back to the Racecourse Ground for the 1883–84 season, where they have remained.
Gallery
== References == | instance of | {
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"text": [
"suburb"
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Rhosddu (Welsh: Rhos-ddu; Welsh pronunciation) is a suburb and community in Wrexham County Borough, Wales, covering the north-western parts of the city of Wrexham and comprises the wards of Grosvenor, Garden Village and Stansty.
At the 2011 Census, the population of the community was 6,840 and 11.8% of people aged 3+ spoke Welsh.
Administration
Rhosddu was formed as a new ecclesiastical parish by an Order in Council in 1886. The parish contained the townships of Acton, Bieston and Gourton (from the parish of Wrexham), the township of Borras Riffri (from the parish of Gresford), and the township of Stansty (from the parish of Gwersyllt). In 1972, Rhosddu reverted to the parish of Wrexham.
The area of Rhosddu was in the civil parish of Stansty, which was part of the old Wrexham Municipal Borough. The administrative structures of the Municipal Borough were abolished in 1974, under the terms of the Local Government Act 1972. Rhosddu was created as one of the communities of Wrexham Maelor after a 1985 boundary review, which brought four new communities into being within the town of Wrexham itself (Rhosddu, Offa, Caia Park, and Acton).
History
The name Rhosddu is formed on the Welsh words rhos, "moor" or "rush pasture", and ddu, "black". The name may derive from the presence of coal and peat below the poorly drained surface as evidenced by old field names in the neighbouring Stansty area which indicate similar features e.g. 'Tirodd Duon' (black lands). It is likely that the area was common land in Medieval times used by tenants of the manor as rough pasture for cattle grazing. Rhosddu Farm (also known as Walnut Tree Farm) was first recorded in 1762 in the possession of the Griffiths family and was located on the site of the Walnut Tree public house on New Road.The first housing developments in the Rhosddu area began from 1856 following the arrival of the railway and the location of associated goods and carriage sheds in the area. The population increased further as a result of the Wrexham and Action Colliery which opened in the late 1860s.St James' church was built in Cefn sandstone to designs by W. Turner of Wrexham. The foundation was laid on 30 September 1874 and it was opened for worship in January 1876, although it was not consecrated until 27 April 1886. The church is now a Grade II Listed building, being considered a good example of a late 19th-century church retaining many original features.Rhosddu School (originally known as Stansty Park Board School) opened in 1877 and moved into its current premises on Price's Lane in 1915.
Grosvenor Road Conservation Area is situated to the north west of the commercial city centre and incorporates Grosvenor Road, Grove Road and parts of Gerald Street, Regent Street, King Street, Grove Park Road, Rhosddu Road and part of the Coleg Cambria Campus.
Dissenters' Burying Ground
The Dissenters' Burying Ground on Rhosddu Road was originally a field of about one acre on land given to the Wrexham Nonconformists during the early 1600s by the Puritan Daniel Lloyd of Pen y Bryn Farm. The graveyard was probably laid out during the 1650s during the Interregnum period. By the mid-18th century, the graveyard was being used and maintained by the Baptist Church and, in 1788, an ongoing ownership dispute of the Ground was resolved allowing Presbyterians to be buried there upon payment of a fee to the Baptist Church. Hay was grown and sold to pay for a grave digger and other expenses. During the night of the Wrexham races, in the mid-1840s, all but one of the brass memorial plates were stolen from the tombs, thus destroying many family histories. The last burial took place in 1901. When the Ground was closed to new burials in 1888, it contained 27 family vaults, a number of brick graves and 920 private family earthen graves. The graveyard was later landscaped and is now a public park.
Many notable people are buried here including the great Puritan Morgan Llwyd (d.1659) and the ironmaster William Wilkinson (d.1808). Margaret Lloyd George unveiled a memorial to Morgan Llwyd in 1912.
Residents
John Godfrey Parry-Thomas, the engineer and motor-racing driver, was the son of the curate of Rhosddu and lived in the area during his childhood.
Sports
Wrexham A.F.C. played their home games in the 1881–82 and 1882–83 seasons at Rhosddu Recreation Ground (changing the club's name to Wrexham Athletic for one season), before moving back to the Racecourse Ground for the 1883–84 season, where they have remained.
Gallery
== References == | located in the administrative territorial entity | {
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"text": [
"Wrexham County Borough"
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Rhosddu (Welsh: Rhos-ddu; Welsh pronunciation) is a suburb and community in Wrexham County Borough, Wales, covering the north-western parts of the city of Wrexham and comprises the wards of Grosvenor, Garden Village and Stansty.
At the 2011 Census, the population of the community was 6,840 and 11.8% of people aged 3+ spoke Welsh.
Administration
Rhosddu was formed as a new ecclesiastical parish by an Order in Council in 1886. The parish contained the townships of Acton, Bieston and Gourton (from the parish of Wrexham), the township of Borras Riffri (from the parish of Gresford), and the township of Stansty (from the parish of Gwersyllt). In 1972, Rhosddu reverted to the parish of Wrexham.
The area of Rhosddu was in the civil parish of Stansty, which was part of the old Wrexham Municipal Borough. The administrative structures of the Municipal Borough were abolished in 1974, under the terms of the Local Government Act 1972. Rhosddu was created as one of the communities of Wrexham Maelor after a 1985 boundary review, which brought four new communities into being within the town of Wrexham itself (Rhosddu, Offa, Caia Park, and Acton).
History
The name Rhosddu is formed on the Welsh words rhos, "moor" or "rush pasture", and ddu, "black". The name may derive from the presence of coal and peat below the poorly drained surface as evidenced by old field names in the neighbouring Stansty area which indicate similar features e.g. 'Tirodd Duon' (black lands). It is likely that the area was common land in Medieval times used by tenants of the manor as rough pasture for cattle grazing. Rhosddu Farm (also known as Walnut Tree Farm) was first recorded in 1762 in the possession of the Griffiths family and was located on the site of the Walnut Tree public house on New Road.The first housing developments in the Rhosddu area began from 1856 following the arrival of the railway and the location of associated goods and carriage sheds in the area. The population increased further as a result of the Wrexham and Action Colliery which opened in the late 1860s.St James' church was built in Cefn sandstone to designs by W. Turner of Wrexham. The foundation was laid on 30 September 1874 and it was opened for worship in January 1876, although it was not consecrated until 27 April 1886. The church is now a Grade II Listed building, being considered a good example of a late 19th-century church retaining many original features.Rhosddu School (originally known as Stansty Park Board School) opened in 1877 and moved into its current premises on Price's Lane in 1915.
Grosvenor Road Conservation Area is situated to the north west of the commercial city centre and incorporates Grosvenor Road, Grove Road and parts of Gerald Street, Regent Street, King Street, Grove Park Road, Rhosddu Road and part of the Coleg Cambria Campus.
Dissenters' Burying Ground
The Dissenters' Burying Ground on Rhosddu Road was originally a field of about one acre on land given to the Wrexham Nonconformists during the early 1600s by the Puritan Daniel Lloyd of Pen y Bryn Farm. The graveyard was probably laid out during the 1650s during the Interregnum period. By the mid-18th century, the graveyard was being used and maintained by the Baptist Church and, in 1788, an ongoing ownership dispute of the Ground was resolved allowing Presbyterians to be buried there upon payment of a fee to the Baptist Church. Hay was grown and sold to pay for a grave digger and other expenses. During the night of the Wrexham races, in the mid-1840s, all but one of the brass memorial plates were stolen from the tombs, thus destroying many family histories. The last burial took place in 1901. When the Ground was closed to new burials in 1888, it contained 27 family vaults, a number of brick graves and 920 private family earthen graves. The graveyard was later landscaped and is now a public park.
Many notable people are buried here including the great Puritan Morgan Llwyd (d.1659) and the ironmaster William Wilkinson (d.1808). Margaret Lloyd George unveiled a memorial to Morgan Llwyd in 1912.
Residents
John Godfrey Parry-Thomas, the engineer and motor-racing driver, was the son of the curate of Rhosddu and lived in the area during his childhood.
Sports
Wrexham A.F.C. played their home games in the 1881–82 and 1882–83 seasons at Rhosddu Recreation Ground (changing the club's name to Wrexham Athletic for one season), before moving back to the Racecourse Ground for the 1883–84 season, where they have remained.
Gallery
== References == | Commons category | {
"answer_start": [
0
],
"text": [
"Rhosddu"
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Rhosddu (Welsh: Rhos-ddu; Welsh pronunciation) is a suburb and community in Wrexham County Borough, Wales, covering the north-western parts of the city of Wrexham and comprises the wards of Grosvenor, Garden Village and Stansty.
At the 2011 Census, the population of the community was 6,840 and 11.8% of people aged 3+ spoke Welsh.
Administration
Rhosddu was formed as a new ecclesiastical parish by an Order in Council in 1886. The parish contained the townships of Acton, Bieston and Gourton (from the parish of Wrexham), the township of Borras Riffri (from the parish of Gresford), and the township of Stansty (from the parish of Gwersyllt). In 1972, Rhosddu reverted to the parish of Wrexham.
The area of Rhosddu was in the civil parish of Stansty, which was part of the old Wrexham Municipal Borough. The administrative structures of the Municipal Borough were abolished in 1974, under the terms of the Local Government Act 1972. Rhosddu was created as one of the communities of Wrexham Maelor after a 1985 boundary review, which brought four new communities into being within the town of Wrexham itself (Rhosddu, Offa, Caia Park, and Acton).
History
The name Rhosddu is formed on the Welsh words rhos, "moor" or "rush pasture", and ddu, "black". The name may derive from the presence of coal and peat below the poorly drained surface as evidenced by old field names in the neighbouring Stansty area which indicate similar features e.g. 'Tirodd Duon' (black lands). It is likely that the area was common land in Medieval times used by tenants of the manor as rough pasture for cattle grazing. Rhosddu Farm (also known as Walnut Tree Farm) was first recorded in 1762 in the possession of the Griffiths family and was located on the site of the Walnut Tree public house on New Road.The first housing developments in the Rhosddu area began from 1856 following the arrival of the railway and the location of associated goods and carriage sheds in the area. The population increased further as a result of the Wrexham and Action Colliery which opened in the late 1860s.St James' church was built in Cefn sandstone to designs by W. Turner of Wrexham. The foundation was laid on 30 September 1874 and it was opened for worship in January 1876, although it was not consecrated until 27 April 1886. The church is now a Grade II Listed building, being considered a good example of a late 19th-century church retaining many original features.Rhosddu School (originally known as Stansty Park Board School) opened in 1877 and moved into its current premises on Price's Lane in 1915.
Grosvenor Road Conservation Area is situated to the north west of the commercial city centre and incorporates Grosvenor Road, Grove Road and parts of Gerald Street, Regent Street, King Street, Grove Park Road, Rhosddu Road and part of the Coleg Cambria Campus.
Dissenters' Burying Ground
The Dissenters' Burying Ground on Rhosddu Road was originally a field of about one acre on land given to the Wrexham Nonconformists during the early 1600s by the Puritan Daniel Lloyd of Pen y Bryn Farm. The graveyard was probably laid out during the 1650s during the Interregnum period. By the mid-18th century, the graveyard was being used and maintained by the Baptist Church and, in 1788, an ongoing ownership dispute of the Ground was resolved allowing Presbyterians to be buried there upon payment of a fee to the Baptist Church. Hay was grown and sold to pay for a grave digger and other expenses. During the night of the Wrexham races, in the mid-1840s, all but one of the brass memorial plates were stolen from the tombs, thus destroying many family histories. The last burial took place in 1901. When the Ground was closed to new burials in 1888, it contained 27 family vaults, a number of brick graves and 920 private family earthen graves. The graveyard was later landscaped and is now a public park.
Many notable people are buried here including the great Puritan Morgan Llwyd (d.1659) and the ironmaster William Wilkinson (d.1808). Margaret Lloyd George unveiled a memorial to Morgan Llwyd in 1912.
Residents
John Godfrey Parry-Thomas, the engineer and motor-racing driver, was the son of the curate of Rhosddu and lived in the area during his childhood.
Sports
Wrexham A.F.C. played their home games in the 1881–82 and 1882–83 seasons at Rhosddu Recreation Ground (changing the club's name to Wrexham Athletic for one season), before moving back to the Racecourse Ground for the 1883–84 season, where they have remained.
Gallery
== References == | official name | {
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Sila Puafisi (born 15 April 1988) is a Tongan international rugby union player, currently playing for Northland in the Bunnings NPC. He previously played for Glasgow Warriors.
Career
He played for Tasman Mako where they won the 2013 ITM Cup Championship.He moved, in 2013, to Gloucester Rugby in the Aviva Premiership and was part of the squad that won the 2014–15 European Rugby Challenge Cup but was not used in the Final match against Edinburgh Rugby.
It was announced on 27 August 2015 that the prop had signed for Pro12 champions Glasgow Warriors on a one year deal.On 3 January 2017, Puafisi signs for French club CA Brive in the Top 14 from the 2017-18 season.He signed for La Rochelle for the 2018-19 season.In 2021 season he was back playing for the Karaka Rugby club in the Counties Manukau region of New Zealand.
International career
He made his international debut for Tonga in the 2011 IRB Pacific Nations Cup against Japan, losing at 28–27. He was called up to Tonga for the 2013 Autumn Internationals against Romania, France and Wales.
References
== External links == | country of citizenship | {
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Sila Puafisi (born 15 April 1988) is a Tongan international rugby union player, currently playing for Northland in the Bunnings NPC. He previously played for Glasgow Warriors.
Career
He played for Tasman Mako where they won the 2013 ITM Cup Championship.He moved, in 2013, to Gloucester Rugby in the Aviva Premiership and was part of the squad that won the 2014–15 European Rugby Challenge Cup but was not used in the Final match against Edinburgh Rugby.
It was announced on 27 August 2015 that the prop had signed for Pro12 champions Glasgow Warriors on a one year deal.On 3 January 2017, Puafisi signs for French club CA Brive in the Top 14 from the 2017-18 season.He signed for La Rochelle for the 2018-19 season.In 2021 season he was back playing for the Karaka Rugby club in the Counties Manukau region of New Zealand.
International career
He made his international debut for Tonga in the 2011 IRB Pacific Nations Cup against Japan, losing at 28–27. He was called up to Tonga for the 2013 Autumn Internationals against Romania, France and Wales.
References
== External links == | member of sports team | {
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Sila Puafisi (born 15 April 1988) is a Tongan international rugby union player, currently playing for Northland in the Bunnings NPC. He previously played for Glasgow Warriors.
Career
He played for Tasman Mako where they won the 2013 ITM Cup Championship.He moved, in 2013, to Gloucester Rugby in the Aviva Premiership and was part of the squad that won the 2014–15 European Rugby Challenge Cup but was not used in the Final match against Edinburgh Rugby.
It was announced on 27 August 2015 that the prop had signed for Pro12 champions Glasgow Warriors on a one year deal.On 3 January 2017, Puafisi signs for French club CA Brive in the Top 14 from the 2017-18 season.He signed for La Rochelle for the 2018-19 season.In 2021 season he was back playing for the Karaka Rugby club in the Counties Manukau region of New Zealand.
International career
He made his international debut for Tonga in the 2011 IRB Pacific Nations Cup against Japan, losing at 28–27. He was called up to Tonga for the 2013 Autumn Internationals against Romania, France and Wales.
References
== External links == | occupation | {
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Sila Puafisi (born 15 April 1988) is a Tongan international rugby union player, currently playing for Northland in the Bunnings NPC. He previously played for Glasgow Warriors.
Career
He played for Tasman Mako where they won the 2013 ITM Cup Championship.He moved, in 2013, to Gloucester Rugby in the Aviva Premiership and was part of the squad that won the 2014–15 European Rugby Challenge Cup but was not used in the Final match against Edinburgh Rugby.
It was announced on 27 August 2015 that the prop had signed for Pro12 champions Glasgow Warriors on a one year deal.On 3 January 2017, Puafisi signs for French club CA Brive in the Top 14 from the 2017-18 season.He signed for La Rochelle for the 2018-19 season.In 2021 season he was back playing for the Karaka Rugby club in the Counties Manukau region of New Zealand.
International career
He made his international debut for Tonga in the 2011 IRB Pacific Nations Cup against Japan, losing at 28–27. He was called up to Tonga for the 2013 Autumn Internationals against Romania, France and Wales.
References
== External links == | position played on team / speciality | {
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Sila Puafisi (born 15 April 1988) is a Tongan international rugby union player, currently playing for Northland in the Bunnings NPC. He previously played for Glasgow Warriors.
Career
He played for Tasman Mako where they won the 2013 ITM Cup Championship.He moved, in 2013, to Gloucester Rugby in the Aviva Premiership and was part of the squad that won the 2014–15 European Rugby Challenge Cup but was not used in the Final match against Edinburgh Rugby.
It was announced on 27 August 2015 that the prop had signed for Pro12 champions Glasgow Warriors on a one year deal.On 3 January 2017, Puafisi signs for French club CA Brive in the Top 14 from the 2017-18 season.He signed for La Rochelle for the 2018-19 season.In 2021 season he was back playing for the Karaka Rugby club in the Counties Manukau region of New Zealand.
International career
He made his international debut for Tonga in the 2011 IRB Pacific Nations Cup against Japan, losing at 28–27. He was called up to Tonga for the 2013 Autumn Internationals against Romania, France and Wales.
References
== External links == | sport | {
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Sila Puafisi (born 15 April 1988) is a Tongan international rugby union player, currently playing for Northland in the Bunnings NPC. He previously played for Glasgow Warriors.
Career
He played for Tasman Mako where they won the 2013 ITM Cup Championship.He moved, in 2013, to Gloucester Rugby in the Aviva Premiership and was part of the squad that won the 2014–15 European Rugby Challenge Cup but was not used in the Final match against Edinburgh Rugby.
It was announced on 27 August 2015 that the prop had signed for Pro12 champions Glasgow Warriors on a one year deal.On 3 January 2017, Puafisi signs for French club CA Brive in the Top 14 from the 2017-18 season.He signed for La Rochelle for the 2018-19 season.In 2021 season he was back playing for the Karaka Rugby club in the Counties Manukau region of New Zealand.
International career
He made his international debut for Tonga in the 2011 IRB Pacific Nations Cup against Japan, losing at 28–27. He was called up to Tonga for the 2013 Autumn Internationals against Romania, France and Wales.
References
== External links == | given name | {
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Sila Puafisi (born 15 April 1988) is a Tongan international rugby union player, currently playing for Northland in the Bunnings NPC. He previously played for Glasgow Warriors.
Career
He played for Tasman Mako where they won the 2013 ITM Cup Championship.He moved, in 2013, to Gloucester Rugby in the Aviva Premiership and was part of the squad that won the 2014–15 European Rugby Challenge Cup but was not used in the Final match against Edinburgh Rugby.
It was announced on 27 August 2015 that the prop had signed for Pro12 champions Glasgow Warriors on a one year deal.On 3 January 2017, Puafisi signs for French club CA Brive in the Top 14 from the 2017-18 season.He signed for La Rochelle for the 2018-19 season.In 2021 season he was back playing for the Karaka Rugby club in the Counties Manukau region of New Zealand.
International career
He made his international debut for Tonga in the 2011 IRB Pacific Nations Cup against Japan, losing at 28–27. He was called up to Tonga for the 2013 Autumn Internationals against Romania, France and Wales.
References
== External links == | country for sport | {
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Quentin Jarrod Iglehart-Summers (born June 15, 1987) is an American former track and field sprinter, who specialized in the 400-meter dash. He set a personal record of 45.46 seconds for the event in 2008. He was a gold medalist in the 4 × 400 metres relay at the IAAF World Indoor Championships in 2012. He also won a relay gold medal at the 2006 World Junior Championships in Athletics. At collegiate level he was a four-time national champion in the relay with the Baylor Bears.
Career
Born to William Summers and Cheryle Iglehart in San Antonio, Texas, he took up track while at James Madison High School. Under coach Keith Randle, in his final year he was 400 m runner-up at the state championships and won the event at the AAU Junior Olympic Games. He gained an athletic scholarship to attend Baylor University and ran track there with their Baylor Bears track and field team. In his first year there he was runner-up at the Big 12 Conference indoor championships and anchored the team to victory in the 4 × 400 metres relay. Outdoors, he won the Big 12 and NCAA Midwest regional relay titles before helping the team to third at the 2006 NCAA Division I Outdoor Track and Field Championships in a time of 3:02.93 minutes.Iglehart-Summers established himself as one of the top sprinters in his age group with a 400 m win at the USA Junior Outdoor Track & Field Championships. This led to his first international appearance at the 2006 World Junior Championships in Athletics in Beijing, where he was an individual semi-finalist and a gold medalist in the 4 × 400 m relay, alongside Bryshon Nellum, Chris Carter and Justin Oliver.In his second year at Baylor he won national relay titles at the 2007 NCAA Indoor Championships and 2007 NCAA Outdoor Championships, setting a school record of 3:00.04 in the process with Reggie Witherspoon, LeJerald Betters, and Kevin Mutai. Individually, he placed third in the 400 m at the NCAA indoor meet. Regionally, he won the NCAA Midwest title and was top three at the Big 12 outdoors and indoors. Iglehart-Summers third year saw him sweep the relay titles with Baylor at NCAA, NCAA Midwest and Big 12 conference level. He was runner-up at the Big 12 outdoor meet, setting a lifetime best of 45.46 seconds. His final year with the Baylor Bears brought another NCAA Indoor relay title, and third place in the relay at the NCAA outdoors.Iglehart-Summers ran at the 2008 United States Olympic Trials, reaching the semi-finals. He also made another international appearance at the 2008 NACAC Under-23 Championships, though the American relay team he anchored managed only fifth. He returned to national competition at the 2009 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships, but failed to progress beyond the heats. Following appearances at the 2010 national indoor and outdoor championships, he competed sparingly in 2011 before achieving his best national placing at the 2012 USA Indoor Track and Field Championships, finishing seventh in the 400 m final. This earned him his first and only senior national selection and he came away with a gold medal from the 2012 IAAF World Indoor Championships after running in the heats only of the men's 4 × 400 metres relay. He competed in mostly Texan meets before retiring two years later, with his final national appearance coming at the 2014 USA Indoor Track and Field Championships, where he placed eighth in the 400 m.
International competitions
National titles
NCAA Outdoor
4 × 400 m relay: 2007, 2008
NCAA Indoor
4 × 400 m relay: 2007, 2009
Personal records
Outdoor200 metres – 21.15 (2013)
400 metres – 45.46 (2008)
4 × 400 metres relay – 3:00.04 (2007)Indoor200 metres – 21.45 (2013)
400 metres – 46.07 (2007)
800 metres – 1:56.28 (2011)
4 × 400 metres relay – 3:04.24 (2007)
References
External links
Quentin Iglehart-Summers at World Athletics | place of birth | {
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Quentin Jarrod Iglehart-Summers (born June 15, 1987) is an American former track and field sprinter, who specialized in the 400-meter dash. He set a personal record of 45.46 seconds for the event in 2008. He was a gold medalist in the 4 × 400 metres relay at the IAAF World Indoor Championships in 2012. He also won a relay gold medal at the 2006 World Junior Championships in Athletics. At collegiate level he was a four-time national champion in the relay with the Baylor Bears.
Career
Born to William Summers and Cheryle Iglehart in San Antonio, Texas, he took up track while at James Madison High School. Under coach Keith Randle, in his final year he was 400 m runner-up at the state championships and won the event at the AAU Junior Olympic Games. He gained an athletic scholarship to attend Baylor University and ran track there with their Baylor Bears track and field team. In his first year there he was runner-up at the Big 12 Conference indoor championships and anchored the team to victory in the 4 × 400 metres relay. Outdoors, he won the Big 12 and NCAA Midwest regional relay titles before helping the team to third at the 2006 NCAA Division I Outdoor Track and Field Championships in a time of 3:02.93 minutes.Iglehart-Summers established himself as one of the top sprinters in his age group with a 400 m win at the USA Junior Outdoor Track & Field Championships. This led to his first international appearance at the 2006 World Junior Championships in Athletics in Beijing, where he was an individual semi-finalist and a gold medalist in the 4 × 400 m relay, alongside Bryshon Nellum, Chris Carter and Justin Oliver.In his second year at Baylor he won national relay titles at the 2007 NCAA Indoor Championships and 2007 NCAA Outdoor Championships, setting a school record of 3:00.04 in the process with Reggie Witherspoon, LeJerald Betters, and Kevin Mutai. Individually, he placed third in the 400 m at the NCAA indoor meet. Regionally, he won the NCAA Midwest title and was top three at the Big 12 outdoors and indoors. Iglehart-Summers third year saw him sweep the relay titles with Baylor at NCAA, NCAA Midwest and Big 12 conference level. He was runner-up at the Big 12 outdoor meet, setting a lifetime best of 45.46 seconds. His final year with the Baylor Bears brought another NCAA Indoor relay title, and third place in the relay at the NCAA outdoors.Iglehart-Summers ran at the 2008 United States Olympic Trials, reaching the semi-finals. He also made another international appearance at the 2008 NACAC Under-23 Championships, though the American relay team he anchored managed only fifth. He returned to national competition at the 2009 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships, but failed to progress beyond the heats. Following appearances at the 2010 national indoor and outdoor championships, he competed sparingly in 2011 before achieving his best national placing at the 2012 USA Indoor Track and Field Championships, finishing seventh in the 400 m final. This earned him his first and only senior national selection and he came away with a gold medal from the 2012 IAAF World Indoor Championships after running in the heats only of the men's 4 × 400 metres relay. He competed in mostly Texan meets before retiring two years later, with his final national appearance coming at the 2014 USA Indoor Track and Field Championships, where he placed eighth in the 400 m.
International competitions
National titles
NCAA Outdoor
4 × 400 m relay: 2007, 2008
NCAA Indoor
4 × 400 m relay: 2007, 2009
Personal records
Outdoor200 metres – 21.15 (2013)
400 metres – 45.46 (2008)
4 × 400 metres relay – 3:00.04 (2007)Indoor200 metres – 21.45 (2013)
400 metres – 46.07 (2007)
800 metres – 1:56.28 (2011)
4 × 400 metres relay – 3:04.24 (2007)
References
External links
Quentin Iglehart-Summers at World Athletics | given name | {
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The 2019 Loyola Marymount Lions men's soccer team represented Loyola Marymount University during the 2019 NCAA Division I men's soccer season and the 2019 West Coast Conference men's soccer season. The regular season began on August 30 and concluded on November 16. It was the program's 41st season fielding a men's varsity soccer team, and their 32nd season in the West Coast Conference. The 2019 season was Paul Krumpe's twenty-second year as head coach for the program.
Roster
As of December 12, 2019Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.
Schedule
Source:
== References == | head coach | {
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The 2019 Loyola Marymount Lions men's soccer team represented Loyola Marymount University during the 2019 NCAA Division I men's soccer season and the 2019 West Coast Conference men's soccer season. The regular season began on August 30 and concluded on November 16. It was the program's 41st season fielding a men's varsity soccer team, and their 32nd season in the West Coast Conference. The 2019 season was Paul Krumpe's twenty-second year as head coach for the program.
Roster
As of December 12, 2019Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.
Schedule
Source:
== References == | season of club or team | {
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The Annam limestone babbler (Gypsophila annamensis), also known as the khướu đá hoa in Vietnamese, is a species of bird in the family Pellorneidae.
It is native to the limestone hills of northern Indochina. It was formerly considered a subspecies of the variable limestone babbler (G. crispifrons) but a 2020 study recovered it as a distinct species.Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest and subtropical or tropical moist montane forest.
References
International Ornithological Congress (January 23, 2021). "IOC World Bird List". Retrieved January 23, 2021.
Collar, N. J. & Robson, C. 2007. Family Timaliidae (Babblers) pp. 70 – 291 in; del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A. & Christie, D.A. eds. Handbook of the Birds of the World, Vol. 12. Picathartes to Tits and Chickadees. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona. | taxon rank | {
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The Annam limestone babbler (Gypsophila annamensis), also known as the khướu đá hoa in Vietnamese, is a species of bird in the family Pellorneidae.
It is native to the limestone hills of northern Indochina. It was formerly considered a subspecies of the variable limestone babbler (G. crispifrons) but a 2020 study recovered it as a distinct species.Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest and subtropical or tropical moist montane forest.
References
International Ornithological Congress (January 23, 2021). "IOC World Bird List". Retrieved January 23, 2021.
Collar, N. J. & Robson, C. 2007. Family Timaliidae (Babblers) pp. 70 – 291 in; del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A. & Christie, D.A. eds. Handbook of the Birds of the World, Vol. 12. Picathartes to Tits and Chickadees. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona. | parent taxon | {
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29
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"text": [
"Gypsophila"
]
} |
The Annam limestone babbler (Gypsophila annamensis), also known as the khướu đá hoa in Vietnamese, is a species of bird in the family Pellorneidae.
It is native to the limestone hills of northern Indochina. It was formerly considered a subspecies of the variable limestone babbler (G. crispifrons) but a 2020 study recovered it as a distinct species.Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest and subtropical or tropical moist montane forest.
References
International Ornithological Congress (January 23, 2021). "IOC World Bird List". Retrieved January 23, 2021.
Collar, N. J. & Robson, C. 2007. Family Timaliidae (Babblers) pp. 70 – 291 in; del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A. & Christie, D.A. eds. Handbook of the Birds of the World, Vol. 12. Picathartes to Tits and Chickadees. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona. | taxon name | {
"answer_start": [
29
],
"text": [
"Gypsophila annamensis"
]
} |
Maria Aurora Couto (22 August 1937 – 14 January 2022) was an Indian writer and educator from Goa. She was best known for her book Goa: A Daughter's Story and for promoting literature and ideas within Goa and beyond. She lived in the north Goan village of Aldona. In addition to her books, she wrote for newspapers and magazine, and also taught English literature at Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi and Dhempe College of Panjim. She also helped start the DD Kosambi Festival of Ideas in 2008.
Couto was a recipient of the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian award in 2010.
Early life
Couto was born in Salcette in South Goa on 22 August 1937 to António Caetano Francisco (Chico) de Figueiredo and Maria Quitéria Filomena Borges. Her parents were both natives of the Velhas Conquistas district of Salcette. Both her paternal and maternal origins were from the Roman Catholic Brahmin community of the erstwhile Portuguese Goa and Damaon.She moved as a child to the neighbouring city of Dharwad, then in the Mysore state, and a centre of education and opportunity for Goans, with her parents and six siblings in an attempt to control her father's alcoholism. Following their father's abandonment of the family, the seven children were raised by their mother as a single parent.Couto studied at St Joseph's High School and later studied English literature at Karnatak University. In a later interview, she would later recollect that her growing up days were centered around her identity as an Indian, as a Goan, and as a Catholic. The college at the time had students from all over the then Mysore state. Some of her classmates at university included playwright Girish Karnad and author Shashi Deshpande. She later completed her PhD in literature studying religious humanism in the works of François Mauriac.
Career
Couto went on to teach English literature in colleges such as Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi and Dhempe College, Panaji and also contributed to periodicals in India and the United Kingdom.Couto's writing career began with her 1988 book about English author and literary critic, Graham Greene's works, Graham Greene: On the Frontier, Politics and Religion in the Novels. She had met the writer earlier during his visit to Goa in 1963. Her 2004 book, Goa: A Daughter's Story, covers the history of Goa from her perspective in addition to being an autobiography. In 2014, Couto released her book Filomena's Journeys, which delves into the life of her mother, Filomena Borges, covering "Goa’s dying Catholic elite" as it showed the shift of society and culture in Goa. In this third book she described her father's battles with alcoholism, life in the changing times, and growing up in multicultural India.As the Chairperson of the DD Kosambi Centenary Committee in 2008, Couto helped initiate the DD Kosambi Festival of Ideas, a lecture series sponsored by Goa's Department of Culture. She was also actively involved with Goa University.Couto also spoke about environmental issues and on various social justice causes pertaining to her home state of Goa. She spoke against the attacks and vandalism of Catholic crosses in Southern Goa in 2017. She was also a supporter of the Goenchi Mati Movement, a people's movement that protested the mining activities in Goa. Couto was amongst writers who asked the Sahitya Akademi to condemn actions including the M. M. Kalburgi killing and other violence in the country in 2015.Couto was awarded the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest Indian civilian award, by the Government of India in 2010.
Personal life and death
Couto married an Indian civil administrator of Goan origin, Alban Couto (Albano Francisco Couto) in 1961. She moved along with her husband spending time in different parts of India, as well as abroad, and later returned to shape the literature of the region in her later years.Her husband, belonged to the Indian Administrative Service. She met him in Mumbai and they had three children together. Due to the nature of his work, they would travel and stay across the country. They almost settled in Chennai, before finally choosing to live in Aldona, Goa, in his ancestral house. She enjoyed listening to South African jazz and was passionate about films, having started a film club when she was a teacher. Albano Couto died in June 2009.Maria Couto died of pneumonia on 14 January 2022 at the age of 84.
Works
The works of Couto include:
Couto, Maria (1988). Graham Greene: On the Frontier: Politics and Religion in the Novels. London: Macmillan. ISBN 9780333443460.
Couto, Maria (2004). Goa: A Daughter's Story. Penguin Books India. ISBN 978-0-14-303343-1.
Pereira, A. B. de Braganca (2008). Ethnography of Goa, Daman and Diu. Penguin UK. ISBN 978-93-5118-208-5. (a translation of Etnografia da India Portuguesa by A.B. Braganza Pereira from Portuguese)
Couto, Maria (2013). Filomena's Journeys: A Portrait of a Marriage, a Family & a Culture. Aleph Book Company. ISBN 978-93-82277-04-0.
References
External links
Maria Aurora Couto interviewed for Literally Goa on YouTube | place of death | {
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Maria Aurora Couto (22 August 1937 – 14 January 2022) was an Indian writer and educator from Goa. She was best known for her book Goa: A Daughter's Story and for promoting literature and ideas within Goa and beyond. She lived in the north Goan village of Aldona. In addition to her books, she wrote for newspapers and magazine, and also taught English literature at Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi and Dhempe College of Panjim. She also helped start the DD Kosambi Festival of Ideas in 2008.
Couto was a recipient of the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian award in 2010.
Early life
Couto was born in Salcette in South Goa on 22 August 1937 to António Caetano Francisco (Chico) de Figueiredo and Maria Quitéria Filomena Borges. Her parents were both natives of the Velhas Conquistas district of Salcette. Both her paternal and maternal origins were from the Roman Catholic Brahmin community of the erstwhile Portuguese Goa and Damaon.She moved as a child to the neighbouring city of Dharwad, then in the Mysore state, and a centre of education and opportunity for Goans, with her parents and six siblings in an attempt to control her father's alcoholism. Following their father's abandonment of the family, the seven children were raised by their mother as a single parent.Couto studied at St Joseph's High School and later studied English literature at Karnatak University. In a later interview, she would later recollect that her growing up days were centered around her identity as an Indian, as a Goan, and as a Catholic. The college at the time had students from all over the then Mysore state. Some of her classmates at university included playwright Girish Karnad and author Shashi Deshpande. She later completed her PhD in literature studying religious humanism in the works of François Mauriac.
Career
Couto went on to teach English literature in colleges such as Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi and Dhempe College, Panaji and also contributed to periodicals in India and the United Kingdom.Couto's writing career began with her 1988 book about English author and literary critic, Graham Greene's works, Graham Greene: On the Frontier, Politics and Religion in the Novels. She had met the writer earlier during his visit to Goa in 1963. Her 2004 book, Goa: A Daughter's Story, covers the history of Goa from her perspective in addition to being an autobiography. In 2014, Couto released her book Filomena's Journeys, which delves into the life of her mother, Filomena Borges, covering "Goa’s dying Catholic elite" as it showed the shift of society and culture in Goa. In this third book she described her father's battles with alcoholism, life in the changing times, and growing up in multicultural India.As the Chairperson of the DD Kosambi Centenary Committee in 2008, Couto helped initiate the DD Kosambi Festival of Ideas, a lecture series sponsored by Goa's Department of Culture. She was also actively involved with Goa University.Couto also spoke about environmental issues and on various social justice causes pertaining to her home state of Goa. She spoke against the attacks and vandalism of Catholic crosses in Southern Goa in 2017. She was also a supporter of the Goenchi Mati Movement, a people's movement that protested the mining activities in Goa. Couto was amongst writers who asked the Sahitya Akademi to condemn actions including the M. M. Kalburgi killing and other violence in the country in 2015.Couto was awarded the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest Indian civilian award, by the Government of India in 2010.
Personal life and death
Couto married an Indian civil administrator of Goan origin, Alban Couto (Albano Francisco Couto) in 1961. She moved along with her husband spending time in different parts of India, as well as abroad, and later returned to shape the literature of the region in her later years.Her husband, belonged to the Indian Administrative Service. She met him in Mumbai and they had three children together. Due to the nature of his work, they would travel and stay across the country. They almost settled in Chennai, before finally choosing to live in Aldona, Goa, in his ancestral house. She enjoyed listening to South African jazz and was passionate about films, having started a film club when she was a teacher. Albano Couto died in June 2009.Maria Couto died of pneumonia on 14 January 2022 at the age of 84.
Works
The works of Couto include:
Couto, Maria (1988). Graham Greene: On the Frontier: Politics and Religion in the Novels. London: Macmillan. ISBN 9780333443460.
Couto, Maria (2004). Goa: A Daughter's Story. Penguin Books India. ISBN 978-0-14-303343-1.
Pereira, A. B. de Braganca (2008). Ethnography of Goa, Daman and Diu. Penguin UK. ISBN 978-93-5118-208-5. (a translation of Etnografia da India Portuguesa by A.B. Braganza Pereira from Portuguese)
Couto, Maria (2013). Filomena's Journeys: A Portrait of a Marriage, a Family & a Culture. Aleph Book Company. ISBN 978-93-82277-04-0.
References
External links
Maria Aurora Couto interviewed for Literally Goa on YouTube | country of citizenship | {
"answer_start": [
61
],
"text": [
"India"
]
} |
Maria Aurora Couto (22 August 1937 – 14 January 2022) was an Indian writer and educator from Goa. She was best known for her book Goa: A Daughter's Story and for promoting literature and ideas within Goa and beyond. She lived in the north Goan village of Aldona. In addition to her books, she wrote for newspapers and magazine, and also taught English literature at Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi and Dhempe College of Panjim. She also helped start the DD Kosambi Festival of Ideas in 2008.
Couto was a recipient of the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian award in 2010.
Early life
Couto was born in Salcette in South Goa on 22 August 1937 to António Caetano Francisco (Chico) de Figueiredo and Maria Quitéria Filomena Borges. Her parents were both natives of the Velhas Conquistas district of Salcette. Both her paternal and maternal origins were from the Roman Catholic Brahmin community of the erstwhile Portuguese Goa and Damaon.She moved as a child to the neighbouring city of Dharwad, then in the Mysore state, and a centre of education and opportunity for Goans, with her parents and six siblings in an attempt to control her father's alcoholism. Following their father's abandonment of the family, the seven children were raised by their mother as a single parent.Couto studied at St Joseph's High School and later studied English literature at Karnatak University. In a later interview, she would later recollect that her growing up days were centered around her identity as an Indian, as a Goan, and as a Catholic. The college at the time had students from all over the then Mysore state. Some of her classmates at university included playwright Girish Karnad and author Shashi Deshpande. She later completed her PhD in literature studying religious humanism in the works of François Mauriac.
Career
Couto went on to teach English literature in colleges such as Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi and Dhempe College, Panaji and also contributed to periodicals in India and the United Kingdom.Couto's writing career began with her 1988 book about English author and literary critic, Graham Greene's works, Graham Greene: On the Frontier, Politics and Religion in the Novels. She had met the writer earlier during his visit to Goa in 1963. Her 2004 book, Goa: A Daughter's Story, covers the history of Goa from her perspective in addition to being an autobiography. In 2014, Couto released her book Filomena's Journeys, which delves into the life of her mother, Filomena Borges, covering "Goa’s dying Catholic elite" as it showed the shift of society and culture in Goa. In this third book she described her father's battles with alcoholism, life in the changing times, and growing up in multicultural India.As the Chairperson of the DD Kosambi Centenary Committee in 2008, Couto helped initiate the DD Kosambi Festival of Ideas, a lecture series sponsored by Goa's Department of Culture. She was also actively involved with Goa University.Couto also spoke about environmental issues and on various social justice causes pertaining to her home state of Goa. She spoke against the attacks and vandalism of Catholic crosses in Southern Goa in 2017. She was also a supporter of the Goenchi Mati Movement, a people's movement that protested the mining activities in Goa. Couto was amongst writers who asked the Sahitya Akademi to condemn actions including the M. M. Kalburgi killing and other violence in the country in 2015.Couto was awarded the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest Indian civilian award, by the Government of India in 2010.
Personal life and death
Couto married an Indian civil administrator of Goan origin, Alban Couto (Albano Francisco Couto) in 1961. She moved along with her husband spending time in different parts of India, as well as abroad, and later returned to shape the literature of the region in her later years.Her husband, belonged to the Indian Administrative Service. She met him in Mumbai and they had three children together. Due to the nature of his work, they would travel and stay across the country. They almost settled in Chennai, before finally choosing to live in Aldona, Goa, in his ancestral house. She enjoyed listening to South African jazz and was passionate about films, having started a film club when she was a teacher. Albano Couto died in June 2009.Maria Couto died of pneumonia on 14 January 2022 at the age of 84.
Works
The works of Couto include:
Couto, Maria (1988). Graham Greene: On the Frontier: Politics and Religion in the Novels. London: Macmillan. ISBN 9780333443460.
Couto, Maria (2004). Goa: A Daughter's Story. Penguin Books India. ISBN 978-0-14-303343-1.
Pereira, A. B. de Braganca (2008). Ethnography of Goa, Daman and Diu. Penguin UK. ISBN 978-93-5118-208-5. (a translation of Etnografia da India Portuguesa by A.B. Braganza Pereira from Portuguese)
Couto, Maria (2013). Filomena's Journeys: A Portrait of a Marriage, a Family & a Culture. Aleph Book Company. ISBN 978-93-82277-04-0.
References
External links
Maria Aurora Couto interviewed for Literally Goa on YouTube | instance of | {
"answer_start": [
1767
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"text": [
"human"
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Maria Aurora Couto (22 August 1937 – 14 January 2022) was an Indian writer and educator from Goa. She was best known for her book Goa: A Daughter's Story and for promoting literature and ideas within Goa and beyond. She lived in the north Goan village of Aldona. In addition to her books, she wrote for newspapers and magazine, and also taught English literature at Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi and Dhempe College of Panjim. She also helped start the DD Kosambi Festival of Ideas in 2008.
Couto was a recipient of the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian award in 2010.
Early life
Couto was born in Salcette in South Goa on 22 August 1937 to António Caetano Francisco (Chico) de Figueiredo and Maria Quitéria Filomena Borges. Her parents were both natives of the Velhas Conquistas district of Salcette. Both her paternal and maternal origins were from the Roman Catholic Brahmin community of the erstwhile Portuguese Goa and Damaon.She moved as a child to the neighbouring city of Dharwad, then in the Mysore state, and a centre of education and opportunity for Goans, with her parents and six siblings in an attempt to control her father's alcoholism. Following their father's abandonment of the family, the seven children were raised by their mother as a single parent.Couto studied at St Joseph's High School and later studied English literature at Karnatak University. In a later interview, she would later recollect that her growing up days were centered around her identity as an Indian, as a Goan, and as a Catholic. The college at the time had students from all over the then Mysore state. Some of her classmates at university included playwright Girish Karnad and author Shashi Deshpande. She later completed her PhD in literature studying religious humanism in the works of François Mauriac.
Career
Couto went on to teach English literature in colleges such as Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi and Dhempe College, Panaji and also contributed to periodicals in India and the United Kingdom.Couto's writing career began with her 1988 book about English author and literary critic, Graham Greene's works, Graham Greene: On the Frontier, Politics and Religion in the Novels. She had met the writer earlier during his visit to Goa in 1963. Her 2004 book, Goa: A Daughter's Story, covers the history of Goa from her perspective in addition to being an autobiography. In 2014, Couto released her book Filomena's Journeys, which delves into the life of her mother, Filomena Borges, covering "Goa’s dying Catholic elite" as it showed the shift of society and culture in Goa. In this third book she described her father's battles with alcoholism, life in the changing times, and growing up in multicultural India.As the Chairperson of the DD Kosambi Centenary Committee in 2008, Couto helped initiate the DD Kosambi Festival of Ideas, a lecture series sponsored by Goa's Department of Culture. She was also actively involved with Goa University.Couto also spoke about environmental issues and on various social justice causes pertaining to her home state of Goa. She spoke against the attacks and vandalism of Catholic crosses in Southern Goa in 2017. She was also a supporter of the Goenchi Mati Movement, a people's movement that protested the mining activities in Goa. Couto was amongst writers who asked the Sahitya Akademi to condemn actions including the M. M. Kalburgi killing and other violence in the country in 2015.Couto was awarded the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest Indian civilian award, by the Government of India in 2010.
Personal life and death
Couto married an Indian civil administrator of Goan origin, Alban Couto (Albano Francisco Couto) in 1961. She moved along with her husband spending time in different parts of India, as well as abroad, and later returned to shape the literature of the region in her later years.Her husband, belonged to the Indian Administrative Service. She met him in Mumbai and they had three children together. Due to the nature of his work, they would travel and stay across the country. They almost settled in Chennai, before finally choosing to live in Aldona, Goa, in his ancestral house. She enjoyed listening to South African jazz and was passionate about films, having started a film club when she was a teacher. Albano Couto died in June 2009.Maria Couto died of pneumonia on 14 January 2022 at the age of 84.
Works
The works of Couto include:
Couto, Maria (1988). Graham Greene: On the Frontier: Politics and Religion in the Novels. London: Macmillan. ISBN 9780333443460.
Couto, Maria (2004). Goa: A Daughter's Story. Penguin Books India. ISBN 978-0-14-303343-1.
Pereira, A. B. de Braganca (2008). Ethnography of Goa, Daman and Diu. Penguin UK. ISBN 978-93-5118-208-5. (a translation of Etnografia da India Portuguesa by A.B. Braganza Pereira from Portuguese)
Couto, Maria (2013). Filomena's Journeys: A Portrait of a Marriage, a Family & a Culture. Aleph Book Company. ISBN 978-93-82277-04-0.
References
External links
Maria Aurora Couto interviewed for Literally Goa on YouTube | occupation | {
"answer_start": [
68
],
"text": [
"writer"
]
} |
Maria Aurora Couto (22 August 1937 – 14 January 2022) was an Indian writer and educator from Goa. She was best known for her book Goa: A Daughter's Story and for promoting literature and ideas within Goa and beyond. She lived in the north Goan village of Aldona. In addition to her books, she wrote for newspapers and magazine, and also taught English literature at Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi and Dhempe College of Panjim. She also helped start the DD Kosambi Festival of Ideas in 2008.
Couto was a recipient of the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian award in 2010.
Early life
Couto was born in Salcette in South Goa on 22 August 1937 to António Caetano Francisco (Chico) de Figueiredo and Maria Quitéria Filomena Borges. Her parents were both natives of the Velhas Conquistas district of Salcette. Both her paternal and maternal origins were from the Roman Catholic Brahmin community of the erstwhile Portuguese Goa and Damaon.She moved as a child to the neighbouring city of Dharwad, then in the Mysore state, and a centre of education and opportunity for Goans, with her parents and six siblings in an attempt to control her father's alcoholism. Following their father's abandonment of the family, the seven children were raised by their mother as a single parent.Couto studied at St Joseph's High School and later studied English literature at Karnatak University. In a later interview, she would later recollect that her growing up days were centered around her identity as an Indian, as a Goan, and as a Catholic. The college at the time had students from all over the then Mysore state. Some of her classmates at university included playwright Girish Karnad and author Shashi Deshpande. She later completed her PhD in literature studying religious humanism in the works of François Mauriac.
Career
Couto went on to teach English literature in colleges such as Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi and Dhempe College, Panaji and also contributed to periodicals in India and the United Kingdom.Couto's writing career began with her 1988 book about English author and literary critic, Graham Greene's works, Graham Greene: On the Frontier, Politics and Religion in the Novels. She had met the writer earlier during his visit to Goa in 1963. Her 2004 book, Goa: A Daughter's Story, covers the history of Goa from her perspective in addition to being an autobiography. In 2014, Couto released her book Filomena's Journeys, which delves into the life of her mother, Filomena Borges, covering "Goa’s dying Catholic elite" as it showed the shift of society and culture in Goa. In this third book she described her father's battles with alcoholism, life in the changing times, and growing up in multicultural India.As the Chairperson of the DD Kosambi Centenary Committee in 2008, Couto helped initiate the DD Kosambi Festival of Ideas, a lecture series sponsored by Goa's Department of Culture. She was also actively involved with Goa University.Couto also spoke about environmental issues and on various social justice causes pertaining to her home state of Goa. She spoke against the attacks and vandalism of Catholic crosses in Southern Goa in 2017. She was also a supporter of the Goenchi Mati Movement, a people's movement that protested the mining activities in Goa. Couto was amongst writers who asked the Sahitya Akademi to condemn actions including the M. M. Kalburgi killing and other violence in the country in 2015.Couto was awarded the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest Indian civilian award, by the Government of India in 2010.
Personal life and death
Couto married an Indian civil administrator of Goan origin, Alban Couto (Albano Francisco Couto) in 1961. She moved along with her husband spending time in different parts of India, as well as abroad, and later returned to shape the literature of the region in her later years.Her husband, belonged to the Indian Administrative Service. She met him in Mumbai and they had three children together. Due to the nature of his work, they would travel and stay across the country. They almost settled in Chennai, before finally choosing to live in Aldona, Goa, in his ancestral house. She enjoyed listening to South African jazz and was passionate about films, having started a film club when she was a teacher. Albano Couto died in June 2009.Maria Couto died of pneumonia on 14 January 2022 at the age of 84.
Works
The works of Couto include:
Couto, Maria (1988). Graham Greene: On the Frontier: Politics and Religion in the Novels. London: Macmillan. ISBN 9780333443460.
Couto, Maria (2004). Goa: A Daughter's Story. Penguin Books India. ISBN 978-0-14-303343-1.
Pereira, A. B. de Braganca (2008). Ethnography of Goa, Daman and Diu. Penguin UK. ISBN 978-93-5118-208-5. (a translation of Etnografia da India Portuguesa by A.B. Braganza Pereira from Portuguese)
Couto, Maria (2013). Filomena's Journeys: A Portrait of a Marriage, a Family & a Culture. Aleph Book Company. ISBN 978-93-82277-04-0.
References
External links
Maria Aurora Couto interviewed for Literally Goa on YouTube | Commons category | {
"answer_start": [
0
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"text": [
"Maria Aurora Couto"
]
} |
Maria Aurora Couto (22 August 1937 – 14 January 2022) was an Indian writer and educator from Goa. She was best known for her book Goa: A Daughter's Story and for promoting literature and ideas within Goa and beyond. She lived in the north Goan village of Aldona. In addition to her books, she wrote for newspapers and magazine, and also taught English literature at Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi and Dhempe College of Panjim. She also helped start the DD Kosambi Festival of Ideas in 2008.
Couto was a recipient of the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian award in 2010.
Early life
Couto was born in Salcette in South Goa on 22 August 1937 to António Caetano Francisco (Chico) de Figueiredo and Maria Quitéria Filomena Borges. Her parents were both natives of the Velhas Conquistas district of Salcette. Both her paternal and maternal origins were from the Roman Catholic Brahmin community of the erstwhile Portuguese Goa and Damaon.She moved as a child to the neighbouring city of Dharwad, then in the Mysore state, and a centre of education and opportunity for Goans, with her parents and six siblings in an attempt to control her father's alcoholism. Following their father's abandonment of the family, the seven children were raised by their mother as a single parent.Couto studied at St Joseph's High School and later studied English literature at Karnatak University. In a later interview, she would later recollect that her growing up days were centered around her identity as an Indian, as a Goan, and as a Catholic. The college at the time had students from all over the then Mysore state. Some of her classmates at university included playwright Girish Karnad and author Shashi Deshpande. She later completed her PhD in literature studying religious humanism in the works of François Mauriac.
Career
Couto went on to teach English literature in colleges such as Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi and Dhempe College, Panaji and also contributed to periodicals in India and the United Kingdom.Couto's writing career began with her 1988 book about English author and literary critic, Graham Greene's works, Graham Greene: On the Frontier, Politics and Religion in the Novels. She had met the writer earlier during his visit to Goa in 1963. Her 2004 book, Goa: A Daughter's Story, covers the history of Goa from her perspective in addition to being an autobiography. In 2014, Couto released her book Filomena's Journeys, which delves into the life of her mother, Filomena Borges, covering "Goa’s dying Catholic elite" as it showed the shift of society and culture in Goa. In this third book she described her father's battles with alcoholism, life in the changing times, and growing up in multicultural India.As the Chairperson of the DD Kosambi Centenary Committee in 2008, Couto helped initiate the DD Kosambi Festival of Ideas, a lecture series sponsored by Goa's Department of Culture. She was also actively involved with Goa University.Couto also spoke about environmental issues and on various social justice causes pertaining to her home state of Goa. She spoke against the attacks and vandalism of Catholic crosses in Southern Goa in 2017. She was also a supporter of the Goenchi Mati Movement, a people's movement that protested the mining activities in Goa. Couto was amongst writers who asked the Sahitya Akademi to condemn actions including the M. M. Kalburgi killing and other violence in the country in 2015.Couto was awarded the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest Indian civilian award, by the Government of India in 2010.
Personal life and death
Couto married an Indian civil administrator of Goan origin, Alban Couto (Albano Francisco Couto) in 1961. She moved along with her husband spending time in different parts of India, as well as abroad, and later returned to shape the literature of the region in her later years.Her husband, belonged to the Indian Administrative Service. She met him in Mumbai and they had three children together. Due to the nature of his work, they would travel and stay across the country. They almost settled in Chennai, before finally choosing to live in Aldona, Goa, in his ancestral house. She enjoyed listening to South African jazz and was passionate about films, having started a film club when she was a teacher. Albano Couto died in June 2009.Maria Couto died of pneumonia on 14 January 2022 at the age of 84.
Works
The works of Couto include:
Couto, Maria (1988). Graham Greene: On the Frontier: Politics and Religion in the Novels. London: Macmillan. ISBN 9780333443460.
Couto, Maria (2004). Goa: A Daughter's Story. Penguin Books India. ISBN 978-0-14-303343-1.
Pereira, A. B. de Braganca (2008). Ethnography of Goa, Daman and Diu. Penguin UK. ISBN 978-93-5118-208-5. (a translation of Etnografia da India Portuguesa by A.B. Braganza Pereira from Portuguese)
Couto, Maria (2013). Filomena's Journeys: A Portrait of a Marriage, a Family & a Culture. Aleph Book Company. ISBN 978-93-82277-04-0.
References
External links
Maria Aurora Couto interviewed for Literally Goa on YouTube | family name | {
"answer_start": [
13
],
"text": [
"Couto"
]
} |
Maria Aurora Couto (22 August 1937 – 14 January 2022) was an Indian writer and educator from Goa. She was best known for her book Goa: A Daughter's Story and for promoting literature and ideas within Goa and beyond. She lived in the north Goan village of Aldona. In addition to her books, she wrote for newspapers and magazine, and also taught English literature at Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi and Dhempe College of Panjim. She also helped start the DD Kosambi Festival of Ideas in 2008.
Couto was a recipient of the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian award in 2010.
Early life
Couto was born in Salcette in South Goa on 22 August 1937 to António Caetano Francisco (Chico) de Figueiredo and Maria Quitéria Filomena Borges. Her parents were both natives of the Velhas Conquistas district of Salcette. Both her paternal and maternal origins were from the Roman Catholic Brahmin community of the erstwhile Portuguese Goa and Damaon.She moved as a child to the neighbouring city of Dharwad, then in the Mysore state, and a centre of education and opportunity for Goans, with her parents and six siblings in an attempt to control her father's alcoholism. Following their father's abandonment of the family, the seven children were raised by their mother as a single parent.Couto studied at St Joseph's High School and later studied English literature at Karnatak University. In a later interview, she would later recollect that her growing up days were centered around her identity as an Indian, as a Goan, and as a Catholic. The college at the time had students from all over the then Mysore state. Some of her classmates at university included playwright Girish Karnad and author Shashi Deshpande. She later completed her PhD in literature studying religious humanism in the works of François Mauriac.
Career
Couto went on to teach English literature in colleges such as Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi and Dhempe College, Panaji and also contributed to periodicals in India and the United Kingdom.Couto's writing career began with her 1988 book about English author and literary critic, Graham Greene's works, Graham Greene: On the Frontier, Politics and Religion in the Novels. She had met the writer earlier during his visit to Goa in 1963. Her 2004 book, Goa: A Daughter's Story, covers the history of Goa from her perspective in addition to being an autobiography. In 2014, Couto released her book Filomena's Journeys, which delves into the life of her mother, Filomena Borges, covering "Goa’s dying Catholic elite" as it showed the shift of society and culture in Goa. In this third book she described her father's battles with alcoholism, life in the changing times, and growing up in multicultural India.As the Chairperson of the DD Kosambi Centenary Committee in 2008, Couto helped initiate the DD Kosambi Festival of Ideas, a lecture series sponsored by Goa's Department of Culture. She was also actively involved with Goa University.Couto also spoke about environmental issues and on various social justice causes pertaining to her home state of Goa. She spoke against the attacks and vandalism of Catholic crosses in Southern Goa in 2017. She was also a supporter of the Goenchi Mati Movement, a people's movement that protested the mining activities in Goa. Couto was amongst writers who asked the Sahitya Akademi to condemn actions including the M. M. Kalburgi killing and other violence in the country in 2015.Couto was awarded the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest Indian civilian award, by the Government of India in 2010.
Personal life and death
Couto married an Indian civil administrator of Goan origin, Alban Couto (Albano Francisco Couto) in 1961. She moved along with her husband spending time in different parts of India, as well as abroad, and later returned to shape the literature of the region in her later years.Her husband, belonged to the Indian Administrative Service. She met him in Mumbai and they had three children together. Due to the nature of his work, they would travel and stay across the country. They almost settled in Chennai, before finally choosing to live in Aldona, Goa, in his ancestral house. She enjoyed listening to South African jazz and was passionate about films, having started a film club when she was a teacher. Albano Couto died in June 2009.Maria Couto died of pneumonia on 14 January 2022 at the age of 84.
Works
The works of Couto include:
Couto, Maria (1988). Graham Greene: On the Frontier: Politics and Religion in the Novels. London: Macmillan. ISBN 9780333443460.
Couto, Maria (2004). Goa: A Daughter's Story. Penguin Books India. ISBN 978-0-14-303343-1.
Pereira, A. B. de Braganca (2008). Ethnography of Goa, Daman and Diu. Penguin UK. ISBN 978-93-5118-208-5. (a translation of Etnografia da India Portuguesa by A.B. Braganza Pereira from Portuguese)
Couto, Maria (2013). Filomena's Journeys: A Portrait of a Marriage, a Family & a Culture. Aleph Book Company. ISBN 978-93-82277-04-0.
References
External links
Maria Aurora Couto interviewed for Literally Goa on YouTube | given name | {
"answer_start": [
0
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"text": [
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The enzyme 3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine reductive deaminase (EC 4.3.1.22, reductive deaminase, DOPA-reductive deaminase, DOPARDA; systematic name 3,4-dihydroxy-L-phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (3,4-dihydroxyphenylpropanoate-forming)) catalyses the following chemical reaction
L-dopa + 2 NADH
⇌
{\displaystyle \rightleftharpoons }
3,4-dihydroxyphenylpropanoate + 2 NAD+ + NH3This enzyme participates in L-phenylalanine catabolism in the anaerobic phototrophic bacterium Rhodobacter sphaeroides OU5.
References
External links
3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine+reductive+deaminase at the U.S. National Library of Medicine Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) | subclass of | {
"answer_start": [
182
],
"text": [
"lyase"
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The enzyme 3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine reductive deaminase (EC 4.3.1.22, reductive deaminase, DOPA-reductive deaminase, DOPARDA; systematic name 3,4-dihydroxy-L-phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (3,4-dihydroxyphenylpropanoate-forming)) catalyses the following chemical reaction
L-dopa + 2 NADH
⇌
{\displaystyle \rightleftharpoons }
3,4-dihydroxyphenylpropanoate + 2 NAD+ + NH3This enzyme participates in L-phenylalanine catabolism in the anaerobic phototrophic bacterium Rhodobacter sphaeroides OU5.
References
External links
3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine+reductive+deaminase at the U.S. National Library of Medicine Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) | EC enzyme number | {
"answer_start": [
62
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"text": [
"4.3.1.22"
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Moehadji Widjaja (1930/1931 – 15 April 1985) was an Indonesian military officer and politician who served as Mayor of Surabaya between 1979 and 1984.
Career
Widjaja held a rank of colonel in the Indonesian Military Police Corps.Before becoming the mayor of Surabaya, Widjaja served as chairman of the Malang city council. He was sworn in as Mayor on 27 January 1979. Under his own admission, there was not a lot of physical development within the city in the first two years of his tenure, partly due to lack of funding in the municipal budget. For a number of development projects of the villages within the city's boundaries, funding was provided by both the municipal government and local contributions. He was replaced by Poernomo Kasidi on 20 June 1984.He died in his Surabaya home on 15 April 1985 from a heart attack. He was buried at the 10 November 1945 Heroes' Cemetery in Surabaya.
== References == | Commons category | {
"answer_start": [
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Witkowice [vitkɔˈvit͡sɛ] is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Kaźmierz, within Szamotuły County, Greater Poland Voivodeship, in west-central Poland.
== References == | country | {
"answer_start": [
121
],
"text": [
"Poland"
]
} |
Witkowice [vitkɔˈvit͡sɛ] is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Kaźmierz, within Szamotuły County, Greater Poland Voivodeship, in west-central Poland.
== References == | located in the administrative territorial entity | {
"answer_start": [
72
],
"text": [
"Gmina Kaźmierz"
]
} |
A nursery and workers camp was established by the Forests Commission Victoria (FCV) in 1949 at Olsens Bridge at the head of the Morwell River, which is just east of Boolarra in Victoria. The nursery was established to grow mountain ash seedlings for the Strzelecki Ranges reforestation scheme.The scheme, which began in the early 1930s, ran quietly and successfully for nearly 60 years and is believed to have been the largest and most sustained reforestation project of its type in Australia. The FCV workers camp was later to become the HM Morwell River Prison in May 1961, where up to 80 inmates worked in the nursery and planted seedlings across the Strzeleckis under the guidance of FCV employees.The Prison was a "Minimum Security" facility and escapes occurred in 1962, 1967 and 1968.
Reputation has it that prisoners often secretly made their way to the Boolarra Hotel, and even as far as Morwell Shopping Centre. It's also rumoured the inmates brewed moonshine in the nearby bush..Guards were, at times, not above joining prisoners in their illicit meals. On at least one occasion in 1968, staff and inmates at Morwell River Camp stole a number of sheep from a neighbour’s paddock. This misdemeanour was taken very seriously and resulted in a prosecution by the Forests Commission.Probably its most notable inmates were media commentator Derryn Hinch in 1987, followed by prominent football umpire Harry Beitzel in 1994.
The nursery was run separately by the Forests Commission, and at it height in the mid-1970s produced in excess of one million seedlings each year.However an internal review of the Department‘s extensive nursery operations in 1991 recommended the closure of Olsens Bridge, which ceased soon after. Seedlings were then sourced from HM Won Wron Prison nursery near Yarram.The Morwell River Prison closed in 1997 and the remaining inmates transferred to a newly built Fulham Correctional Centre near Sale.
The prison complex was then used briefly, and unsuccessfully, as a school adventure camp but the site deteriorated quickly and became overgrown with blackberries and scrub, so that by 2006 only a few dilapidated buildings and bare concrete slabs remained visible. The land was sold in 2008.
== References == | country | {
"answer_start": [
483
],
"text": [
"Australia"
]
} |
A nursery and workers camp was established by the Forests Commission Victoria (FCV) in 1949 at Olsens Bridge at the head of the Morwell River, which is just east of Boolarra in Victoria. The nursery was established to grow mountain ash seedlings for the Strzelecki Ranges reforestation scheme.The scheme, which began in the early 1930s, ran quietly and successfully for nearly 60 years and is believed to have been the largest and most sustained reforestation project of its type in Australia. The FCV workers camp was later to become the HM Morwell River Prison in May 1961, where up to 80 inmates worked in the nursery and planted seedlings across the Strzeleckis under the guidance of FCV employees.The Prison was a "Minimum Security" facility and escapes occurred in 1962, 1967 and 1968.
Reputation has it that prisoners often secretly made their way to the Boolarra Hotel, and even as far as Morwell Shopping Centre. It's also rumoured the inmates brewed moonshine in the nearby bush..Guards were, at times, not above joining prisoners in their illicit meals. On at least one occasion in 1968, staff and inmates at Morwell River Camp stole a number of sheep from a neighbour’s paddock. This misdemeanour was taken very seriously and resulted in a prosecution by the Forests Commission.Probably its most notable inmates were media commentator Derryn Hinch in 1987, followed by prominent football umpire Harry Beitzel in 1994.
The nursery was run separately by the Forests Commission, and at it height in the mid-1970s produced in excess of one million seedlings each year.However an internal review of the Department‘s extensive nursery operations in 1991 recommended the closure of Olsens Bridge, which ceased soon after. Seedlings were then sourced from HM Won Wron Prison nursery near Yarram.The Morwell River Prison closed in 1997 and the remaining inmates transferred to a newly built Fulham Correctional Centre near Sale.
The prison complex was then used briefly, and unsuccessfully, as a school adventure camp but the site deteriorated quickly and became overgrown with blackberries and scrub, so that by 2006 only a few dilapidated buildings and bare concrete slabs remained visible. The land was sold in 2008.
== References == | instance of | {
"answer_start": [
816
],
"text": [
"prison"
]
} |
A nursery and workers camp was established by the Forests Commission Victoria (FCV) in 1949 at Olsens Bridge at the head of the Morwell River, which is just east of Boolarra in Victoria. The nursery was established to grow mountain ash seedlings for the Strzelecki Ranges reforestation scheme.The scheme, which began in the early 1930s, ran quietly and successfully for nearly 60 years and is believed to have been the largest and most sustained reforestation project of its type in Australia. The FCV workers camp was later to become the HM Morwell River Prison in May 1961, where up to 80 inmates worked in the nursery and planted seedlings across the Strzeleckis under the guidance of FCV employees.The Prison was a "Minimum Security" facility and escapes occurred in 1962, 1967 and 1968.
Reputation has it that prisoners often secretly made their way to the Boolarra Hotel, and even as far as Morwell Shopping Centre. It's also rumoured the inmates brewed moonshine in the nearby bush..Guards were, at times, not above joining prisoners in their illicit meals. On at least one occasion in 1968, staff and inmates at Morwell River Camp stole a number of sheep from a neighbour’s paddock. This misdemeanour was taken very seriously and resulted in a prosecution by the Forests Commission.Probably its most notable inmates were media commentator Derryn Hinch in 1987, followed by prominent football umpire Harry Beitzel in 1994.
The nursery was run separately by the Forests Commission, and at it height in the mid-1970s produced in excess of one million seedlings each year.However an internal review of the Department‘s extensive nursery operations in 1991 recommended the closure of Olsens Bridge, which ceased soon after. Seedlings were then sourced from HM Won Wron Prison nursery near Yarram.The Morwell River Prison closed in 1997 and the remaining inmates transferred to a newly built Fulham Correctional Centre near Sale.
The prison complex was then used briefly, and unsuccessfully, as a school adventure camp but the site deteriorated quickly and became overgrown with blackberries and scrub, so that by 2006 only a few dilapidated buildings and bare concrete slabs remained visible. The land was sold in 2008.
== References == | located in the administrative territorial entity | {
"answer_start": [
69
],
"text": [
"Victoria"
]
} |
Ira D. Gruber (born January 6, 1934) is an American author, bibliographer, and military historian of the American Revolution.
Personal life
Ira D. Gruber was born January 6, 1934, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and grew up in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. He attended Duke University and served in the United States Navy Reserve. From 1955-1957 he held the title of crypto security officer on the USS Wiltsie.
Career
Gruber became a professor at Duke after earning his Ph.D. in 1961. He later held the positions of fellow at the Institute of Early American History and Culture, assistant professor of history at Occidental College, and Harris Masterson, Jr. Professor -- and later (from 2009 on) Professor Emeritus -- of History at Rice University.During his long teaching career, Gruber published several works on the theme of American military history, specifically regarding the American Revolution. Books and the British Army in the Age of the American Revolution examines the books read by military officers during the revolution and how these books may have influenced their techniques and decisions. Another book, The Howe Brothers and the American Revolution, discusses the failure of the Howe Brothers to restore the British government in America.
Awards
1974 and 2001 George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching, Rice University
1998 Edwin H. Simmons Award given by Society for Military History
2013 Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement given by Society for Military History
Works
Gruber, Ira D. (2010). Books and the British Army in the Age of the American Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 9780807833780. OCLC 676697361.
Gruber, Ira D. (1975). The Howe Brothers and the American Revolution. New York: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0393007561. OCLC 333567.
Gruber, Ira D. (1998). John Peebles' American war : the diary of a Scottish grenadier, 1776-1782. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books. ISBN 0811708810. OCLC 39782957.
Doughty, Robert A.; Gruber, Ira D. (1996). Warfare in the Western World: Military Operations. Lexington: D.C. Heath, cop. ISBN 0669209392. OCLC 469055793.
Moten, Matthew, ed. (2011). "1". Between War and Peace: How America Ends its Wars. New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-1439194614. OCLC 555638109.
Heller, Charles E.; Stofft, William A., eds. (1986). "1". America's First Battles 1776-1965. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 0700602771. OCLC 13425151.
Hagan, Kenneth J.; Roberts, William R., eds. (1986). "2". Against All Enemies: Interpretations of American Military History from Colonial Times to Present. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Inc. ISBN 0313211973. OCLC 12342367.
References
External links
Ira Gruber Academic Career Papers
Review of John Peebles' American War | place of birth | {
"answer_start": [
184
],
"text": [
"Philadelphia"
]
} |
Ira D. Gruber (born January 6, 1934) is an American author, bibliographer, and military historian of the American Revolution.
Personal life
Ira D. Gruber was born January 6, 1934, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and grew up in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. He attended Duke University and served in the United States Navy Reserve. From 1955-1957 he held the title of crypto security officer on the USS Wiltsie.
Career
Gruber became a professor at Duke after earning his Ph.D. in 1961. He later held the positions of fellow at the Institute of Early American History and Culture, assistant professor of history at Occidental College, and Harris Masterson, Jr. Professor -- and later (from 2009 on) Professor Emeritus -- of History at Rice University.During his long teaching career, Gruber published several works on the theme of American military history, specifically regarding the American Revolution. Books and the British Army in the Age of the American Revolution examines the books read by military officers during the revolution and how these books may have influenced their techniques and decisions. Another book, The Howe Brothers and the American Revolution, discusses the failure of the Howe Brothers to restore the British government in America.
Awards
1974 and 2001 George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching, Rice University
1998 Edwin H. Simmons Award given by Society for Military History
2013 Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement given by Society for Military History
Works
Gruber, Ira D. (2010). Books and the British Army in the Age of the American Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 9780807833780. OCLC 676697361.
Gruber, Ira D. (1975). The Howe Brothers and the American Revolution. New York: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0393007561. OCLC 333567.
Gruber, Ira D. (1998). John Peebles' American war : the diary of a Scottish grenadier, 1776-1782. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books. ISBN 0811708810. OCLC 39782957.
Doughty, Robert A.; Gruber, Ira D. (1996). Warfare in the Western World: Military Operations. Lexington: D.C. Heath, cop. ISBN 0669209392. OCLC 469055793.
Moten, Matthew, ed. (2011). "1". Between War and Peace: How America Ends its Wars. New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-1439194614. OCLC 555638109.
Heller, Charles E.; Stofft, William A., eds. (1986). "1". America's First Battles 1776-1965. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 0700602771. OCLC 13425151.
Hagan, Kenneth J.; Roberts, William R., eds. (1986). "2". Against All Enemies: Interpretations of American Military History from Colonial Times to Present. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Inc. ISBN 0313211973. OCLC 12342367.
References
External links
Ira Gruber Academic Career Papers
Review of John Peebles' American War | educated at | {
"answer_start": [
263
],
"text": [
"Duke University"
]
} |
Ira D. Gruber (born January 6, 1934) is an American author, bibliographer, and military historian of the American Revolution.
Personal life
Ira D. Gruber was born January 6, 1934, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and grew up in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. He attended Duke University and served in the United States Navy Reserve. From 1955-1957 he held the title of crypto security officer on the USS Wiltsie.
Career
Gruber became a professor at Duke after earning his Ph.D. in 1961. He later held the positions of fellow at the Institute of Early American History and Culture, assistant professor of history at Occidental College, and Harris Masterson, Jr. Professor -- and later (from 2009 on) Professor Emeritus -- of History at Rice University.During his long teaching career, Gruber published several works on the theme of American military history, specifically regarding the American Revolution. Books and the British Army in the Age of the American Revolution examines the books read by military officers during the revolution and how these books may have influenced their techniques and decisions. Another book, The Howe Brothers and the American Revolution, discusses the failure of the Howe Brothers to restore the British government in America.
Awards
1974 and 2001 George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching, Rice University
1998 Edwin H. Simmons Award given by Society for Military History
2013 Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement given by Society for Military History
Works
Gruber, Ira D. (2010). Books and the British Army in the Age of the American Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 9780807833780. OCLC 676697361.
Gruber, Ira D. (1975). The Howe Brothers and the American Revolution. New York: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0393007561. OCLC 333567.
Gruber, Ira D. (1998). John Peebles' American war : the diary of a Scottish grenadier, 1776-1782. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books. ISBN 0811708810. OCLC 39782957.
Doughty, Robert A.; Gruber, Ira D. (1996). Warfare in the Western World: Military Operations. Lexington: D.C. Heath, cop. ISBN 0669209392. OCLC 469055793.
Moten, Matthew, ed. (2011). "1". Between War and Peace: How America Ends its Wars. New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-1439194614. OCLC 555638109.
Heller, Charles E.; Stofft, William A., eds. (1986). "1". America's First Battles 1776-1965. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 0700602771. OCLC 13425151.
Hagan, Kenneth J.; Roberts, William R., eds. (1986). "2". Against All Enemies: Interpretations of American Military History from Colonial Times to Present. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Inc. ISBN 0313211973. OCLC 12342367.
References
External links
Ira Gruber Academic Career Papers
Review of John Peebles' American War | occupation | {
"answer_start": [
79
],
"text": [
"military historian"
]
} |
Ira D. Gruber (born January 6, 1934) is an American author, bibliographer, and military historian of the American Revolution.
Personal life
Ira D. Gruber was born January 6, 1934, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and grew up in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. He attended Duke University and served in the United States Navy Reserve. From 1955-1957 he held the title of crypto security officer on the USS Wiltsie.
Career
Gruber became a professor at Duke after earning his Ph.D. in 1961. He later held the positions of fellow at the Institute of Early American History and Culture, assistant professor of history at Occidental College, and Harris Masterson, Jr. Professor -- and later (from 2009 on) Professor Emeritus -- of History at Rice University.During his long teaching career, Gruber published several works on the theme of American military history, specifically regarding the American Revolution. Books and the British Army in the Age of the American Revolution examines the books read by military officers during the revolution and how these books may have influenced their techniques and decisions. Another book, The Howe Brothers and the American Revolution, discusses the failure of the Howe Brothers to restore the British government in America.
Awards
1974 and 2001 George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching, Rice University
1998 Edwin H. Simmons Award given by Society for Military History
2013 Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement given by Society for Military History
Works
Gruber, Ira D. (2010). Books and the British Army in the Age of the American Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 9780807833780. OCLC 676697361.
Gruber, Ira D. (1975). The Howe Brothers and the American Revolution. New York: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0393007561. OCLC 333567.
Gruber, Ira D. (1998). John Peebles' American war : the diary of a Scottish grenadier, 1776-1782. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books. ISBN 0811708810. OCLC 39782957.
Doughty, Robert A.; Gruber, Ira D. (1996). Warfare in the Western World: Military Operations. Lexington: D.C. Heath, cop. ISBN 0669209392. OCLC 469055793.
Moten, Matthew, ed. (2011). "1". Between War and Peace: How America Ends its Wars. New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-1439194614. OCLC 555638109.
Heller, Charles E.; Stofft, William A., eds. (1986). "1". America's First Battles 1776-1965. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 0700602771. OCLC 13425151.
Hagan, Kenneth J.; Roberts, William R., eds. (1986). "2". Against All Enemies: Interpretations of American Military History from Colonial Times to Present. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Inc. ISBN 0313211973. OCLC 12342367.
References
External links
Ira Gruber Academic Career Papers
Review of John Peebles' American War | employer | {
"answer_start": [
729
],
"text": [
"Rice University"
]
} |
Ira D. Gruber (born January 6, 1934) is an American author, bibliographer, and military historian of the American Revolution.
Personal life
Ira D. Gruber was born January 6, 1934, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and grew up in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. He attended Duke University and served in the United States Navy Reserve. From 1955-1957 he held the title of crypto security officer on the USS Wiltsie.
Career
Gruber became a professor at Duke after earning his Ph.D. in 1961. He later held the positions of fellow at the Institute of Early American History and Culture, assistant professor of history at Occidental College, and Harris Masterson, Jr. Professor -- and later (from 2009 on) Professor Emeritus -- of History at Rice University.During his long teaching career, Gruber published several works on the theme of American military history, specifically regarding the American Revolution. Books and the British Army in the Age of the American Revolution examines the books read by military officers during the revolution and how these books may have influenced their techniques and decisions. Another book, The Howe Brothers and the American Revolution, discusses the failure of the Howe Brothers to restore the British government in America.
Awards
1974 and 2001 George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching, Rice University
1998 Edwin H. Simmons Award given by Society for Military History
2013 Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement given by Society for Military History
Works
Gruber, Ira D. (2010). Books and the British Army in the Age of the American Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 9780807833780. OCLC 676697361.
Gruber, Ira D. (1975). The Howe Brothers and the American Revolution. New York: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0393007561. OCLC 333567.
Gruber, Ira D. (1998). John Peebles' American war : the diary of a Scottish grenadier, 1776-1782. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books. ISBN 0811708810. OCLC 39782957.
Doughty, Robert A.; Gruber, Ira D. (1996). Warfare in the Western World: Military Operations. Lexington: D.C. Heath, cop. ISBN 0669209392. OCLC 469055793.
Moten, Matthew, ed. (2011). "1". Between War and Peace: How America Ends its Wars. New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-1439194614. OCLC 555638109.
Heller, Charles E.; Stofft, William A., eds. (1986). "1". America's First Battles 1776-1965. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 0700602771. OCLC 13425151.
Hagan, Kenneth J.; Roberts, William R., eds. (1986). "2". Against All Enemies: Interpretations of American Military History from Colonial Times to Present. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Inc. ISBN 0313211973. OCLC 12342367.
References
External links
Ira Gruber Academic Career Papers
Review of John Peebles' American War | family name | {
"answer_start": [
7
],
"text": [
"Gruber"
]
} |
Ira D. Gruber (born January 6, 1934) is an American author, bibliographer, and military historian of the American Revolution.
Personal life
Ira D. Gruber was born January 6, 1934, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and grew up in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. He attended Duke University and served in the United States Navy Reserve. From 1955-1957 he held the title of crypto security officer on the USS Wiltsie.
Career
Gruber became a professor at Duke after earning his Ph.D. in 1961. He later held the positions of fellow at the Institute of Early American History and Culture, assistant professor of history at Occidental College, and Harris Masterson, Jr. Professor -- and later (from 2009 on) Professor Emeritus -- of History at Rice University.During his long teaching career, Gruber published several works on the theme of American military history, specifically regarding the American Revolution. Books and the British Army in the Age of the American Revolution examines the books read by military officers during the revolution and how these books may have influenced their techniques and decisions. Another book, The Howe Brothers and the American Revolution, discusses the failure of the Howe Brothers to restore the British government in America.
Awards
1974 and 2001 George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching, Rice University
1998 Edwin H. Simmons Award given by Society for Military History
2013 Samuel Eliot Morison Prize for lifetime achievement given by Society for Military History
Works
Gruber, Ira D. (2010). Books and the British Army in the Age of the American Revolution. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 9780807833780. OCLC 676697361.
Gruber, Ira D. (1975). The Howe Brothers and the American Revolution. New York: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0393007561. OCLC 333567.
Gruber, Ira D. (1998). John Peebles' American war : the diary of a Scottish grenadier, 1776-1782. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books. ISBN 0811708810. OCLC 39782957.
Doughty, Robert A.; Gruber, Ira D. (1996). Warfare in the Western World: Military Operations. Lexington: D.C. Heath, cop. ISBN 0669209392. OCLC 469055793.
Moten, Matthew, ed. (2011). "1". Between War and Peace: How America Ends its Wars. New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-1439194614. OCLC 555638109.
Heller, Charles E.; Stofft, William A., eds. (1986). "1". America's First Battles 1776-1965. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas. ISBN 0700602771. OCLC 13425151.
Hagan, Kenneth J.; Roberts, William R., eds. (1986). "2". Against All Enemies: Interpretations of American Military History from Colonial Times to Present. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Inc. ISBN 0313211973. OCLC 12342367.
References
External links
Ira Gruber Academic Career Papers
Review of John Peebles' American War | given name | {
"answer_start": [
0
],
"text": [
"Ira"
]
} |
Ahmet Nurettin Baransel (1897 – 21 May 1967) was a Turkish general who served as the 7th chief of the Turkish General Staff from 28 May 1954 to 25 August 1955, 4th commander of the Turkish Land Forces from 25 June 1956 to 16 September 1957, 12th commander of the First Army from 4 November 1952 to 6 April 1954, and the 11th commander of the Third Army.
Baransel was born in Istanbul. He obtained his graduation from the Turkish Military Academy in 1912, and as a staff officer he graduated from the same academy in 1925. He was promoted to the rank of brigadier general in 1939, major general in 1941, lieutenant general in 1947, and four-star general in 1951.
Career
Baransel started his career in 1912 after obtaining his graduation. He was appointed in the Army as a team, adjutant and company commander until 1919. He commanded the 7th Aircraft Company Command, Eskişehir Aircraft Station Command, Air Detachment Chief of Staff, General Staff Air Control Command, İzmir Air Group Command, 69th Regiment Battalion Command, 7th and 8th Corps. He also commanded the 11th Regiment of the Third Division, 13th Regiment of the 5th Division, Ağrı Border Brigade Command, and became faculty member of the Turkish War Academies.
As a brigadier general he served as deputy commander of the 1st Cavalry Division. As a major general, he commanded the 5th, 16th, 17th and 22nd DDivisions of the Land Forces, in addition to serving as chief of staff of the 1st Army. As a lieutenant general, he commanded the 3rd, 6th Corps, in addition to serving as deputy commander of the Third Army.
He participated in the World War I and the Turkish War of Independence.
== References == | place of birth | {
"answer_start": [
375
],
"text": [
"Istanbul"
]
} |
Ahmet Nurettin Baransel (1897 – 21 May 1967) was a Turkish general who served as the 7th chief of the Turkish General Staff from 28 May 1954 to 25 August 1955, 4th commander of the Turkish Land Forces from 25 June 1956 to 16 September 1957, 12th commander of the First Army from 4 November 1952 to 6 April 1954, and the 11th commander of the Third Army.
Baransel was born in Istanbul. He obtained his graduation from the Turkish Military Academy in 1912, and as a staff officer he graduated from the same academy in 1925. He was promoted to the rank of brigadier general in 1939, major general in 1941, lieutenant general in 1947, and four-star general in 1951.
Career
Baransel started his career in 1912 after obtaining his graduation. He was appointed in the Army as a team, adjutant and company commander until 1919. He commanded the 7th Aircraft Company Command, Eskişehir Aircraft Station Command, Air Detachment Chief of Staff, General Staff Air Control Command, İzmir Air Group Command, 69th Regiment Battalion Command, 7th and 8th Corps. He also commanded the 11th Regiment of the Third Division, 13th Regiment of the 5th Division, Ağrı Border Brigade Command, and became faculty member of the Turkish War Academies.
As a brigadier general he served as deputy commander of the 1st Cavalry Division. As a major general, he commanded the 5th, 16th, 17th and 22nd DDivisions of the Land Forces, in addition to serving as chief of staff of the 1st Army. As a lieutenant general, he commanded the 3rd, 6th Corps, in addition to serving as deputy commander of the Third Army.
He participated in the World War I and the Turkish War of Independence.
== References == | place of death | {
"answer_start": [
375
],
"text": [
"Istanbul"
]
} |
Ahmet Nurettin Baransel (1897 – 21 May 1967) was a Turkish general who served as the 7th chief of the Turkish General Staff from 28 May 1954 to 25 August 1955, 4th commander of the Turkish Land Forces from 25 June 1956 to 16 September 1957, 12th commander of the First Army from 4 November 1952 to 6 April 1954, and the 11th commander of the Third Army.
Baransel was born in Istanbul. He obtained his graduation from the Turkish Military Academy in 1912, and as a staff officer he graduated from the same academy in 1925. He was promoted to the rank of brigadier general in 1939, major general in 1941, lieutenant general in 1947, and four-star general in 1951.
Career
Baransel started his career in 1912 after obtaining his graduation. He was appointed in the Army as a team, adjutant and company commander until 1919. He commanded the 7th Aircraft Company Command, Eskişehir Aircraft Station Command, Air Detachment Chief of Staff, General Staff Air Control Command, İzmir Air Group Command, 69th Regiment Battalion Command, 7th and 8th Corps. He also commanded the 11th Regiment of the Third Division, 13th Regiment of the 5th Division, Ağrı Border Brigade Command, and became faculty member of the Turkish War Academies.
As a brigadier general he served as deputy commander of the 1st Cavalry Division. As a major general, he commanded the 5th, 16th, 17th and 22nd DDivisions of the Land Forces, in addition to serving as chief of staff of the 1st Army. As a lieutenant general, he commanded the 3rd, 6th Corps, in addition to serving as deputy commander of the Third Army.
He participated in the World War I and the Turkish War of Independence.
== References == | educated at | {
"answer_start": [
421
],
"text": [
"Turkish Military Academy"
]
} |
Ahmet Nurettin Baransel (1897 – 21 May 1967) was a Turkish general who served as the 7th chief of the Turkish General Staff from 28 May 1954 to 25 August 1955, 4th commander of the Turkish Land Forces from 25 June 1956 to 16 September 1957, 12th commander of the First Army from 4 November 1952 to 6 April 1954, and the 11th commander of the Third Army.
Baransel was born in Istanbul. He obtained his graduation from the Turkish Military Academy in 1912, and as a staff officer he graduated from the same academy in 1925. He was promoted to the rank of brigadier general in 1939, major general in 1941, lieutenant general in 1947, and four-star general in 1951.
Career
Baransel started his career in 1912 after obtaining his graduation. He was appointed in the Army as a team, adjutant and company commander until 1919. He commanded the 7th Aircraft Company Command, Eskişehir Aircraft Station Command, Air Detachment Chief of Staff, General Staff Air Control Command, İzmir Air Group Command, 69th Regiment Battalion Command, 7th and 8th Corps. He also commanded the 11th Regiment of the Third Division, 13th Regiment of the 5th Division, Ağrı Border Brigade Command, and became faculty member of the Turkish War Academies.
As a brigadier general he served as deputy commander of the 1st Cavalry Division. As a major general, he commanded the 5th, 16th, 17th and 22nd DDivisions of the Land Forces, in addition to serving as chief of staff of the 1st Army. As a lieutenant general, he commanded the 3rd, 6th Corps, in addition to serving as deputy commander of the Third Army.
He participated in the World War I and the Turkish War of Independence.
== References == | native language | {
"answer_start": [
51
],
"text": [
"Turkish"
]
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Ahmet Nurettin Baransel (1897 – 21 May 1967) was a Turkish general who served as the 7th chief of the Turkish General Staff from 28 May 1954 to 25 August 1955, 4th commander of the Turkish Land Forces from 25 June 1956 to 16 September 1957, 12th commander of the First Army from 4 November 1952 to 6 April 1954, and the 11th commander of the Third Army.
Baransel was born in Istanbul. He obtained his graduation from the Turkish Military Academy in 1912, and as a staff officer he graduated from the same academy in 1925. He was promoted to the rank of brigadier general in 1939, major general in 1941, lieutenant general in 1947, and four-star general in 1951.
Career
Baransel started his career in 1912 after obtaining his graduation. He was appointed in the Army as a team, adjutant and company commander until 1919. He commanded the 7th Aircraft Company Command, Eskişehir Aircraft Station Command, Air Detachment Chief of Staff, General Staff Air Control Command, İzmir Air Group Command, 69th Regiment Battalion Command, 7th and 8th Corps. He also commanded the 11th Regiment of the Third Division, 13th Regiment of the 5th Division, Ağrı Border Brigade Command, and became faculty member of the Turkish War Academies.
As a brigadier general he served as deputy commander of the 1st Cavalry Division. As a major general, he commanded the 5th, 16th, 17th and 22nd DDivisions of the Land Forces, in addition to serving as chief of staff of the 1st Army. As a lieutenant general, he commanded the 3rd, 6th Corps, in addition to serving as deputy commander of the Third Army.
He participated in the World War I and the Turkish War of Independence.
== References == | Commons category | {
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Ahmet Nurettin Baransel (1897 – 21 May 1967) was a Turkish general who served as the 7th chief of the Turkish General Staff from 28 May 1954 to 25 August 1955, 4th commander of the Turkish Land Forces from 25 June 1956 to 16 September 1957, 12th commander of the First Army from 4 November 1952 to 6 April 1954, and the 11th commander of the Third Army.
Baransel was born in Istanbul. He obtained his graduation from the Turkish Military Academy in 1912, and as a staff officer he graduated from the same academy in 1925. He was promoted to the rank of brigadier general in 1939, major general in 1941, lieutenant general in 1947, and four-star general in 1951.
Career
Baransel started his career in 1912 after obtaining his graduation. He was appointed in the Army as a team, adjutant and company commander until 1919. He commanded the 7th Aircraft Company Command, Eskişehir Aircraft Station Command, Air Detachment Chief of Staff, General Staff Air Control Command, İzmir Air Group Command, 69th Regiment Battalion Command, 7th and 8th Corps. He also commanded the 11th Regiment of the Third Division, 13th Regiment of the 5th Division, Ağrı Border Brigade Command, and became faculty member of the Turkish War Academies.
As a brigadier general he served as deputy commander of the 1st Cavalry Division. As a major general, he commanded the 5th, 16th, 17th and 22nd DDivisions of the Land Forces, in addition to serving as chief of staff of the 1st Army. As a lieutenant general, he commanded the 3rd, 6th Corps, in addition to serving as deputy commander of the Third Army.
He participated in the World War I and the Turkish War of Independence.
== References == | military rank | {
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Ahmet Nurettin Baransel (1897 – 21 May 1967) was a Turkish general who served as the 7th chief of the Turkish General Staff from 28 May 1954 to 25 August 1955, 4th commander of the Turkish Land Forces from 25 June 1956 to 16 September 1957, 12th commander of the First Army from 4 November 1952 to 6 April 1954, and the 11th commander of the Third Army.
Baransel was born in Istanbul. He obtained his graduation from the Turkish Military Academy in 1912, and as a staff officer he graduated from the same academy in 1925. He was promoted to the rank of brigadier general in 1939, major general in 1941, lieutenant general in 1947, and four-star general in 1951.
Career
Baransel started his career in 1912 after obtaining his graduation. He was appointed in the Army as a team, adjutant and company commander until 1919. He commanded the 7th Aircraft Company Command, Eskişehir Aircraft Station Command, Air Detachment Chief of Staff, General Staff Air Control Command, İzmir Air Group Command, 69th Regiment Battalion Command, 7th and 8th Corps. He also commanded the 11th Regiment of the Third Division, 13th Regiment of the 5th Division, Ağrı Border Brigade Command, and became faculty member of the Turkish War Academies.
As a brigadier general he served as deputy commander of the 1st Cavalry Division. As a major general, he commanded the 5th, 16th, 17th and 22nd DDivisions of the Land Forces, in addition to serving as chief of staff of the 1st Army. As a lieutenant general, he commanded the 3rd, 6th Corps, in addition to serving as deputy commander of the Third Army.
He participated in the World War I and the Turkish War of Independence.
== References == | family name | {
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Ahmet Nurettin Baransel (1897 – 21 May 1967) was a Turkish general who served as the 7th chief of the Turkish General Staff from 28 May 1954 to 25 August 1955, 4th commander of the Turkish Land Forces from 25 June 1956 to 16 September 1957, 12th commander of the First Army from 4 November 1952 to 6 April 1954, and the 11th commander of the Third Army.
Baransel was born in Istanbul. He obtained his graduation from the Turkish Military Academy in 1912, and as a staff officer he graduated from the same academy in 1925. He was promoted to the rank of brigadier general in 1939, major general in 1941, lieutenant general in 1947, and four-star general in 1951.
Career
Baransel started his career in 1912 after obtaining his graduation. He was appointed in the Army as a team, adjutant and company commander until 1919. He commanded the 7th Aircraft Company Command, Eskişehir Aircraft Station Command, Air Detachment Chief of Staff, General Staff Air Control Command, İzmir Air Group Command, 69th Regiment Battalion Command, 7th and 8th Corps. He also commanded the 11th Regiment of the Third Division, 13th Regiment of the 5th Division, Ağrı Border Brigade Command, and became faculty member of the Turkish War Academies.
As a brigadier general he served as deputy commander of the 1st Cavalry Division. As a major general, he commanded the 5th, 16th, 17th and 22nd DDivisions of the Land Forces, in addition to serving as chief of staff of the 1st Army. As a lieutenant general, he commanded the 3rd, 6th Corps, in addition to serving as deputy commander of the Third Army.
He participated in the World War I and the Turkish War of Independence.
== References == | given name | {
"answer_start": [
6
],
"text": [
"Nurettin"
]
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Ahmet Nurettin Baransel (1897 – 21 May 1967) was a Turkish general who served as the 7th chief of the Turkish General Staff from 28 May 1954 to 25 August 1955, 4th commander of the Turkish Land Forces from 25 June 1956 to 16 September 1957, 12th commander of the First Army from 4 November 1952 to 6 April 1954, and the 11th commander of the Third Army.
Baransel was born in Istanbul. He obtained his graduation from the Turkish Military Academy in 1912, and as a staff officer he graduated from the same academy in 1925. He was promoted to the rank of brigadier general in 1939, major general in 1941, lieutenant general in 1947, and four-star general in 1951.
Career
Baransel started his career in 1912 after obtaining his graduation. He was appointed in the Army as a team, adjutant and company commander until 1919. He commanded the 7th Aircraft Company Command, Eskişehir Aircraft Station Command, Air Detachment Chief of Staff, General Staff Air Control Command, İzmir Air Group Command, 69th Regiment Battalion Command, 7th and 8th Corps. He also commanded the 11th Regiment of the Third Division, 13th Regiment of the 5th Division, Ağrı Border Brigade Command, and became faculty member of the Turkish War Academies.
As a brigadier general he served as deputy commander of the 1st Cavalry Division. As a major general, he commanded the 5th, 16th, 17th and 22nd DDivisions of the Land Forces, in addition to serving as chief of staff of the 1st Army. As a lieutenant general, he commanded the 3rd, 6th Corps, in addition to serving as deputy commander of the Third Army.
He participated in the World War I and the Turkish War of Independence.
== References == | languages spoken, written or signed | {
"answer_start": [
51
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"text": [
"Turkish"
]
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Kid A is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 2 October 2000 by Parlophone. It was recorded with their producer, Nigel Godrich, in Paris, Copenhagen, Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire.
After the stress of promoting Radiohead's 1997 album OK Computer, the songwriter, Thom Yorke, wanted to depart from rock music. Drawing influence from electronic music, ambient music, krautrock, jazz and 20th-century classical music, Radiohead used instruments such as modular synthesisers, the ondes Martenot, brass and strings. They processed guitar sounds, incorporated samples and loops, and manipulated their recordings with software. Yorke wrote impersonal and abstract lyrics, cutting up phrases and assembling them at random.
In a departure from industry practice, Radiohead released no singles or music videos and conducted few interviews and photoshoots. Instead, they released short animated "blips", and became one of the first major acts to use the internet for promotion. Bootlegs of early performances were shared on filesharing services, and Kid A was leaked before release. In 2000, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos.
Kid A debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and became Radiohead's first number-one album on the Billboard 200 in the US, where it sold more than 207,000 copies in its first week. Its new sound divided listeners, and some dismissed it as pretentious, deliberately obscure, or derivative. However, it later attracted acclaim; at the end of the decade, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and the Times ranked Kid A the greatest album of the 2000s, and in 2020 Rolling Stone ranked it number 20 on its updated list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Like OK Computer, it won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. It has been certified platinum in Australia, Canada, France, Japan, the US and the UK.
A second album of material from the sessions, Amnesiac, was released eight months later. Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A, Amnesiac and previously unreleased material, was released in 2021.
Background
Following the critical and commercial success of their 1997 album OK Computer, the members of Radiohead suffered burnout. The songwriter, Thom Yorke, became ill, describing himself as "a complete fucking mess ... completely unhinged". He was troubled by new acts he felt were imitating Radiohead and became hostile to the music media. He told The Observer: "I always used to use music as a way of moving on and dealing with things, and I sort of felt like that the thing that helped me deal with things had been sold to the highest bidder and I was simply doing its bidding. And I couldn't handle that."Yorke suffered from writer's block and could not finish writing songs on guitar. He became disillusioned with the "mythology" of rock music, feeling the genre had "run its course". He began to listen almost exclusively to the electronic music of artists signed to the record label Warp, such as Aphex Twin and Autechre. Yorke said: "It was refreshing because the music was all structures and had no human voices in it. But I felt just as emotional about it as I'd ever felt about guitar music." He liked the idea of his voice being used as an instrument rather than having a leading role, and wanted to focus on sounds and textures instead of traditional songwriting.Yorke bought a house in Cornwall and spent his time walking the cliffs and drawing, restricting his musical activity to playing the grand piano he had recently bought. "Everything in Its Right Place" was the first song he wrote. He described himself as a "shit piano player", with little knowledge of electronic instruments: "I remember this Tom Waits quote from years ago, that what keeps him going as a songwriter is his complete ignorance of the instruments he's using. So everything's a novelty. That's one of the reasons I wanted to get into computers and synths, because I didn't understand how the fuck they worked. I had no idea what ADSR meant."The guitarist Ed O'Brien had hoped Radiohead's fourth album would comprise short, melodic guitar songs, but Yorke said: "There was no chance of the album sounding like that. I'd completely had it with melody. I just wanted rhythm. All melodies to me were pure embarrassment." The bassist, Colin Greenwood, said: "We felt we had to change everything. There were other guitar bands out there trying to do similar things. We had to move on."
Recording
In the late 1990s, Radiohead began building their own studio in Oxfordshire. Yorke planned to use it as the German band Can had used their studio in Cologne, recording everything they played and then editing it. However, as the studio would not be complete until late 1999, Radiohead began work in Guillaime Tell Studios, Paris, in January 1999.Radiohead worked with the OK Computer producer Nigel Godrich and no deadline. Yorke, who had the greatest control, was still facing writer's block. His new songs were incomplete, and some consisted of little more than sounds or rhythms; few had clear verses or choruses. Yorke's lack of lyrics created problems, as these had provided points of reference and inspiration for his bandmates in the past.The group struggled with Yorke's new direction. According to Godrich, Yorke did not communicate much, and according to Yorke, Godrich "didn't understand why, if we had such a strength in one thing, we would want to do something else". The lead guitarist, Jonny Greenwood, feared "awful art-rock nonsense just for its own sake". His brother, Colin, did not enjoy Yorke's Warp influences, finding them "really cold". The other band members were unsure of how to contribute, and considered leaving. O'Brien said: "It's scary – everyone feels insecure. I'm a guitarist and suddenly it's like, well, there are no guitars on this track, or no drums."Radiohead experimented with electronic instruments including modular synthesisers and the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument similar to a theremin, and used software such as Pro Tools and Cubase to edit and manipulate their recordings. They found it difficult to use electronic instruments collaboratively; according to Yorke, "We had to develop ways of going off into corners and build things on whatever sequencer, synthesiser or piece of machinery we would bring to the equation and then integrate that into the way we would normally work." O'Brien began using sustain units, which allow guitar notes to be sustained infinitely, combined with looping and delay effects to create synthesiser-like sounds.In March, Radiohead moved to Medley Studios in Copenhagen for two weeks, which were unproductive. The sessions produced about 50 reels of tape, each containing 15 minutes of music, with nothing finished. In April, Radiohead resumed recording in a mansion in Batsford Park, Gloucestershire. The lack of deadline and the number of incomplete ideas made it hard to focus, and the group held tense meetings. They agreed to disband if they could not agree on an album worth releasing.In July, O'Brien began keeping an online diary of Radiohead's progress. Radiohead moved to their new studio in Oxfordshire in September. In November, Radiohead held a live webcast from their studio, featuring a performance of new music and a DJ set. By 2000, six songs were complete. In January, at Godrich's suggestion, Radiohead split into two groups: one would generate a sound or sequence without acoustic instruments such as guitars or drums, and the other would develop it. Though the experiment produced no finished songs, it helped convince O'Brien of the potential of electronic instruments.On 19 April 2000, Yorke wrote on Radiohead's website that they had finished recording. Having completed over 20 songs, Radiohead considered releasing a double album, but felt the material was too dense. Instead, they saved half the songs for their next album, Amnesiac, released the following year. Yorke said Radiohead split the work into two albums because "they cancel each other out as overall finished things. They come from two different places." He observed that deciding the track list was not just a matter of choosing the best songs, as "you can put all the best songs in the world on a record and they'll ruin each other". He cited the later Beatles albums as examples of effective sequencing: "How in the hell can you have three different versions of 'Revolution' on the same record and get away with it? I thought about that sort of thing." Agreeing on the track list created arguments, and O'Brien said the band came close to breaking up: "That felt like it could go either way, it could break ... But we came in the next day and it was resolved." The album was mastered by Chris Blair in Abbey Road Studios, London.
Tracks
Radiohead worked on the first track, "Everything in Its Right Place", in a conventional band arrangement in Copenhagen and Paris, but without results. In Gloucestershire, Yorke and Godrich transferred the song to a Prophet-5 synthesiser, and Yorke's vocals were processed in Pro Tools using a scrubbing tool. O'Brien and the drummer, Philip Selway, said the track helped them accept that not every song needed every band member to play on it. O'Brien recalled: "To be genuinely sort of delighted that you'd been working for six months on this record and something great has come out of it, and you haven't contributed to it, is a really liberating feeling." Jonny Greenwood described it as a turning point for the album: "We knew it had to be the first song, and everything just followed after it."Yorke wrote an early version of "The National Anthem" when the band was still in school. In 1997, Radiohead recorded drums and bass for the song, intending to develop it as a B-side for OK Computer, but decided to keep it for their next album. For Kid A, Greenwood added ondes Martenot and sounds sampled from radio stations, and Yorke's vocals were processed with a ring modulator. In November 1999, Radiohead recorded a brass section inspired by the "organised chaos" of Town Hall Concert by the jazz musician Charles Mingus, instructing the musicians to sound like a "traffic jam".The strings on "How to Disappear Completely" were performed by the Orchestra of St John's and recorded in Dorchester Abbey, a 12th-century church about five miles from Radiohead's Oxfordshire studio. Radiohead chose the orchestra as they had performed pieces by Penderecki and Messiaen. Jonny Greenwood, the only Radiohead member trained in music theory, composed the string arrangement by multitracking his ondes Martenot. According to Godrich, when the orchestra members saw Greenwood's score "they all just sort of burst into giggles, because they couldn't do what he'd written, because it was impossible – or impossible for them, anyway". The orchestra leader, John Lubbock, encouraged them to experiment and work with Greenwood's ideas. The concerts director, Alison Atkinson, said the session was more experimental than the orchestra's usual bookings.
"Idioteque" samples two computer music pieces, Paul Lansky's "Mild und Leise" and Arthur Kreiger's "Short Piece". Both samples were taken from Electronic Music Winners, a 1976 experimental music LP which Jonny Greenwood stumbled upon while the band was working on Kid A. The track was built from a drum machine pattern Greenwood created with a modular synthesiser and a sample from "Mild und Leise". He gave the 50-minute recording to Yorke, who took a short section of it and used it to write the song. Yorke also referred to electronic dance music when talking about "Idioteque", and said that the song was "an attempt to capture that exploding beat sound where you're at the club and the PA's so loud, you know it's doing damage"."Motion Picture Soundtrack" was written before Radiohead's debut single "Creep" (1992), and Radiohead recorded a version on piano during the OK Computer sessions. For Kid A, Yorke recorded it on a pedal organ, influenced by the songwriter Tom Waits. The band added harp samples and double bass, attempting to emulate the soundtracks of 1950s Disney films. Radiohead also worked on several songs they did not complete until the recording sessions for future albums, including "Nude", "Burn the Witch" and "True Love Waits".
Music
Style and influences
Kid A incorporates influences from electronic artists on Warp Records such as 1990s IDM artists Autechre and Aphex Twin; 1970s Krautrock bands such as Can; the jazz of Charles Mingus, Alice Coltrane and Miles Davis; and abstract hip hop from the Mo'Wax label, including Blackalicious and DJ Krush. Yorke cited Remain in Light (1980) by Talking Heads as a "massive reference point". Björk was another major influence, particularly her 1997 album Homogenic, as was the Beta Band. Radiohead attended an Underworld concert which helped renew their enthusiasm in a difficult moment.The string orchestration for "How to Disappear Completely" was influenced by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. Jonny Greenwood's use of the ondes Martenot on several songs was inspired by Olivier Messiaen, who popularised the instrument and was one of Greenwood's teenage heroes. Greenwood described his interest in mixing old and new music technology, and during the recording sessions Yorke read Ian MacDonald's Revolution in the Head, which chronicles the Beatles' recordings with George Martin during the 1960s. The band also sought to combine electronic manipulations with jam sessions in the studio, saying their model was the German band Can.Kid A has been described as a work of electronica, experimental rock, post-rock, alternative rock, post-prog, ambient, electronic rock, art rock, and art pop. Though guitar is less prominent than on previous Radiohead albums, guitars were still used on most tracks. "Treefingers", an ambient instrumental, was created by digitally processing O'Brien's guitar loops. Many of Yorke's vocals were manipulated with effects; for example, his vocals on the title track were simply spoken, then vocoded with the ondes Martenot to create the melody.
Lyrics
Yorke's lyrics on Kid A are less personal than on earlier albums, and instead incorporate abstract and surreal themes. He cut up phrases and assembled them at random, combining cliches and banal observations; for example, "Morning Bell" features repeated contrasting lines such as "Where'd you park the car?" and "Cut the kids in half". Yorke denied that he was "trying to get anything across" with the lyrics, and described them as "like shattered bits of mirror ... like pieces of something broken. ... it's not like I'm trying to get anything across."Yorke cited David Byrne's approach to lyrics on Remain in Light as an influence: "When they made that record, they had no real songs, just wrote it all as they went along. Byrne turned up with pages and pages, and just picked stuff up and threw bits in all the time. And that's exactly how I approached Kid A." Radiohead used Yorke's lyrics "like pieces in a collage ... [creating] an artwork out of a lot of different little things". The lyrics are not included in the liner notes, as Radiohead felt they could not be considered independently of the music, and Yorke did not want listeners to focus on them.Yorke wrote "Everything in Its Right Place" about the depression he experienced on the OK Computer tour, feeling he could not speak. The refrain of "How to Disappear Completely" was inspired by R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe, who advised Yorke to relieve tour stress by repeating to himself: "I'm not here, this isn't happening". The refrain of "Optimistic" ("try the best you can / the best you can is good enough") was an assurance by Yorke's partner, Rachel Owen, when Yorke was frustrated with the band's progress. The title Kid A came from a filename on one of Yorke's sequencers. Yorke said he liked its "non-meaning", saying: "If you call [an album] something specific, it drives the record in a certain way."
Artwork
The Kid A artwork and packaging was created by Yorke with Stanley Donwood, who has worked with Radiohead since their 1994 EP My Iron Lung. Donwood painted on large canvases with knives and sticks, then photographed the paintings and manipulated them with Photoshop. While working on the artwork, Yorke and Donwood became "obsessed" with the Worldwatch Institute website, which was full of "scary statistics about ice caps melting, and weather patterns changing"; this inspired them to use an image of a mountain range as the cover art. Donwood said he saw the mountains as "some sort of cataclysmic power".Donwood was inspired by a photograph taken during the Kosovo War depicting a square metre of snow full of the "detritus of war", such as military equipment and cigarette stains. He said: "I was upset by it in a way war had never upset me before. It felt like it was happening in my street." The red swimming pool on the album spine and disc was inspired by the 1988 graphic novel Brought to Light by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz, in which the number of people killed by state terrorism is measured in swimming pools filled with blood. Donwood said this image "haunted" him during the recording of the album, calling it "a symbol of looming danger and shattered expectations". Yorke and Donwood cited a Paris exhibition of paintings by David Hockney as another influence.Yorke and Donwood made many versions of the album cover, with different pictures and different titles in different typefaces. Unable to pick one, they taped them to cupboards of the studio kitchen and went to bed. According to Donwood, the choice the next day "was obvious". In October 2021, Yorke and Donwood curated an exhibition of Kid A artwork at Christie's headquarters in London.
Promotion
Radiohead minimised their involvement in promotion for Kid A, conducting few interviews or photoshoots. Though "Optimistic" and promotional copies of other tracks received radio play, Radiohead released no singles from the album. Yorke said this was to avoid the stress of publicity, which he had struggled with on OK Computer, rather than for artistic reasons.Radiohead were careful to present it as a cohesive work rather than a series of separate tracks. Rather than give EMI executives their own copies, they had them listen to the album in its entirety on a bus from Hollywood to Malibu. Rob Gordon, the vice president of marketing at Capitol Records, the American subsidiary of Radiohead's label EMI, praised the album but said promoting it would be a "business challenge".No advance copies of Kid A were circulated, but it was played under controlled conditions for critics and fans. On September 5, 2000, it was played for the public for the first time at the IMAX theatre in Lincoln Square, Manhattan. Promotional copies of Kid A came with stickers prohibiting broadcast before September 19. At midnight, it was played in its entirety by the London radio station Xfm. MTV2, KROQ, and WXRK also played the album.Rather than agree to a standard magazine photoshoot for Q, Radiohead supplied digitally altered portraits, with their skin smoothed, their irises recoloured, and Yorke's drooping eyelid removed. The Q editor Andrew Harrison described the images as "aggressively weird to the point of taking the piss ... All five of Radiohead had been given the aspect of gawking aliens." Yorke said: "I'd like to see them try to put these pictures on a poster." Q projected the images onto the Houses of Parliament, placed them on posters and billboards in the London Underground and on the Old Street Roundabout, and had them printed on key rings, mugs and mouse mats, to "turn Radiohead back into a product".
Videos
Instead of releasing traditional music videos for Kid A, Radiohead commissioned dozens of 10-second videos featuring Donwood artwork they called "blips", which were aired on music channels and distributed online. Pitchfork described them as "context-free animated nightmares that radiated mystery", with "arch hints of surveillance". Five of the videos were serviced as exclusives to MTV, and "helped play into the arty mystique that endeared Radiohead to its core audience", according to Billboard. Much of the promotional material featured pointy-toothed bear characters created by Donwood. The bears originated in stories Donwood made for his young children about teddy bears who came to life and ate the "grown-ups" who had abandoned them.
Internet
Though Radiohead had experimented with internet promotion for OK Computer in 1997, by 2000 online music promotion was not widespread, with record labels still reliant on MTV and radio. Donwood wrote that EMI was not interested in the Radiohead website, and left him and the band to update it with "discursive and random content".To promote Kid A, Capitol created the "iBlip", a Java applet that could be embedded in fan sites. It allowed users to stream the album, and included artwork, photos and links to order Kid A on Amazon. It was used by more than 1000 sites, and the album was streamed more than 400,000 times. Capitol also streamed Kid A through Amazon, MTV.com and heavy.com, and ran a campaign with the peer-to-peer filesharing service Aimster, allowing users to swap iBlips and Radiohead-branded Aimster skins.Three weeks before release, Kid A was leaked online and shared on the peer-to-peer service Napster. Asked whether he believed Napster had damaged sales, Capitol president Ray Lott likened the situation to unfounded concern about home taping in the 1980s and said: "I'm trying to sell as many Radiohead albums as possible. If I worried about what Napster would do, I wouldn't sell as many albums." Yorke said Napster "encourages enthusiasm for music in a way that the music industry has long forgotten to do".
Tour
Radiohead rearranged the Kid A songs to perform them live. O'Brien said, "You couldn't do Kid A live and be true to the record. You would have to do it like an art installation ... When we played live, we put the human element back into it." Selway said they "found some new life" in the songs when they came to perform them.In mid-2000, months before Kid A was released, Radiohead toured the Mediterranean, performing Kid A and Amnesiac songs for the first time. Fans shared concert bootlegs online. Colin Greenwood said: "We played in Barcelona and the next day the entire performance was up on Napster. Three weeks later when we got to play in Israel the audience knew the words to all the new songs and it was wonderful." Later that year, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos, playing mostly new songs. The tour included a homecoming show in South Park, Oxford, with supporting performances by Humphrey Lyttelton (who performed on Amnesiac), Beck and Sigur Rós. According to the journalist Alex Ross, the show may have been the largest public gathering in Oxford history.Radiohead also performed three concerts in North American theatres, their first in nearly three years. The small venues sold out rapidly, attracting celebrities, and fans camped overnight. In October, Radiohead performed on the American TV show Saturday Night Live; the performance shocked viewers expecting rock songs, with Jonny Greenwood playing electronic instruments, the house brass band improvising over "The National Anthem", and Yorke dancing erratically to "Idioteque". Rolling Stone described the Kid A tour as "a revelation, exposing rock and roll humanity" in the songs. In November 2001, Radiohead released I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings, comprising performances from the Kid A and Amnesiac tours.
Sales
Kid A reached number one on Amazon's sales chart, with more than 10,000 pre-orders. It debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, selling 55,000 copies in its first day – the biggest first-day sales of the year and more than every other album in the top ten combined. Kid A also debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, selling more than 207,000 copies in its first week. It was Radiohead's first US top-20 album, and the first US number one in three years for any British act. Kid A also debuted at number one in Canada, where it sold more than 44,000 copies in its first week, and in France, Ireland and New Zealand. European sales slowed on 2 October 2000, the day of release, when EMI recalled 150,000 faulty CDs. By June 2001, Kid A had sold 310,000 copies in the UK, less than a third of OK Computer sales. It is certified platinum in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Japan and the US.
Critical reception
Kid A was widely anticipated. Spin described it as the most anticipated rock record since Nirvana's In Utero. According to Andrew Harrison, the editor of Q, journalists expected it to provide more of the "rousing, cathartic, lots-of-guitar, Saturday-night-at-Glastonbury big future rock moments" of OK Computer. Months before its release, Pat Blashill of Melody Maker wrote: "If there's one band that promises to return rock to us, it's Radiohead."After Kid A had been played for critics, many bemoaned the lack of guitar, the obscured vocals and the unconventional song structures. Some called it "a commercial suicide note". The Guardian wrote of the "muted electronic hums, pulses and tones", predicting that it would confuse listeners. In Mojo, Jim Irvin wrote that "upon first listen, Kid A is just awful ... Too often it sounds like the fragments that they began the writing process with – a loop, a riff, a mumbled line of text, have been set in concrete and had other, lesser ideas piled on top." The Guardian critic Adam Sweeting wrote that "even listeners raised on krautrock or Ornette Coleman will find Kid A a mystifying experience", and that it pandered to "the worst cliches" about Radiohead's "relentless miserabilism". Several critics found the free jazz of "The National Anthem" discordant and unpleasant.Several critics felt Kid A was pretentious or deliberately obscure. The Irish Times bemoaned the lack of conventional song structures and panned the album as "deliberately abstruse, wilfully esoteric and wantonly unfathomable ... The only thing challenging about Kid A is the very real challenge to your attention span." In the New Yorker, the novelist Nick Hornby wrote that it was "morbid proof that this sort of self-indulgence results in a weird kind of anonymity rather than something distinctive and original". The Melody Maker critic Mark Beaumont called it "tubby, ostentatious, self-congratulatory, look-ma-I-can-suck-my-own-cock whiny old rubbish ... About 60 songs were started that no one had a bloody clue how to finish." Alexis Petridis of The Guardian described it as "self-consciously awkward and bloody-minded, the noise made by a band trying so hard to make a 'difficult' album that they felt it beneath them to write any songs". Rolling Stone published a piece mocking Kid A as humourless, derivative and lacking in songs: "Because it was decided that Radiohead were Important and Significant last time around, no one can accept the album as the crackpot art project it so obviously is."Some critics felt Kid A was unoriginal. In the New York Times, Howard Hampton dismissed Radiohead as a "rock composite" and wrote that Kid A "recycles Pink Floyd's dark-side-of-the-moon solipsism to Me-Decade perfection". Beaumont said Radiohead were "simply ploughing furrows dug by DJ Shadow and Brian Eno before them". The Irish Times felt the ambient elements were inferior to Eno's 1978 album Music For Airports and its "scary" elements inferior to Scott Walker's 1995 album Tilt. Select wrote: "What do they want for sounding like the Aphex Twin circa 1993, a medal?" In a retrospective, the journalist Rob Sheffield wrote that the "mastery of Warp-style electronic effects" had appeared "clumsy and dated" at the time of Kid A's release. In an NME editorial, James Oldham wrote that the electronic influences were "mired in compromise", with Radiohead still operating as a rock band, and concluded: "Time will judge it. But right now, Kid A has the ring of a lengthy, over-analysed mistake." Rob Mitchell, the co-founder of Warp, felt Kid A represented "an honest interpretation of [Warp] influences" and was not "gratuitously" electronic. He predicted it might one day be seen in the same way as David Bowie's 1977 album Low, which alienated some Bowie fans but was later acclaimed.AllMusic gave Kid A a favourable review, but wrote that it "never is as visionary or stunning as OK Computer, nor does it really repay the intensive time it demands in order for it to sink in". The NME was also positive, but described some songs as "meandering" and "anticlimactic", and concluded: "For all its feats of brinkmanship, the patently magnificent construct called Kid A betrays a band playing one-handed just to prove they can, scared to commit itself emotionally." In Rolling Stone, David Fricke called Kid A "a work of deliberately inky, often irritating obsession ... But this is pop, a music of ornery, glistening guile and honest ache, and it will feel good under your skin once you let it get there."Spin said Kid A was "not the act of career suicide or feat of self-indulgence it will be castigated as", and predicted that fans would recognise it as Radiohead's best and "bravest" album. Billboard described it as "an ocean of unparalleled musical depth" and "the first truly groundbreaking album of the 21st century". The music critic Robert Christgau wrote that Kid A was "an imaginative, imitative variation on a pop staple: sadness made pretty". The Village Voice called it "oblique oblique oblique ... Also incredibly beautiful." Brent DiCrescenzo of Pitchfork gave Kid A a perfect score, calling it "cacophonous yet tranquil, experimental yet familiar, foreign yet womb-like, spacious yet visceral, textured yet vaporous, awakening yet dreamlike". He concluded that Radiohead "must be the greatest band alive, if not the best since you know who". One of the first Kid A reviews posted online, DiCrescenzo's review helped popularise Pitchfork and became notorious for its "obtuse" writing.At Metacritic, which aggregates ratings from critics, Kid A has a score of 80 based on 24 reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews". It was named one of the best albums of 2000 by publications including the Los Angeles Times, Spin, Melody Maker, Mojo, NME, Pitchfork, Q, the Times, Uncut and the Wire. At the 2001 Grammy Awards, Kid A was nominated for Album of the Year and won for Best Alternative Album.
Legacy
In the years following its release, Kid A attracted acclaim. In 2005, Pitchfork wrote that it had "challenged and confounded" Radiohead's audience, and subsequently "transformed into an intellectual symbol of sorts ... Owning it became 'getting it'; getting it became 'anointing it'." In 2015, Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone likened Radiohead's change in style to Bob Dylan's controversial move to rock music, writing that critics now hesitated to say they had disliked it at the time. He described Kid A as the "defining moment in the Radiohead legend". A year later, Billboard argued that Kid A was the first album since Bowie's Low to have moved "rock and electronic music forward in such a mature fashion". In an article for Kid A's 20th anniversary, the Quietus suggested that the negative reviews had been motivated by rockism, the tendency among music critics to venerate rock music over other genres.In a 2011 Guardian article about his critical Melody Maker review, Beaumont wrote that though his opinion had not changed, "Kid A's status as a cultural cornerstone has proved me, if not wrong, then very much in the minority ... People whose opinions I trust claim it to be their favourite album ever." In 2014, Brice Ezell of PopMatters wrote that Kid A is "more fun to think and write about than it is to actually listen to" and a "far less compelling representation of the band's talents than The Bends and OK Computer". In 2016, Dorian Lysnkey wrote in The Guardian: "At times, Kid A is dull enough to make you fervently wish that they'd merged the highlights with the best bits of the similarly spotty Amnesiac ... Yorke had given up on coherent lyrics so one can only guess at what he was worrying about."Radiohead denied that they had set out to create "difficult" music. Jonny Greenwood argued that the tracks were short and melodic, and suggested that "people basically want their hands held through 12 'Mull Of Kintyre's". Yorke said: "We're actually trying to communicate but, somewhere along the line, we just seemed to piss off a lot of people ... What we're doing isn't that radical." He recalled that the band had been "white as a sheet" before early performances on the Kid A tour, thinking they had been "absolutely trashed". At the same time, the reaction motivated them: "There was a sense of a fight to convince people, which was actually really exciting." He regretted having released no singles, feeling it meant much of the early judgement of the album came from critics.Grantland credited Kid A for pioneering the use of internet to stream and promote music, writing: "For many music fans of a certain age and persuasion, Kid A was the first album experienced primarily via the internet – it's where you went to hear it, read the reviews, and argue about whether it was a masterpiece ... Listen early, form an opinion quickly, state it publicly, and move on to the next big record by the official release date. In that way, Kid A invented modern music culture as we know it." In his 2005 book Killing Yourself to Live, critic Chuck Klosterman interpreted Kid A as a prediction of the September 11 attacks.Speaking at Radiohead's induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2019, David Byrne of Talking Heads, one of Radiohead's formative influences, said: "What was really weird and very encouraging was that [Kid A] was popular. It was a hit! It proved to me that the artistic risk paid off and music fans sometimes are not stupid." In 2020, Billboard wrote that the success of Kid A, despite its "challenging" content, established Radiohead as "heavy hitters in the business for the long run".
Accolades
In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked Kid A number 20 on its updated "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list, describing it as "a new, uniquely fearless kind of rock record for a new, increasingly fearful century ... [It] remains one of the more stunning sonic makeovers in music history." In previous versions of the list, Kid A ranked at number 67 (2012) and number 428 (2003). In 2005, Stylus and Pitchfork named Kid A the best album of the previous five years, with Pitchfork calling it "the perfect record for its time: ominous, surreal, and impossibly millennial".In 2006, Time named Kid A one of the 100 best albums, calling it "the opposite of easy listening, and the weirdest album to ever sell a million copies, but ... also a testament to just how complicated pop music can be". At the end of the decade, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and the Times ranked Kid A the greatest album of the 2000s. The Guardian ranked it second best, calling it "a jittery premonition of the troubled, disconnected, overloaded decade to come. The sound of today, in other words, a decade early." In 2021, Pitchfork readers voted Kid A the greatest album of the previous 25 years. In 2011, Rolling Stone named "Everything in Its Right Place" the 24th-best song of the 2000s, describing it as "oddness at its most hummable". "Idioteque" was named one of the best songs of the decade by Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, and Rolling Stone ranked it #33 on its 2018 list of the "greatest songs of the century so far".
(*) designates unordered list
Reissues
Radiohead left EMI after their contract ended in 2003. After a period of being out of print on vinyl, Kid A was reissued as a double LP on 19 August 2008 as part of the "From the Capitol Vaults" series, along with other Radiohead albums. In 2007, EMI released Radiohead Box Set, a compilation of albums recorded while Radiohead were signed to EMI, including Kid A. On 25 August 2009, EMI reissued Kid A in a two-CD "Collector's Edition" and a "Special Collector's Edition" containing an additional DVD. Both versions feature live tracks, taken mostly from television performances. Radiohead had no input into the reissues and the music was not remastered.The EMI reissues were discontinued after Radiohead's back catalogue transferred to XL Recordings in 2016. In May 2016, XL reissued Kid A on vinyl, along with the rest of Radiohead's back catalogue. An early demo of "The National Anthem" was included in the special edition of the 2017 OK Computer reissue OKNOTOK 1997 2017. In February 2020, Radiohead released an extended version of "Treefingers", previously released on the soundtrack for the 2000 film Memento, to digital platforms.On November 5, 2021, Radiohead released Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A and Amnesiac. It includes a third album, Kid Amnesiae, comprising previously unreleased material from the sessions. Radiohead promoted the reissue with singles for the previously unreleased tracks "If You Say the Word" and "Follow Me Around". Kid A Mnesia Exhibition, an interactive experience with music and artwork from the albums, was released on November 18 for PlayStation 5, macOS and Windows.
Track listing
All songs written by Radiohead, except "Idioteque", which samples "Mild und Leise" by Paul Lansky and "Short Piece" by Arthur Kreiger.
"Everything in Its Right Place" – 4:11
"Kid A" – 4:44
"The National Anthem" – 5:51
"How to Disappear Completely" – 5:56
"Treefingers" – 3:42
"Optimistic" – 5:15
"In Limbo" – 3:31
"Idioteque" – 5:09
"Morning Bell" – 4:35
"Motion Picture Soundtrack" – 7:01
Untitled hidden track – 0:52Note: Track 10 ends at 3:20; includes an untitled hidden track from 4:17 until 5:09, followed by 1:51 of silence. On streaming services, the hidden track is listed as a separate track.
Personnel
Credits adapted from liner notes.
Charts
Certifications and sales
Notes
References
Bibliography
Randall, Mac (2012). Exit Music: The Radiohead Story Updated Edition. ISBN 9781617130472.
Further reading
Lin, Marvin (25 November 2010). Radiohead's Kid A. 33⅓ series. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8264-2343-6.
Ed's Diary: Archived 13 April 2007 at the Wayback Machine Ed O'Brien's studio diary from Kid A/Amnesiac recording sessions, 1999–2000 (archived at Green Plastic)
Marzorati, Gerald. "The Post-Rock Band". The New York Times. 1 October 2000. Retrieved on 4 November 2010.
"All Things Reconsidered: The 10th Anniversary of Radiohead's 'Kid A'" (a collection of articles). PopMatters. November 2010. Retrieved on 4 November 2010.
External links
Kid A at Discogs (list of releases) | instance of | {
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Kid A is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 2 October 2000 by Parlophone. It was recorded with their producer, Nigel Godrich, in Paris, Copenhagen, Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire.
After the stress of promoting Radiohead's 1997 album OK Computer, the songwriter, Thom Yorke, wanted to depart from rock music. Drawing influence from electronic music, ambient music, krautrock, jazz and 20th-century classical music, Radiohead used instruments such as modular synthesisers, the ondes Martenot, brass and strings. They processed guitar sounds, incorporated samples and loops, and manipulated their recordings with software. Yorke wrote impersonal and abstract lyrics, cutting up phrases and assembling them at random.
In a departure from industry practice, Radiohead released no singles or music videos and conducted few interviews and photoshoots. Instead, they released short animated "blips", and became one of the first major acts to use the internet for promotion. Bootlegs of early performances were shared on filesharing services, and Kid A was leaked before release. In 2000, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos.
Kid A debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and became Radiohead's first number-one album on the Billboard 200 in the US, where it sold more than 207,000 copies in its first week. Its new sound divided listeners, and some dismissed it as pretentious, deliberately obscure, or derivative. However, it later attracted acclaim; at the end of the decade, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and the Times ranked Kid A the greatest album of the 2000s, and in 2020 Rolling Stone ranked it number 20 on its updated list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Like OK Computer, it won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. It has been certified platinum in Australia, Canada, France, Japan, the US and the UK.
A second album of material from the sessions, Amnesiac, was released eight months later. Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A, Amnesiac and previously unreleased material, was released in 2021.
Background
Following the critical and commercial success of their 1997 album OK Computer, the members of Radiohead suffered burnout. The songwriter, Thom Yorke, became ill, describing himself as "a complete fucking mess ... completely unhinged". He was troubled by new acts he felt were imitating Radiohead and became hostile to the music media. He told The Observer: "I always used to use music as a way of moving on and dealing with things, and I sort of felt like that the thing that helped me deal with things had been sold to the highest bidder and I was simply doing its bidding. And I couldn't handle that."Yorke suffered from writer's block and could not finish writing songs on guitar. He became disillusioned with the "mythology" of rock music, feeling the genre had "run its course". He began to listen almost exclusively to the electronic music of artists signed to the record label Warp, such as Aphex Twin and Autechre. Yorke said: "It was refreshing because the music was all structures and had no human voices in it. But I felt just as emotional about it as I'd ever felt about guitar music." He liked the idea of his voice being used as an instrument rather than having a leading role, and wanted to focus on sounds and textures instead of traditional songwriting.Yorke bought a house in Cornwall and spent his time walking the cliffs and drawing, restricting his musical activity to playing the grand piano he had recently bought. "Everything in Its Right Place" was the first song he wrote. He described himself as a "shit piano player", with little knowledge of electronic instruments: "I remember this Tom Waits quote from years ago, that what keeps him going as a songwriter is his complete ignorance of the instruments he's using. So everything's a novelty. That's one of the reasons I wanted to get into computers and synths, because I didn't understand how the fuck they worked. I had no idea what ADSR meant."The guitarist Ed O'Brien had hoped Radiohead's fourth album would comprise short, melodic guitar songs, but Yorke said: "There was no chance of the album sounding like that. I'd completely had it with melody. I just wanted rhythm. All melodies to me were pure embarrassment." The bassist, Colin Greenwood, said: "We felt we had to change everything. There were other guitar bands out there trying to do similar things. We had to move on."
Recording
In the late 1990s, Radiohead began building their own studio in Oxfordshire. Yorke planned to use it as the German band Can had used their studio in Cologne, recording everything they played and then editing it. However, as the studio would not be complete until late 1999, Radiohead began work in Guillaime Tell Studios, Paris, in January 1999.Radiohead worked with the OK Computer producer Nigel Godrich and no deadline. Yorke, who had the greatest control, was still facing writer's block. His new songs were incomplete, and some consisted of little more than sounds or rhythms; few had clear verses or choruses. Yorke's lack of lyrics created problems, as these had provided points of reference and inspiration for his bandmates in the past.The group struggled with Yorke's new direction. According to Godrich, Yorke did not communicate much, and according to Yorke, Godrich "didn't understand why, if we had such a strength in one thing, we would want to do something else". The lead guitarist, Jonny Greenwood, feared "awful art-rock nonsense just for its own sake". His brother, Colin, did not enjoy Yorke's Warp influences, finding them "really cold". The other band members were unsure of how to contribute, and considered leaving. O'Brien said: "It's scary – everyone feels insecure. I'm a guitarist and suddenly it's like, well, there are no guitars on this track, or no drums."Radiohead experimented with electronic instruments including modular synthesisers and the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument similar to a theremin, and used software such as Pro Tools and Cubase to edit and manipulate their recordings. They found it difficult to use electronic instruments collaboratively; according to Yorke, "We had to develop ways of going off into corners and build things on whatever sequencer, synthesiser or piece of machinery we would bring to the equation and then integrate that into the way we would normally work." O'Brien began using sustain units, which allow guitar notes to be sustained infinitely, combined with looping and delay effects to create synthesiser-like sounds.In March, Radiohead moved to Medley Studios in Copenhagen for two weeks, which were unproductive. The sessions produced about 50 reels of tape, each containing 15 minutes of music, with nothing finished. In April, Radiohead resumed recording in a mansion in Batsford Park, Gloucestershire. The lack of deadline and the number of incomplete ideas made it hard to focus, and the group held tense meetings. They agreed to disband if they could not agree on an album worth releasing.In July, O'Brien began keeping an online diary of Radiohead's progress. Radiohead moved to their new studio in Oxfordshire in September. In November, Radiohead held a live webcast from their studio, featuring a performance of new music and a DJ set. By 2000, six songs were complete. In January, at Godrich's suggestion, Radiohead split into two groups: one would generate a sound or sequence without acoustic instruments such as guitars or drums, and the other would develop it. Though the experiment produced no finished songs, it helped convince O'Brien of the potential of electronic instruments.On 19 April 2000, Yorke wrote on Radiohead's website that they had finished recording. Having completed over 20 songs, Radiohead considered releasing a double album, but felt the material was too dense. Instead, they saved half the songs for their next album, Amnesiac, released the following year. Yorke said Radiohead split the work into two albums because "they cancel each other out as overall finished things. They come from two different places." He observed that deciding the track list was not just a matter of choosing the best songs, as "you can put all the best songs in the world on a record and they'll ruin each other". He cited the later Beatles albums as examples of effective sequencing: "How in the hell can you have three different versions of 'Revolution' on the same record and get away with it? I thought about that sort of thing." Agreeing on the track list created arguments, and O'Brien said the band came close to breaking up: "That felt like it could go either way, it could break ... But we came in the next day and it was resolved." The album was mastered by Chris Blair in Abbey Road Studios, London.
Tracks
Radiohead worked on the first track, "Everything in Its Right Place", in a conventional band arrangement in Copenhagen and Paris, but without results. In Gloucestershire, Yorke and Godrich transferred the song to a Prophet-5 synthesiser, and Yorke's vocals were processed in Pro Tools using a scrubbing tool. O'Brien and the drummer, Philip Selway, said the track helped them accept that not every song needed every band member to play on it. O'Brien recalled: "To be genuinely sort of delighted that you'd been working for six months on this record and something great has come out of it, and you haven't contributed to it, is a really liberating feeling." Jonny Greenwood described it as a turning point for the album: "We knew it had to be the first song, and everything just followed after it."Yorke wrote an early version of "The National Anthem" when the band was still in school. In 1997, Radiohead recorded drums and bass for the song, intending to develop it as a B-side for OK Computer, but decided to keep it for their next album. For Kid A, Greenwood added ondes Martenot and sounds sampled from radio stations, and Yorke's vocals were processed with a ring modulator. In November 1999, Radiohead recorded a brass section inspired by the "organised chaos" of Town Hall Concert by the jazz musician Charles Mingus, instructing the musicians to sound like a "traffic jam".The strings on "How to Disappear Completely" were performed by the Orchestra of St John's and recorded in Dorchester Abbey, a 12th-century church about five miles from Radiohead's Oxfordshire studio. Radiohead chose the orchestra as they had performed pieces by Penderecki and Messiaen. Jonny Greenwood, the only Radiohead member trained in music theory, composed the string arrangement by multitracking his ondes Martenot. According to Godrich, when the orchestra members saw Greenwood's score "they all just sort of burst into giggles, because they couldn't do what he'd written, because it was impossible – or impossible for them, anyway". The orchestra leader, John Lubbock, encouraged them to experiment and work with Greenwood's ideas. The concerts director, Alison Atkinson, said the session was more experimental than the orchestra's usual bookings.
"Idioteque" samples two computer music pieces, Paul Lansky's "Mild und Leise" and Arthur Kreiger's "Short Piece". Both samples were taken from Electronic Music Winners, a 1976 experimental music LP which Jonny Greenwood stumbled upon while the band was working on Kid A. The track was built from a drum machine pattern Greenwood created with a modular synthesiser and a sample from "Mild und Leise". He gave the 50-minute recording to Yorke, who took a short section of it and used it to write the song. Yorke also referred to electronic dance music when talking about "Idioteque", and said that the song was "an attempt to capture that exploding beat sound where you're at the club and the PA's so loud, you know it's doing damage"."Motion Picture Soundtrack" was written before Radiohead's debut single "Creep" (1992), and Radiohead recorded a version on piano during the OK Computer sessions. For Kid A, Yorke recorded it on a pedal organ, influenced by the songwriter Tom Waits. The band added harp samples and double bass, attempting to emulate the soundtracks of 1950s Disney films. Radiohead also worked on several songs they did not complete until the recording sessions for future albums, including "Nude", "Burn the Witch" and "True Love Waits".
Music
Style and influences
Kid A incorporates influences from electronic artists on Warp Records such as 1990s IDM artists Autechre and Aphex Twin; 1970s Krautrock bands such as Can; the jazz of Charles Mingus, Alice Coltrane and Miles Davis; and abstract hip hop from the Mo'Wax label, including Blackalicious and DJ Krush. Yorke cited Remain in Light (1980) by Talking Heads as a "massive reference point". Björk was another major influence, particularly her 1997 album Homogenic, as was the Beta Band. Radiohead attended an Underworld concert which helped renew their enthusiasm in a difficult moment.The string orchestration for "How to Disappear Completely" was influenced by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. Jonny Greenwood's use of the ondes Martenot on several songs was inspired by Olivier Messiaen, who popularised the instrument and was one of Greenwood's teenage heroes. Greenwood described his interest in mixing old and new music technology, and during the recording sessions Yorke read Ian MacDonald's Revolution in the Head, which chronicles the Beatles' recordings with George Martin during the 1960s. The band also sought to combine electronic manipulations with jam sessions in the studio, saying their model was the German band Can.Kid A has been described as a work of electronica, experimental rock, post-rock, alternative rock, post-prog, ambient, electronic rock, art rock, and art pop. Though guitar is less prominent than on previous Radiohead albums, guitars were still used on most tracks. "Treefingers", an ambient instrumental, was created by digitally processing O'Brien's guitar loops. Many of Yorke's vocals were manipulated with effects; for example, his vocals on the title track were simply spoken, then vocoded with the ondes Martenot to create the melody.
Lyrics
Yorke's lyrics on Kid A are less personal than on earlier albums, and instead incorporate abstract and surreal themes. He cut up phrases and assembled them at random, combining cliches and banal observations; for example, "Morning Bell" features repeated contrasting lines such as "Where'd you park the car?" and "Cut the kids in half". Yorke denied that he was "trying to get anything across" with the lyrics, and described them as "like shattered bits of mirror ... like pieces of something broken. ... it's not like I'm trying to get anything across."Yorke cited David Byrne's approach to lyrics on Remain in Light as an influence: "When they made that record, they had no real songs, just wrote it all as they went along. Byrne turned up with pages and pages, and just picked stuff up and threw bits in all the time. And that's exactly how I approached Kid A." Radiohead used Yorke's lyrics "like pieces in a collage ... [creating] an artwork out of a lot of different little things". The lyrics are not included in the liner notes, as Radiohead felt they could not be considered independently of the music, and Yorke did not want listeners to focus on them.Yorke wrote "Everything in Its Right Place" about the depression he experienced on the OK Computer tour, feeling he could not speak. The refrain of "How to Disappear Completely" was inspired by R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe, who advised Yorke to relieve tour stress by repeating to himself: "I'm not here, this isn't happening". The refrain of "Optimistic" ("try the best you can / the best you can is good enough") was an assurance by Yorke's partner, Rachel Owen, when Yorke was frustrated with the band's progress. The title Kid A came from a filename on one of Yorke's sequencers. Yorke said he liked its "non-meaning", saying: "If you call [an album] something specific, it drives the record in a certain way."
Artwork
The Kid A artwork and packaging was created by Yorke with Stanley Donwood, who has worked with Radiohead since their 1994 EP My Iron Lung. Donwood painted on large canvases with knives and sticks, then photographed the paintings and manipulated them with Photoshop. While working on the artwork, Yorke and Donwood became "obsessed" with the Worldwatch Institute website, which was full of "scary statistics about ice caps melting, and weather patterns changing"; this inspired them to use an image of a mountain range as the cover art. Donwood said he saw the mountains as "some sort of cataclysmic power".Donwood was inspired by a photograph taken during the Kosovo War depicting a square metre of snow full of the "detritus of war", such as military equipment and cigarette stains. He said: "I was upset by it in a way war had never upset me before. It felt like it was happening in my street." The red swimming pool on the album spine and disc was inspired by the 1988 graphic novel Brought to Light by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz, in which the number of people killed by state terrorism is measured in swimming pools filled with blood. Donwood said this image "haunted" him during the recording of the album, calling it "a symbol of looming danger and shattered expectations". Yorke and Donwood cited a Paris exhibition of paintings by David Hockney as another influence.Yorke and Donwood made many versions of the album cover, with different pictures and different titles in different typefaces. Unable to pick one, they taped them to cupboards of the studio kitchen and went to bed. According to Donwood, the choice the next day "was obvious". In October 2021, Yorke and Donwood curated an exhibition of Kid A artwork at Christie's headquarters in London.
Promotion
Radiohead minimised their involvement in promotion for Kid A, conducting few interviews or photoshoots. Though "Optimistic" and promotional copies of other tracks received radio play, Radiohead released no singles from the album. Yorke said this was to avoid the stress of publicity, which he had struggled with on OK Computer, rather than for artistic reasons.Radiohead were careful to present it as a cohesive work rather than a series of separate tracks. Rather than give EMI executives their own copies, they had them listen to the album in its entirety on a bus from Hollywood to Malibu. Rob Gordon, the vice president of marketing at Capitol Records, the American subsidiary of Radiohead's label EMI, praised the album but said promoting it would be a "business challenge".No advance copies of Kid A were circulated, but it was played under controlled conditions for critics and fans. On September 5, 2000, it was played for the public for the first time at the IMAX theatre in Lincoln Square, Manhattan. Promotional copies of Kid A came with stickers prohibiting broadcast before September 19. At midnight, it was played in its entirety by the London radio station Xfm. MTV2, KROQ, and WXRK also played the album.Rather than agree to a standard magazine photoshoot for Q, Radiohead supplied digitally altered portraits, with their skin smoothed, their irises recoloured, and Yorke's drooping eyelid removed. The Q editor Andrew Harrison described the images as "aggressively weird to the point of taking the piss ... All five of Radiohead had been given the aspect of gawking aliens." Yorke said: "I'd like to see them try to put these pictures on a poster." Q projected the images onto the Houses of Parliament, placed them on posters and billboards in the London Underground and on the Old Street Roundabout, and had them printed on key rings, mugs and mouse mats, to "turn Radiohead back into a product".
Videos
Instead of releasing traditional music videos for Kid A, Radiohead commissioned dozens of 10-second videos featuring Donwood artwork they called "blips", which were aired on music channels and distributed online. Pitchfork described them as "context-free animated nightmares that radiated mystery", with "arch hints of surveillance". Five of the videos were serviced as exclusives to MTV, and "helped play into the arty mystique that endeared Radiohead to its core audience", according to Billboard. Much of the promotional material featured pointy-toothed bear characters created by Donwood. The bears originated in stories Donwood made for his young children about teddy bears who came to life and ate the "grown-ups" who had abandoned them.
Internet
Though Radiohead had experimented with internet promotion for OK Computer in 1997, by 2000 online music promotion was not widespread, with record labels still reliant on MTV and radio. Donwood wrote that EMI was not interested in the Radiohead website, and left him and the band to update it with "discursive and random content".To promote Kid A, Capitol created the "iBlip", a Java applet that could be embedded in fan sites. It allowed users to stream the album, and included artwork, photos and links to order Kid A on Amazon. It was used by more than 1000 sites, and the album was streamed more than 400,000 times. Capitol also streamed Kid A through Amazon, MTV.com and heavy.com, and ran a campaign with the peer-to-peer filesharing service Aimster, allowing users to swap iBlips and Radiohead-branded Aimster skins.Three weeks before release, Kid A was leaked online and shared on the peer-to-peer service Napster. Asked whether he believed Napster had damaged sales, Capitol president Ray Lott likened the situation to unfounded concern about home taping in the 1980s and said: "I'm trying to sell as many Radiohead albums as possible. If I worried about what Napster would do, I wouldn't sell as many albums." Yorke said Napster "encourages enthusiasm for music in a way that the music industry has long forgotten to do".
Tour
Radiohead rearranged the Kid A songs to perform them live. O'Brien said, "You couldn't do Kid A live and be true to the record. You would have to do it like an art installation ... When we played live, we put the human element back into it." Selway said they "found some new life" in the songs when they came to perform them.In mid-2000, months before Kid A was released, Radiohead toured the Mediterranean, performing Kid A and Amnesiac songs for the first time. Fans shared concert bootlegs online. Colin Greenwood said: "We played in Barcelona and the next day the entire performance was up on Napster. Three weeks later when we got to play in Israel the audience knew the words to all the new songs and it was wonderful." Later that year, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos, playing mostly new songs. The tour included a homecoming show in South Park, Oxford, with supporting performances by Humphrey Lyttelton (who performed on Amnesiac), Beck and Sigur Rós. According to the journalist Alex Ross, the show may have been the largest public gathering in Oxford history.Radiohead also performed three concerts in North American theatres, their first in nearly three years. The small venues sold out rapidly, attracting celebrities, and fans camped overnight. In October, Radiohead performed on the American TV show Saturday Night Live; the performance shocked viewers expecting rock songs, with Jonny Greenwood playing electronic instruments, the house brass band improvising over "The National Anthem", and Yorke dancing erratically to "Idioteque". Rolling Stone described the Kid A tour as "a revelation, exposing rock and roll humanity" in the songs. In November 2001, Radiohead released I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings, comprising performances from the Kid A and Amnesiac tours.
Sales
Kid A reached number one on Amazon's sales chart, with more than 10,000 pre-orders. It debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, selling 55,000 copies in its first day – the biggest first-day sales of the year and more than every other album in the top ten combined. Kid A also debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, selling more than 207,000 copies in its first week. It was Radiohead's first US top-20 album, and the first US number one in three years for any British act. Kid A also debuted at number one in Canada, where it sold more than 44,000 copies in its first week, and in France, Ireland and New Zealand. European sales slowed on 2 October 2000, the day of release, when EMI recalled 150,000 faulty CDs. By June 2001, Kid A had sold 310,000 copies in the UK, less than a third of OK Computer sales. It is certified platinum in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Japan and the US.
Critical reception
Kid A was widely anticipated. Spin described it as the most anticipated rock record since Nirvana's In Utero. According to Andrew Harrison, the editor of Q, journalists expected it to provide more of the "rousing, cathartic, lots-of-guitar, Saturday-night-at-Glastonbury big future rock moments" of OK Computer. Months before its release, Pat Blashill of Melody Maker wrote: "If there's one band that promises to return rock to us, it's Radiohead."After Kid A had been played for critics, many bemoaned the lack of guitar, the obscured vocals and the unconventional song structures. Some called it "a commercial suicide note". The Guardian wrote of the "muted electronic hums, pulses and tones", predicting that it would confuse listeners. In Mojo, Jim Irvin wrote that "upon first listen, Kid A is just awful ... Too often it sounds like the fragments that they began the writing process with – a loop, a riff, a mumbled line of text, have been set in concrete and had other, lesser ideas piled on top." The Guardian critic Adam Sweeting wrote that "even listeners raised on krautrock or Ornette Coleman will find Kid A a mystifying experience", and that it pandered to "the worst cliches" about Radiohead's "relentless miserabilism". Several critics found the free jazz of "The National Anthem" discordant and unpleasant.Several critics felt Kid A was pretentious or deliberately obscure. The Irish Times bemoaned the lack of conventional song structures and panned the album as "deliberately abstruse, wilfully esoteric and wantonly unfathomable ... The only thing challenging about Kid A is the very real challenge to your attention span." In the New Yorker, the novelist Nick Hornby wrote that it was "morbid proof that this sort of self-indulgence results in a weird kind of anonymity rather than something distinctive and original". The Melody Maker critic Mark Beaumont called it "tubby, ostentatious, self-congratulatory, look-ma-I-can-suck-my-own-cock whiny old rubbish ... About 60 songs were started that no one had a bloody clue how to finish." Alexis Petridis of The Guardian described it as "self-consciously awkward and bloody-minded, the noise made by a band trying so hard to make a 'difficult' album that they felt it beneath them to write any songs". Rolling Stone published a piece mocking Kid A as humourless, derivative and lacking in songs: "Because it was decided that Radiohead were Important and Significant last time around, no one can accept the album as the crackpot art project it so obviously is."Some critics felt Kid A was unoriginal. In the New York Times, Howard Hampton dismissed Radiohead as a "rock composite" and wrote that Kid A "recycles Pink Floyd's dark-side-of-the-moon solipsism to Me-Decade perfection". Beaumont said Radiohead were "simply ploughing furrows dug by DJ Shadow and Brian Eno before them". The Irish Times felt the ambient elements were inferior to Eno's 1978 album Music For Airports and its "scary" elements inferior to Scott Walker's 1995 album Tilt. Select wrote: "What do they want for sounding like the Aphex Twin circa 1993, a medal?" In a retrospective, the journalist Rob Sheffield wrote that the "mastery of Warp-style electronic effects" had appeared "clumsy and dated" at the time of Kid A's release. In an NME editorial, James Oldham wrote that the electronic influences were "mired in compromise", with Radiohead still operating as a rock band, and concluded: "Time will judge it. But right now, Kid A has the ring of a lengthy, over-analysed mistake." Rob Mitchell, the co-founder of Warp, felt Kid A represented "an honest interpretation of [Warp] influences" and was not "gratuitously" electronic. He predicted it might one day be seen in the same way as David Bowie's 1977 album Low, which alienated some Bowie fans but was later acclaimed.AllMusic gave Kid A a favourable review, but wrote that it "never is as visionary or stunning as OK Computer, nor does it really repay the intensive time it demands in order for it to sink in". The NME was also positive, but described some songs as "meandering" and "anticlimactic", and concluded: "For all its feats of brinkmanship, the patently magnificent construct called Kid A betrays a band playing one-handed just to prove they can, scared to commit itself emotionally." In Rolling Stone, David Fricke called Kid A "a work of deliberately inky, often irritating obsession ... But this is pop, a music of ornery, glistening guile and honest ache, and it will feel good under your skin once you let it get there."Spin said Kid A was "not the act of career suicide or feat of self-indulgence it will be castigated as", and predicted that fans would recognise it as Radiohead's best and "bravest" album. Billboard described it as "an ocean of unparalleled musical depth" and "the first truly groundbreaking album of the 21st century". The music critic Robert Christgau wrote that Kid A was "an imaginative, imitative variation on a pop staple: sadness made pretty". The Village Voice called it "oblique oblique oblique ... Also incredibly beautiful." Brent DiCrescenzo of Pitchfork gave Kid A a perfect score, calling it "cacophonous yet tranquil, experimental yet familiar, foreign yet womb-like, spacious yet visceral, textured yet vaporous, awakening yet dreamlike". He concluded that Radiohead "must be the greatest band alive, if not the best since you know who". One of the first Kid A reviews posted online, DiCrescenzo's review helped popularise Pitchfork and became notorious for its "obtuse" writing.At Metacritic, which aggregates ratings from critics, Kid A has a score of 80 based on 24 reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews". It was named one of the best albums of 2000 by publications including the Los Angeles Times, Spin, Melody Maker, Mojo, NME, Pitchfork, Q, the Times, Uncut and the Wire. At the 2001 Grammy Awards, Kid A was nominated for Album of the Year and won for Best Alternative Album.
Legacy
In the years following its release, Kid A attracted acclaim. In 2005, Pitchfork wrote that it had "challenged and confounded" Radiohead's audience, and subsequently "transformed into an intellectual symbol of sorts ... Owning it became 'getting it'; getting it became 'anointing it'." In 2015, Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone likened Radiohead's change in style to Bob Dylan's controversial move to rock music, writing that critics now hesitated to say they had disliked it at the time. He described Kid A as the "defining moment in the Radiohead legend". A year later, Billboard argued that Kid A was the first album since Bowie's Low to have moved "rock and electronic music forward in such a mature fashion". In an article for Kid A's 20th anniversary, the Quietus suggested that the negative reviews had been motivated by rockism, the tendency among music critics to venerate rock music over other genres.In a 2011 Guardian article about his critical Melody Maker review, Beaumont wrote that though his opinion had not changed, "Kid A's status as a cultural cornerstone has proved me, if not wrong, then very much in the minority ... People whose opinions I trust claim it to be their favourite album ever." In 2014, Brice Ezell of PopMatters wrote that Kid A is "more fun to think and write about than it is to actually listen to" and a "far less compelling representation of the band's talents than The Bends and OK Computer". In 2016, Dorian Lysnkey wrote in The Guardian: "At times, Kid A is dull enough to make you fervently wish that they'd merged the highlights with the best bits of the similarly spotty Amnesiac ... Yorke had given up on coherent lyrics so one can only guess at what he was worrying about."Radiohead denied that they had set out to create "difficult" music. Jonny Greenwood argued that the tracks were short and melodic, and suggested that "people basically want their hands held through 12 'Mull Of Kintyre's". Yorke said: "We're actually trying to communicate but, somewhere along the line, we just seemed to piss off a lot of people ... What we're doing isn't that radical." He recalled that the band had been "white as a sheet" before early performances on the Kid A tour, thinking they had been "absolutely trashed". At the same time, the reaction motivated them: "There was a sense of a fight to convince people, which was actually really exciting." He regretted having released no singles, feeling it meant much of the early judgement of the album came from critics.Grantland credited Kid A for pioneering the use of internet to stream and promote music, writing: "For many music fans of a certain age and persuasion, Kid A was the first album experienced primarily via the internet – it's where you went to hear it, read the reviews, and argue about whether it was a masterpiece ... Listen early, form an opinion quickly, state it publicly, and move on to the next big record by the official release date. In that way, Kid A invented modern music culture as we know it." In his 2005 book Killing Yourself to Live, critic Chuck Klosterman interpreted Kid A as a prediction of the September 11 attacks.Speaking at Radiohead's induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2019, David Byrne of Talking Heads, one of Radiohead's formative influences, said: "What was really weird and very encouraging was that [Kid A] was popular. It was a hit! It proved to me that the artistic risk paid off and music fans sometimes are not stupid." In 2020, Billboard wrote that the success of Kid A, despite its "challenging" content, established Radiohead as "heavy hitters in the business for the long run".
Accolades
In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked Kid A number 20 on its updated "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list, describing it as "a new, uniquely fearless kind of rock record for a new, increasingly fearful century ... [It] remains one of the more stunning sonic makeovers in music history." In previous versions of the list, Kid A ranked at number 67 (2012) and number 428 (2003). In 2005, Stylus and Pitchfork named Kid A the best album of the previous five years, with Pitchfork calling it "the perfect record for its time: ominous, surreal, and impossibly millennial".In 2006, Time named Kid A one of the 100 best albums, calling it "the opposite of easy listening, and the weirdest album to ever sell a million copies, but ... also a testament to just how complicated pop music can be". At the end of the decade, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and the Times ranked Kid A the greatest album of the 2000s. The Guardian ranked it second best, calling it "a jittery premonition of the troubled, disconnected, overloaded decade to come. The sound of today, in other words, a decade early." In 2021, Pitchfork readers voted Kid A the greatest album of the previous 25 years. In 2011, Rolling Stone named "Everything in Its Right Place" the 24th-best song of the 2000s, describing it as "oddness at its most hummable". "Idioteque" was named one of the best songs of the decade by Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, and Rolling Stone ranked it #33 on its 2018 list of the "greatest songs of the century so far".
(*) designates unordered list
Reissues
Radiohead left EMI after their contract ended in 2003. After a period of being out of print on vinyl, Kid A was reissued as a double LP on 19 August 2008 as part of the "From the Capitol Vaults" series, along with other Radiohead albums. In 2007, EMI released Radiohead Box Set, a compilation of albums recorded while Radiohead were signed to EMI, including Kid A. On 25 August 2009, EMI reissued Kid A in a two-CD "Collector's Edition" and a "Special Collector's Edition" containing an additional DVD. Both versions feature live tracks, taken mostly from television performances. Radiohead had no input into the reissues and the music was not remastered.The EMI reissues were discontinued after Radiohead's back catalogue transferred to XL Recordings in 2016. In May 2016, XL reissued Kid A on vinyl, along with the rest of Radiohead's back catalogue. An early demo of "The National Anthem" was included in the special edition of the 2017 OK Computer reissue OKNOTOK 1997 2017. In February 2020, Radiohead released an extended version of "Treefingers", previously released on the soundtrack for the 2000 film Memento, to digital platforms.On November 5, 2021, Radiohead released Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A and Amnesiac. It includes a third album, Kid Amnesiae, comprising previously unreleased material from the sessions. Radiohead promoted the reissue with singles for the previously unreleased tracks "If You Say the Word" and "Follow Me Around". Kid A Mnesia Exhibition, an interactive experience with music and artwork from the albums, was released on November 18 for PlayStation 5, macOS and Windows.
Track listing
All songs written by Radiohead, except "Idioteque", which samples "Mild und Leise" by Paul Lansky and "Short Piece" by Arthur Kreiger.
"Everything in Its Right Place" – 4:11
"Kid A" – 4:44
"The National Anthem" – 5:51
"How to Disappear Completely" – 5:56
"Treefingers" – 3:42
"Optimistic" – 5:15
"In Limbo" – 3:31
"Idioteque" – 5:09
"Morning Bell" – 4:35
"Motion Picture Soundtrack" – 7:01
Untitled hidden track – 0:52Note: Track 10 ends at 3:20; includes an untitled hidden track from 4:17 until 5:09, followed by 1:51 of silence. On streaming services, the hidden track is listed as a separate track.
Personnel
Credits adapted from liner notes.
Charts
Certifications and sales
Notes
References
Bibliography
Randall, Mac (2012). Exit Music: The Radiohead Story Updated Edition. ISBN 9781617130472.
Further reading
Lin, Marvin (25 November 2010). Radiohead's Kid A. 33⅓ series. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8264-2343-6.
Ed's Diary: Archived 13 April 2007 at the Wayback Machine Ed O'Brien's studio diary from Kid A/Amnesiac recording sessions, 1999–2000 (archived at Green Plastic)
Marzorati, Gerald. "The Post-Rock Band". The New York Times. 1 October 2000. Retrieved on 4 November 2010.
"All Things Reconsidered: The 10th Anniversary of Radiohead's 'Kid A'" (a collection of articles). PopMatters. November 2010. Retrieved on 4 November 2010.
External links
Kid A at Discogs (list of releases) | genre | {
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"alternative rock"
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Kid A is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 2 October 2000 by Parlophone. It was recorded with their producer, Nigel Godrich, in Paris, Copenhagen, Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire.
After the stress of promoting Radiohead's 1997 album OK Computer, the songwriter, Thom Yorke, wanted to depart from rock music. Drawing influence from electronic music, ambient music, krautrock, jazz and 20th-century classical music, Radiohead used instruments such as modular synthesisers, the ondes Martenot, brass and strings. They processed guitar sounds, incorporated samples and loops, and manipulated their recordings with software. Yorke wrote impersonal and abstract lyrics, cutting up phrases and assembling them at random.
In a departure from industry practice, Radiohead released no singles or music videos and conducted few interviews and photoshoots. Instead, they released short animated "blips", and became one of the first major acts to use the internet for promotion. Bootlegs of early performances were shared on filesharing services, and Kid A was leaked before release. In 2000, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos.
Kid A debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and became Radiohead's first number-one album on the Billboard 200 in the US, where it sold more than 207,000 copies in its first week. Its new sound divided listeners, and some dismissed it as pretentious, deliberately obscure, or derivative. However, it later attracted acclaim; at the end of the decade, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and the Times ranked Kid A the greatest album of the 2000s, and in 2020 Rolling Stone ranked it number 20 on its updated list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Like OK Computer, it won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. It has been certified platinum in Australia, Canada, France, Japan, the US and the UK.
A second album of material from the sessions, Amnesiac, was released eight months later. Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A, Amnesiac and previously unreleased material, was released in 2021.
Background
Following the critical and commercial success of their 1997 album OK Computer, the members of Radiohead suffered burnout. The songwriter, Thom Yorke, became ill, describing himself as "a complete fucking mess ... completely unhinged". He was troubled by new acts he felt were imitating Radiohead and became hostile to the music media. He told The Observer: "I always used to use music as a way of moving on and dealing with things, and I sort of felt like that the thing that helped me deal with things had been sold to the highest bidder and I was simply doing its bidding. And I couldn't handle that."Yorke suffered from writer's block and could not finish writing songs on guitar. He became disillusioned with the "mythology" of rock music, feeling the genre had "run its course". He began to listen almost exclusively to the electronic music of artists signed to the record label Warp, such as Aphex Twin and Autechre. Yorke said: "It was refreshing because the music was all structures and had no human voices in it. But I felt just as emotional about it as I'd ever felt about guitar music." He liked the idea of his voice being used as an instrument rather than having a leading role, and wanted to focus on sounds and textures instead of traditional songwriting.Yorke bought a house in Cornwall and spent his time walking the cliffs and drawing, restricting his musical activity to playing the grand piano he had recently bought. "Everything in Its Right Place" was the first song he wrote. He described himself as a "shit piano player", with little knowledge of electronic instruments: "I remember this Tom Waits quote from years ago, that what keeps him going as a songwriter is his complete ignorance of the instruments he's using. So everything's a novelty. That's one of the reasons I wanted to get into computers and synths, because I didn't understand how the fuck they worked. I had no idea what ADSR meant."The guitarist Ed O'Brien had hoped Radiohead's fourth album would comprise short, melodic guitar songs, but Yorke said: "There was no chance of the album sounding like that. I'd completely had it with melody. I just wanted rhythm. All melodies to me were pure embarrassment." The bassist, Colin Greenwood, said: "We felt we had to change everything. There were other guitar bands out there trying to do similar things. We had to move on."
Recording
In the late 1990s, Radiohead began building their own studio in Oxfordshire. Yorke planned to use it as the German band Can had used their studio in Cologne, recording everything they played and then editing it. However, as the studio would not be complete until late 1999, Radiohead began work in Guillaime Tell Studios, Paris, in January 1999.Radiohead worked with the OK Computer producer Nigel Godrich and no deadline. Yorke, who had the greatest control, was still facing writer's block. His new songs were incomplete, and some consisted of little more than sounds or rhythms; few had clear verses or choruses. Yorke's lack of lyrics created problems, as these had provided points of reference and inspiration for his bandmates in the past.The group struggled with Yorke's new direction. According to Godrich, Yorke did not communicate much, and according to Yorke, Godrich "didn't understand why, if we had such a strength in one thing, we would want to do something else". The lead guitarist, Jonny Greenwood, feared "awful art-rock nonsense just for its own sake". His brother, Colin, did not enjoy Yorke's Warp influences, finding them "really cold". The other band members were unsure of how to contribute, and considered leaving. O'Brien said: "It's scary – everyone feels insecure. I'm a guitarist and suddenly it's like, well, there are no guitars on this track, or no drums."Radiohead experimented with electronic instruments including modular synthesisers and the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument similar to a theremin, and used software such as Pro Tools and Cubase to edit and manipulate their recordings. They found it difficult to use electronic instruments collaboratively; according to Yorke, "We had to develop ways of going off into corners and build things on whatever sequencer, synthesiser or piece of machinery we would bring to the equation and then integrate that into the way we would normally work." O'Brien began using sustain units, which allow guitar notes to be sustained infinitely, combined with looping and delay effects to create synthesiser-like sounds.In March, Radiohead moved to Medley Studios in Copenhagen for two weeks, which were unproductive. The sessions produced about 50 reels of tape, each containing 15 minutes of music, with nothing finished. In April, Radiohead resumed recording in a mansion in Batsford Park, Gloucestershire. The lack of deadline and the number of incomplete ideas made it hard to focus, and the group held tense meetings. They agreed to disband if they could not agree on an album worth releasing.In July, O'Brien began keeping an online diary of Radiohead's progress. Radiohead moved to their new studio in Oxfordshire in September. In November, Radiohead held a live webcast from their studio, featuring a performance of new music and a DJ set. By 2000, six songs were complete. In January, at Godrich's suggestion, Radiohead split into two groups: one would generate a sound or sequence without acoustic instruments such as guitars or drums, and the other would develop it. Though the experiment produced no finished songs, it helped convince O'Brien of the potential of electronic instruments.On 19 April 2000, Yorke wrote on Radiohead's website that they had finished recording. Having completed over 20 songs, Radiohead considered releasing a double album, but felt the material was too dense. Instead, they saved half the songs for their next album, Amnesiac, released the following year. Yorke said Radiohead split the work into two albums because "they cancel each other out as overall finished things. They come from two different places." He observed that deciding the track list was not just a matter of choosing the best songs, as "you can put all the best songs in the world on a record and they'll ruin each other". He cited the later Beatles albums as examples of effective sequencing: "How in the hell can you have three different versions of 'Revolution' on the same record and get away with it? I thought about that sort of thing." Agreeing on the track list created arguments, and O'Brien said the band came close to breaking up: "That felt like it could go either way, it could break ... But we came in the next day and it was resolved." The album was mastered by Chris Blair in Abbey Road Studios, London.
Tracks
Radiohead worked on the first track, "Everything in Its Right Place", in a conventional band arrangement in Copenhagen and Paris, but without results. In Gloucestershire, Yorke and Godrich transferred the song to a Prophet-5 synthesiser, and Yorke's vocals were processed in Pro Tools using a scrubbing tool. O'Brien and the drummer, Philip Selway, said the track helped them accept that not every song needed every band member to play on it. O'Brien recalled: "To be genuinely sort of delighted that you'd been working for six months on this record and something great has come out of it, and you haven't contributed to it, is a really liberating feeling." Jonny Greenwood described it as a turning point for the album: "We knew it had to be the first song, and everything just followed after it."Yorke wrote an early version of "The National Anthem" when the band was still in school. In 1997, Radiohead recorded drums and bass for the song, intending to develop it as a B-side for OK Computer, but decided to keep it for their next album. For Kid A, Greenwood added ondes Martenot and sounds sampled from radio stations, and Yorke's vocals were processed with a ring modulator. In November 1999, Radiohead recorded a brass section inspired by the "organised chaos" of Town Hall Concert by the jazz musician Charles Mingus, instructing the musicians to sound like a "traffic jam".The strings on "How to Disappear Completely" were performed by the Orchestra of St John's and recorded in Dorchester Abbey, a 12th-century church about five miles from Radiohead's Oxfordshire studio. Radiohead chose the orchestra as they had performed pieces by Penderecki and Messiaen. Jonny Greenwood, the only Radiohead member trained in music theory, composed the string arrangement by multitracking his ondes Martenot. According to Godrich, when the orchestra members saw Greenwood's score "they all just sort of burst into giggles, because they couldn't do what he'd written, because it was impossible – or impossible for them, anyway". The orchestra leader, John Lubbock, encouraged them to experiment and work with Greenwood's ideas. The concerts director, Alison Atkinson, said the session was more experimental than the orchestra's usual bookings.
"Idioteque" samples two computer music pieces, Paul Lansky's "Mild und Leise" and Arthur Kreiger's "Short Piece". Both samples were taken from Electronic Music Winners, a 1976 experimental music LP which Jonny Greenwood stumbled upon while the band was working on Kid A. The track was built from a drum machine pattern Greenwood created with a modular synthesiser and a sample from "Mild und Leise". He gave the 50-minute recording to Yorke, who took a short section of it and used it to write the song. Yorke also referred to electronic dance music when talking about "Idioteque", and said that the song was "an attempt to capture that exploding beat sound where you're at the club and the PA's so loud, you know it's doing damage"."Motion Picture Soundtrack" was written before Radiohead's debut single "Creep" (1992), and Radiohead recorded a version on piano during the OK Computer sessions. For Kid A, Yorke recorded it on a pedal organ, influenced by the songwriter Tom Waits. The band added harp samples and double bass, attempting to emulate the soundtracks of 1950s Disney films. Radiohead also worked on several songs they did not complete until the recording sessions for future albums, including "Nude", "Burn the Witch" and "True Love Waits".
Music
Style and influences
Kid A incorporates influences from electronic artists on Warp Records such as 1990s IDM artists Autechre and Aphex Twin; 1970s Krautrock bands such as Can; the jazz of Charles Mingus, Alice Coltrane and Miles Davis; and abstract hip hop from the Mo'Wax label, including Blackalicious and DJ Krush. Yorke cited Remain in Light (1980) by Talking Heads as a "massive reference point". Björk was another major influence, particularly her 1997 album Homogenic, as was the Beta Band. Radiohead attended an Underworld concert which helped renew their enthusiasm in a difficult moment.The string orchestration for "How to Disappear Completely" was influenced by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. Jonny Greenwood's use of the ondes Martenot on several songs was inspired by Olivier Messiaen, who popularised the instrument and was one of Greenwood's teenage heroes. Greenwood described his interest in mixing old and new music technology, and during the recording sessions Yorke read Ian MacDonald's Revolution in the Head, which chronicles the Beatles' recordings with George Martin during the 1960s. The band also sought to combine electronic manipulations with jam sessions in the studio, saying their model was the German band Can.Kid A has been described as a work of electronica, experimental rock, post-rock, alternative rock, post-prog, ambient, electronic rock, art rock, and art pop. Though guitar is less prominent than on previous Radiohead albums, guitars were still used on most tracks. "Treefingers", an ambient instrumental, was created by digitally processing O'Brien's guitar loops. Many of Yorke's vocals were manipulated with effects; for example, his vocals on the title track were simply spoken, then vocoded with the ondes Martenot to create the melody.
Lyrics
Yorke's lyrics on Kid A are less personal than on earlier albums, and instead incorporate abstract and surreal themes. He cut up phrases and assembled them at random, combining cliches and banal observations; for example, "Morning Bell" features repeated contrasting lines such as "Where'd you park the car?" and "Cut the kids in half". Yorke denied that he was "trying to get anything across" with the lyrics, and described them as "like shattered bits of mirror ... like pieces of something broken. ... it's not like I'm trying to get anything across."Yorke cited David Byrne's approach to lyrics on Remain in Light as an influence: "When they made that record, they had no real songs, just wrote it all as they went along. Byrne turned up with pages and pages, and just picked stuff up and threw bits in all the time. And that's exactly how I approached Kid A." Radiohead used Yorke's lyrics "like pieces in a collage ... [creating] an artwork out of a lot of different little things". The lyrics are not included in the liner notes, as Radiohead felt they could not be considered independently of the music, and Yorke did not want listeners to focus on them.Yorke wrote "Everything in Its Right Place" about the depression he experienced on the OK Computer tour, feeling he could not speak. The refrain of "How to Disappear Completely" was inspired by R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe, who advised Yorke to relieve tour stress by repeating to himself: "I'm not here, this isn't happening". The refrain of "Optimistic" ("try the best you can / the best you can is good enough") was an assurance by Yorke's partner, Rachel Owen, when Yorke was frustrated with the band's progress. The title Kid A came from a filename on one of Yorke's sequencers. Yorke said he liked its "non-meaning", saying: "If you call [an album] something specific, it drives the record in a certain way."
Artwork
The Kid A artwork and packaging was created by Yorke with Stanley Donwood, who has worked with Radiohead since their 1994 EP My Iron Lung. Donwood painted on large canvases with knives and sticks, then photographed the paintings and manipulated them with Photoshop. While working on the artwork, Yorke and Donwood became "obsessed" with the Worldwatch Institute website, which was full of "scary statistics about ice caps melting, and weather patterns changing"; this inspired them to use an image of a mountain range as the cover art. Donwood said he saw the mountains as "some sort of cataclysmic power".Donwood was inspired by a photograph taken during the Kosovo War depicting a square metre of snow full of the "detritus of war", such as military equipment and cigarette stains. He said: "I was upset by it in a way war had never upset me before. It felt like it was happening in my street." The red swimming pool on the album spine and disc was inspired by the 1988 graphic novel Brought to Light by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz, in which the number of people killed by state terrorism is measured in swimming pools filled with blood. Donwood said this image "haunted" him during the recording of the album, calling it "a symbol of looming danger and shattered expectations". Yorke and Donwood cited a Paris exhibition of paintings by David Hockney as another influence.Yorke and Donwood made many versions of the album cover, with different pictures and different titles in different typefaces. Unable to pick one, they taped them to cupboards of the studio kitchen and went to bed. According to Donwood, the choice the next day "was obvious". In October 2021, Yorke and Donwood curated an exhibition of Kid A artwork at Christie's headquarters in London.
Promotion
Radiohead minimised their involvement in promotion for Kid A, conducting few interviews or photoshoots. Though "Optimistic" and promotional copies of other tracks received radio play, Radiohead released no singles from the album. Yorke said this was to avoid the stress of publicity, which he had struggled with on OK Computer, rather than for artistic reasons.Radiohead were careful to present it as a cohesive work rather than a series of separate tracks. Rather than give EMI executives their own copies, they had them listen to the album in its entirety on a bus from Hollywood to Malibu. Rob Gordon, the vice president of marketing at Capitol Records, the American subsidiary of Radiohead's label EMI, praised the album but said promoting it would be a "business challenge".No advance copies of Kid A were circulated, but it was played under controlled conditions for critics and fans. On September 5, 2000, it was played for the public for the first time at the IMAX theatre in Lincoln Square, Manhattan. Promotional copies of Kid A came with stickers prohibiting broadcast before September 19. At midnight, it was played in its entirety by the London radio station Xfm. MTV2, KROQ, and WXRK also played the album.Rather than agree to a standard magazine photoshoot for Q, Radiohead supplied digitally altered portraits, with their skin smoothed, their irises recoloured, and Yorke's drooping eyelid removed. The Q editor Andrew Harrison described the images as "aggressively weird to the point of taking the piss ... All five of Radiohead had been given the aspect of gawking aliens." Yorke said: "I'd like to see them try to put these pictures on a poster." Q projected the images onto the Houses of Parliament, placed them on posters and billboards in the London Underground and on the Old Street Roundabout, and had them printed on key rings, mugs and mouse mats, to "turn Radiohead back into a product".
Videos
Instead of releasing traditional music videos for Kid A, Radiohead commissioned dozens of 10-second videos featuring Donwood artwork they called "blips", which were aired on music channels and distributed online. Pitchfork described them as "context-free animated nightmares that radiated mystery", with "arch hints of surveillance". Five of the videos were serviced as exclusives to MTV, and "helped play into the arty mystique that endeared Radiohead to its core audience", according to Billboard. Much of the promotional material featured pointy-toothed bear characters created by Donwood. The bears originated in stories Donwood made for his young children about teddy bears who came to life and ate the "grown-ups" who had abandoned them.
Internet
Though Radiohead had experimented with internet promotion for OK Computer in 1997, by 2000 online music promotion was not widespread, with record labels still reliant on MTV and radio. Donwood wrote that EMI was not interested in the Radiohead website, and left him and the band to update it with "discursive and random content".To promote Kid A, Capitol created the "iBlip", a Java applet that could be embedded in fan sites. It allowed users to stream the album, and included artwork, photos and links to order Kid A on Amazon. It was used by more than 1000 sites, and the album was streamed more than 400,000 times. Capitol also streamed Kid A through Amazon, MTV.com and heavy.com, and ran a campaign with the peer-to-peer filesharing service Aimster, allowing users to swap iBlips and Radiohead-branded Aimster skins.Three weeks before release, Kid A was leaked online and shared on the peer-to-peer service Napster. Asked whether he believed Napster had damaged sales, Capitol president Ray Lott likened the situation to unfounded concern about home taping in the 1980s and said: "I'm trying to sell as many Radiohead albums as possible. If I worried about what Napster would do, I wouldn't sell as many albums." Yorke said Napster "encourages enthusiasm for music in a way that the music industry has long forgotten to do".
Tour
Radiohead rearranged the Kid A songs to perform them live. O'Brien said, "You couldn't do Kid A live and be true to the record. You would have to do it like an art installation ... When we played live, we put the human element back into it." Selway said they "found some new life" in the songs when they came to perform them.In mid-2000, months before Kid A was released, Radiohead toured the Mediterranean, performing Kid A and Amnesiac songs for the first time. Fans shared concert bootlegs online. Colin Greenwood said: "We played in Barcelona and the next day the entire performance was up on Napster. Three weeks later when we got to play in Israel the audience knew the words to all the new songs and it was wonderful." Later that year, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos, playing mostly new songs. The tour included a homecoming show in South Park, Oxford, with supporting performances by Humphrey Lyttelton (who performed on Amnesiac), Beck and Sigur Rós. According to the journalist Alex Ross, the show may have been the largest public gathering in Oxford history.Radiohead also performed three concerts in North American theatres, their first in nearly three years. The small venues sold out rapidly, attracting celebrities, and fans camped overnight. In October, Radiohead performed on the American TV show Saturday Night Live; the performance shocked viewers expecting rock songs, with Jonny Greenwood playing electronic instruments, the house brass band improvising over "The National Anthem", and Yorke dancing erratically to "Idioteque". Rolling Stone described the Kid A tour as "a revelation, exposing rock and roll humanity" in the songs. In November 2001, Radiohead released I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings, comprising performances from the Kid A and Amnesiac tours.
Sales
Kid A reached number one on Amazon's sales chart, with more than 10,000 pre-orders. It debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, selling 55,000 copies in its first day – the biggest first-day sales of the year and more than every other album in the top ten combined. Kid A also debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, selling more than 207,000 copies in its first week. It was Radiohead's first US top-20 album, and the first US number one in three years for any British act. Kid A also debuted at number one in Canada, where it sold more than 44,000 copies in its first week, and in France, Ireland and New Zealand. European sales slowed on 2 October 2000, the day of release, when EMI recalled 150,000 faulty CDs. By June 2001, Kid A had sold 310,000 copies in the UK, less than a third of OK Computer sales. It is certified platinum in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Japan and the US.
Critical reception
Kid A was widely anticipated. Spin described it as the most anticipated rock record since Nirvana's In Utero. According to Andrew Harrison, the editor of Q, journalists expected it to provide more of the "rousing, cathartic, lots-of-guitar, Saturday-night-at-Glastonbury big future rock moments" of OK Computer. Months before its release, Pat Blashill of Melody Maker wrote: "If there's one band that promises to return rock to us, it's Radiohead."After Kid A had been played for critics, many bemoaned the lack of guitar, the obscured vocals and the unconventional song structures. Some called it "a commercial suicide note". The Guardian wrote of the "muted electronic hums, pulses and tones", predicting that it would confuse listeners. In Mojo, Jim Irvin wrote that "upon first listen, Kid A is just awful ... Too often it sounds like the fragments that they began the writing process with – a loop, a riff, a mumbled line of text, have been set in concrete and had other, lesser ideas piled on top." The Guardian critic Adam Sweeting wrote that "even listeners raised on krautrock or Ornette Coleman will find Kid A a mystifying experience", and that it pandered to "the worst cliches" about Radiohead's "relentless miserabilism". Several critics found the free jazz of "The National Anthem" discordant and unpleasant.Several critics felt Kid A was pretentious or deliberately obscure. The Irish Times bemoaned the lack of conventional song structures and panned the album as "deliberately abstruse, wilfully esoteric and wantonly unfathomable ... The only thing challenging about Kid A is the very real challenge to your attention span." In the New Yorker, the novelist Nick Hornby wrote that it was "morbid proof that this sort of self-indulgence results in a weird kind of anonymity rather than something distinctive and original". The Melody Maker critic Mark Beaumont called it "tubby, ostentatious, self-congratulatory, look-ma-I-can-suck-my-own-cock whiny old rubbish ... About 60 songs were started that no one had a bloody clue how to finish." Alexis Petridis of The Guardian described it as "self-consciously awkward and bloody-minded, the noise made by a band trying so hard to make a 'difficult' album that they felt it beneath them to write any songs". Rolling Stone published a piece mocking Kid A as humourless, derivative and lacking in songs: "Because it was decided that Radiohead were Important and Significant last time around, no one can accept the album as the crackpot art project it so obviously is."Some critics felt Kid A was unoriginal. In the New York Times, Howard Hampton dismissed Radiohead as a "rock composite" and wrote that Kid A "recycles Pink Floyd's dark-side-of-the-moon solipsism to Me-Decade perfection". Beaumont said Radiohead were "simply ploughing furrows dug by DJ Shadow and Brian Eno before them". The Irish Times felt the ambient elements were inferior to Eno's 1978 album Music For Airports and its "scary" elements inferior to Scott Walker's 1995 album Tilt. Select wrote: "What do they want for sounding like the Aphex Twin circa 1993, a medal?" In a retrospective, the journalist Rob Sheffield wrote that the "mastery of Warp-style electronic effects" had appeared "clumsy and dated" at the time of Kid A's release. In an NME editorial, James Oldham wrote that the electronic influences were "mired in compromise", with Radiohead still operating as a rock band, and concluded: "Time will judge it. But right now, Kid A has the ring of a lengthy, over-analysed mistake." Rob Mitchell, the co-founder of Warp, felt Kid A represented "an honest interpretation of [Warp] influences" and was not "gratuitously" electronic. He predicted it might one day be seen in the same way as David Bowie's 1977 album Low, which alienated some Bowie fans but was later acclaimed.AllMusic gave Kid A a favourable review, but wrote that it "never is as visionary or stunning as OK Computer, nor does it really repay the intensive time it demands in order for it to sink in". The NME was also positive, but described some songs as "meandering" and "anticlimactic", and concluded: "For all its feats of brinkmanship, the patently magnificent construct called Kid A betrays a band playing one-handed just to prove they can, scared to commit itself emotionally." In Rolling Stone, David Fricke called Kid A "a work of deliberately inky, often irritating obsession ... But this is pop, a music of ornery, glistening guile and honest ache, and it will feel good under your skin once you let it get there."Spin said Kid A was "not the act of career suicide or feat of self-indulgence it will be castigated as", and predicted that fans would recognise it as Radiohead's best and "bravest" album. Billboard described it as "an ocean of unparalleled musical depth" and "the first truly groundbreaking album of the 21st century". The music critic Robert Christgau wrote that Kid A was "an imaginative, imitative variation on a pop staple: sadness made pretty". The Village Voice called it "oblique oblique oblique ... Also incredibly beautiful." Brent DiCrescenzo of Pitchfork gave Kid A a perfect score, calling it "cacophonous yet tranquil, experimental yet familiar, foreign yet womb-like, spacious yet visceral, textured yet vaporous, awakening yet dreamlike". He concluded that Radiohead "must be the greatest band alive, if not the best since you know who". One of the first Kid A reviews posted online, DiCrescenzo's review helped popularise Pitchfork and became notorious for its "obtuse" writing.At Metacritic, which aggregates ratings from critics, Kid A has a score of 80 based on 24 reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews". It was named one of the best albums of 2000 by publications including the Los Angeles Times, Spin, Melody Maker, Mojo, NME, Pitchfork, Q, the Times, Uncut and the Wire. At the 2001 Grammy Awards, Kid A was nominated for Album of the Year and won for Best Alternative Album.
Legacy
In the years following its release, Kid A attracted acclaim. In 2005, Pitchfork wrote that it had "challenged and confounded" Radiohead's audience, and subsequently "transformed into an intellectual symbol of sorts ... Owning it became 'getting it'; getting it became 'anointing it'." In 2015, Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone likened Radiohead's change in style to Bob Dylan's controversial move to rock music, writing that critics now hesitated to say they had disliked it at the time. He described Kid A as the "defining moment in the Radiohead legend". A year later, Billboard argued that Kid A was the first album since Bowie's Low to have moved "rock and electronic music forward in such a mature fashion". In an article for Kid A's 20th anniversary, the Quietus suggested that the negative reviews had been motivated by rockism, the tendency among music critics to venerate rock music over other genres.In a 2011 Guardian article about his critical Melody Maker review, Beaumont wrote that though his opinion had not changed, "Kid A's status as a cultural cornerstone has proved me, if not wrong, then very much in the minority ... People whose opinions I trust claim it to be their favourite album ever." In 2014, Brice Ezell of PopMatters wrote that Kid A is "more fun to think and write about than it is to actually listen to" and a "far less compelling representation of the band's talents than The Bends and OK Computer". In 2016, Dorian Lysnkey wrote in The Guardian: "At times, Kid A is dull enough to make you fervently wish that they'd merged the highlights with the best bits of the similarly spotty Amnesiac ... Yorke had given up on coherent lyrics so one can only guess at what he was worrying about."Radiohead denied that they had set out to create "difficult" music. Jonny Greenwood argued that the tracks were short and melodic, and suggested that "people basically want their hands held through 12 'Mull Of Kintyre's". Yorke said: "We're actually trying to communicate but, somewhere along the line, we just seemed to piss off a lot of people ... What we're doing isn't that radical." He recalled that the band had been "white as a sheet" before early performances on the Kid A tour, thinking they had been "absolutely trashed". At the same time, the reaction motivated them: "There was a sense of a fight to convince people, which was actually really exciting." He regretted having released no singles, feeling it meant much of the early judgement of the album came from critics.Grantland credited Kid A for pioneering the use of internet to stream and promote music, writing: "For many music fans of a certain age and persuasion, Kid A was the first album experienced primarily via the internet – it's where you went to hear it, read the reviews, and argue about whether it was a masterpiece ... Listen early, form an opinion quickly, state it publicly, and move on to the next big record by the official release date. In that way, Kid A invented modern music culture as we know it." In his 2005 book Killing Yourself to Live, critic Chuck Klosterman interpreted Kid A as a prediction of the September 11 attacks.Speaking at Radiohead's induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2019, David Byrne of Talking Heads, one of Radiohead's formative influences, said: "What was really weird and very encouraging was that [Kid A] was popular. It was a hit! It proved to me that the artistic risk paid off and music fans sometimes are not stupid." In 2020, Billboard wrote that the success of Kid A, despite its "challenging" content, established Radiohead as "heavy hitters in the business for the long run".
Accolades
In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked Kid A number 20 on its updated "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list, describing it as "a new, uniquely fearless kind of rock record for a new, increasingly fearful century ... [It] remains one of the more stunning sonic makeovers in music history." In previous versions of the list, Kid A ranked at number 67 (2012) and number 428 (2003). In 2005, Stylus and Pitchfork named Kid A the best album of the previous five years, with Pitchfork calling it "the perfect record for its time: ominous, surreal, and impossibly millennial".In 2006, Time named Kid A one of the 100 best albums, calling it "the opposite of easy listening, and the weirdest album to ever sell a million copies, but ... also a testament to just how complicated pop music can be". At the end of the decade, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and the Times ranked Kid A the greatest album of the 2000s. The Guardian ranked it second best, calling it "a jittery premonition of the troubled, disconnected, overloaded decade to come. The sound of today, in other words, a decade early." In 2021, Pitchfork readers voted Kid A the greatest album of the previous 25 years. In 2011, Rolling Stone named "Everything in Its Right Place" the 24th-best song of the 2000s, describing it as "oddness at its most hummable". "Idioteque" was named one of the best songs of the decade by Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, and Rolling Stone ranked it #33 on its 2018 list of the "greatest songs of the century so far".
(*) designates unordered list
Reissues
Radiohead left EMI after their contract ended in 2003. After a period of being out of print on vinyl, Kid A was reissued as a double LP on 19 August 2008 as part of the "From the Capitol Vaults" series, along with other Radiohead albums. In 2007, EMI released Radiohead Box Set, a compilation of albums recorded while Radiohead were signed to EMI, including Kid A. On 25 August 2009, EMI reissued Kid A in a two-CD "Collector's Edition" and a "Special Collector's Edition" containing an additional DVD. Both versions feature live tracks, taken mostly from television performances. Radiohead had no input into the reissues and the music was not remastered.The EMI reissues were discontinued after Radiohead's back catalogue transferred to XL Recordings in 2016. In May 2016, XL reissued Kid A on vinyl, along with the rest of Radiohead's back catalogue. An early demo of "The National Anthem" was included in the special edition of the 2017 OK Computer reissue OKNOTOK 1997 2017. In February 2020, Radiohead released an extended version of "Treefingers", previously released on the soundtrack for the 2000 film Memento, to digital platforms.On November 5, 2021, Radiohead released Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A and Amnesiac. It includes a third album, Kid Amnesiae, comprising previously unreleased material from the sessions. Radiohead promoted the reissue with singles for the previously unreleased tracks "If You Say the Word" and "Follow Me Around". Kid A Mnesia Exhibition, an interactive experience with music and artwork from the albums, was released on November 18 for PlayStation 5, macOS and Windows.
Track listing
All songs written by Radiohead, except "Idioteque", which samples "Mild und Leise" by Paul Lansky and "Short Piece" by Arthur Kreiger.
"Everything in Its Right Place" – 4:11
"Kid A" – 4:44
"The National Anthem" – 5:51
"How to Disappear Completely" – 5:56
"Treefingers" – 3:42
"Optimistic" – 5:15
"In Limbo" – 3:31
"Idioteque" – 5:09
"Morning Bell" – 4:35
"Motion Picture Soundtrack" – 7:01
Untitled hidden track – 0:52Note: Track 10 ends at 3:20; includes an untitled hidden track from 4:17 until 5:09, followed by 1:51 of silence. On streaming services, the hidden track is listed as a separate track.
Personnel
Credits adapted from liner notes.
Charts
Certifications and sales
Notes
References
Bibliography
Randall, Mac (2012). Exit Music: The Radiohead Story Updated Edition. ISBN 9781617130472.
Further reading
Lin, Marvin (25 November 2010). Radiohead's Kid A. 33⅓ series. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8264-2343-6.
Ed's Diary: Archived 13 April 2007 at the Wayback Machine Ed O'Brien's studio diary from Kid A/Amnesiac recording sessions, 1999–2000 (archived at Green Plastic)
Marzorati, Gerald. "The Post-Rock Band". The New York Times. 1 October 2000. Retrieved on 4 November 2010.
"All Things Reconsidered: The 10th Anniversary of Radiohead's 'Kid A'" (a collection of articles). PopMatters. November 2010. Retrieved on 4 November 2010.
External links
Kid A at Discogs (list of releases) | producer | {
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Kid A is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 2 October 2000 by Parlophone. It was recorded with their producer, Nigel Godrich, in Paris, Copenhagen, Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire.
After the stress of promoting Radiohead's 1997 album OK Computer, the songwriter, Thom Yorke, wanted to depart from rock music. Drawing influence from electronic music, ambient music, krautrock, jazz and 20th-century classical music, Radiohead used instruments such as modular synthesisers, the ondes Martenot, brass and strings. They processed guitar sounds, incorporated samples and loops, and manipulated their recordings with software. Yorke wrote impersonal and abstract lyrics, cutting up phrases and assembling them at random.
In a departure from industry practice, Radiohead released no singles or music videos and conducted few interviews and photoshoots. Instead, they released short animated "blips", and became one of the first major acts to use the internet for promotion. Bootlegs of early performances were shared on filesharing services, and Kid A was leaked before release. In 2000, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos.
Kid A debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and became Radiohead's first number-one album on the Billboard 200 in the US, where it sold more than 207,000 copies in its first week. Its new sound divided listeners, and some dismissed it as pretentious, deliberately obscure, or derivative. However, it later attracted acclaim; at the end of the decade, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and the Times ranked Kid A the greatest album of the 2000s, and in 2020 Rolling Stone ranked it number 20 on its updated list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Like OK Computer, it won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. It has been certified platinum in Australia, Canada, France, Japan, the US and the UK.
A second album of material from the sessions, Amnesiac, was released eight months later. Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A, Amnesiac and previously unreleased material, was released in 2021.
Background
Following the critical and commercial success of their 1997 album OK Computer, the members of Radiohead suffered burnout. The songwriter, Thom Yorke, became ill, describing himself as "a complete fucking mess ... completely unhinged". He was troubled by new acts he felt were imitating Radiohead and became hostile to the music media. He told The Observer: "I always used to use music as a way of moving on and dealing with things, and I sort of felt like that the thing that helped me deal with things had been sold to the highest bidder and I was simply doing its bidding. And I couldn't handle that."Yorke suffered from writer's block and could not finish writing songs on guitar. He became disillusioned with the "mythology" of rock music, feeling the genre had "run its course". He began to listen almost exclusively to the electronic music of artists signed to the record label Warp, such as Aphex Twin and Autechre. Yorke said: "It was refreshing because the music was all structures and had no human voices in it. But I felt just as emotional about it as I'd ever felt about guitar music." He liked the idea of his voice being used as an instrument rather than having a leading role, and wanted to focus on sounds and textures instead of traditional songwriting.Yorke bought a house in Cornwall and spent his time walking the cliffs and drawing, restricting his musical activity to playing the grand piano he had recently bought. "Everything in Its Right Place" was the first song he wrote. He described himself as a "shit piano player", with little knowledge of electronic instruments: "I remember this Tom Waits quote from years ago, that what keeps him going as a songwriter is his complete ignorance of the instruments he's using. So everything's a novelty. That's one of the reasons I wanted to get into computers and synths, because I didn't understand how the fuck they worked. I had no idea what ADSR meant."The guitarist Ed O'Brien had hoped Radiohead's fourth album would comprise short, melodic guitar songs, but Yorke said: "There was no chance of the album sounding like that. I'd completely had it with melody. I just wanted rhythm. All melodies to me were pure embarrassment." The bassist, Colin Greenwood, said: "We felt we had to change everything. There were other guitar bands out there trying to do similar things. We had to move on."
Recording
In the late 1990s, Radiohead began building their own studio in Oxfordshire. Yorke planned to use it as the German band Can had used their studio in Cologne, recording everything they played and then editing it. However, as the studio would not be complete until late 1999, Radiohead began work in Guillaime Tell Studios, Paris, in January 1999.Radiohead worked with the OK Computer producer Nigel Godrich and no deadline. Yorke, who had the greatest control, was still facing writer's block. His new songs were incomplete, and some consisted of little more than sounds or rhythms; few had clear verses or choruses. Yorke's lack of lyrics created problems, as these had provided points of reference and inspiration for his bandmates in the past.The group struggled with Yorke's new direction. According to Godrich, Yorke did not communicate much, and according to Yorke, Godrich "didn't understand why, if we had such a strength in one thing, we would want to do something else". The lead guitarist, Jonny Greenwood, feared "awful art-rock nonsense just for its own sake". His brother, Colin, did not enjoy Yorke's Warp influences, finding them "really cold". The other band members were unsure of how to contribute, and considered leaving. O'Brien said: "It's scary – everyone feels insecure. I'm a guitarist and suddenly it's like, well, there are no guitars on this track, or no drums."Radiohead experimented with electronic instruments including modular synthesisers and the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument similar to a theremin, and used software such as Pro Tools and Cubase to edit and manipulate their recordings. They found it difficult to use electronic instruments collaboratively; according to Yorke, "We had to develop ways of going off into corners and build things on whatever sequencer, synthesiser or piece of machinery we would bring to the equation and then integrate that into the way we would normally work." O'Brien began using sustain units, which allow guitar notes to be sustained infinitely, combined with looping and delay effects to create synthesiser-like sounds.In March, Radiohead moved to Medley Studios in Copenhagen for two weeks, which were unproductive. The sessions produced about 50 reels of tape, each containing 15 minutes of music, with nothing finished. In April, Radiohead resumed recording in a mansion in Batsford Park, Gloucestershire. The lack of deadline and the number of incomplete ideas made it hard to focus, and the group held tense meetings. They agreed to disband if they could not agree on an album worth releasing.In July, O'Brien began keeping an online diary of Radiohead's progress. Radiohead moved to their new studio in Oxfordshire in September. In November, Radiohead held a live webcast from their studio, featuring a performance of new music and a DJ set. By 2000, six songs were complete. In January, at Godrich's suggestion, Radiohead split into two groups: one would generate a sound or sequence without acoustic instruments such as guitars or drums, and the other would develop it. Though the experiment produced no finished songs, it helped convince O'Brien of the potential of electronic instruments.On 19 April 2000, Yorke wrote on Radiohead's website that they had finished recording. Having completed over 20 songs, Radiohead considered releasing a double album, but felt the material was too dense. Instead, they saved half the songs for their next album, Amnesiac, released the following year. Yorke said Radiohead split the work into two albums because "they cancel each other out as overall finished things. They come from two different places." He observed that deciding the track list was not just a matter of choosing the best songs, as "you can put all the best songs in the world on a record and they'll ruin each other". He cited the later Beatles albums as examples of effective sequencing: "How in the hell can you have three different versions of 'Revolution' on the same record and get away with it? I thought about that sort of thing." Agreeing on the track list created arguments, and O'Brien said the band came close to breaking up: "That felt like it could go either way, it could break ... But we came in the next day and it was resolved." The album was mastered by Chris Blair in Abbey Road Studios, London.
Tracks
Radiohead worked on the first track, "Everything in Its Right Place", in a conventional band arrangement in Copenhagen and Paris, but without results. In Gloucestershire, Yorke and Godrich transferred the song to a Prophet-5 synthesiser, and Yorke's vocals were processed in Pro Tools using a scrubbing tool. O'Brien and the drummer, Philip Selway, said the track helped them accept that not every song needed every band member to play on it. O'Brien recalled: "To be genuinely sort of delighted that you'd been working for six months on this record and something great has come out of it, and you haven't contributed to it, is a really liberating feeling." Jonny Greenwood described it as a turning point for the album: "We knew it had to be the first song, and everything just followed after it."Yorke wrote an early version of "The National Anthem" when the band was still in school. In 1997, Radiohead recorded drums and bass for the song, intending to develop it as a B-side for OK Computer, but decided to keep it for their next album. For Kid A, Greenwood added ondes Martenot and sounds sampled from radio stations, and Yorke's vocals were processed with a ring modulator. In November 1999, Radiohead recorded a brass section inspired by the "organised chaos" of Town Hall Concert by the jazz musician Charles Mingus, instructing the musicians to sound like a "traffic jam".The strings on "How to Disappear Completely" were performed by the Orchestra of St John's and recorded in Dorchester Abbey, a 12th-century church about five miles from Radiohead's Oxfordshire studio. Radiohead chose the orchestra as they had performed pieces by Penderecki and Messiaen. Jonny Greenwood, the only Radiohead member trained in music theory, composed the string arrangement by multitracking his ondes Martenot. According to Godrich, when the orchestra members saw Greenwood's score "they all just sort of burst into giggles, because they couldn't do what he'd written, because it was impossible – or impossible for them, anyway". The orchestra leader, John Lubbock, encouraged them to experiment and work with Greenwood's ideas. The concerts director, Alison Atkinson, said the session was more experimental than the orchestra's usual bookings.
"Idioteque" samples two computer music pieces, Paul Lansky's "Mild und Leise" and Arthur Kreiger's "Short Piece". Both samples were taken from Electronic Music Winners, a 1976 experimental music LP which Jonny Greenwood stumbled upon while the band was working on Kid A. The track was built from a drum machine pattern Greenwood created with a modular synthesiser and a sample from "Mild und Leise". He gave the 50-minute recording to Yorke, who took a short section of it and used it to write the song. Yorke also referred to electronic dance music when talking about "Idioteque", and said that the song was "an attempt to capture that exploding beat sound where you're at the club and the PA's so loud, you know it's doing damage"."Motion Picture Soundtrack" was written before Radiohead's debut single "Creep" (1992), and Radiohead recorded a version on piano during the OK Computer sessions. For Kid A, Yorke recorded it on a pedal organ, influenced by the songwriter Tom Waits. The band added harp samples and double bass, attempting to emulate the soundtracks of 1950s Disney films. Radiohead also worked on several songs they did not complete until the recording sessions for future albums, including "Nude", "Burn the Witch" and "True Love Waits".
Music
Style and influences
Kid A incorporates influences from electronic artists on Warp Records such as 1990s IDM artists Autechre and Aphex Twin; 1970s Krautrock bands such as Can; the jazz of Charles Mingus, Alice Coltrane and Miles Davis; and abstract hip hop from the Mo'Wax label, including Blackalicious and DJ Krush. Yorke cited Remain in Light (1980) by Talking Heads as a "massive reference point". Björk was another major influence, particularly her 1997 album Homogenic, as was the Beta Band. Radiohead attended an Underworld concert which helped renew their enthusiasm in a difficult moment.The string orchestration for "How to Disappear Completely" was influenced by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. Jonny Greenwood's use of the ondes Martenot on several songs was inspired by Olivier Messiaen, who popularised the instrument and was one of Greenwood's teenage heroes. Greenwood described his interest in mixing old and new music technology, and during the recording sessions Yorke read Ian MacDonald's Revolution in the Head, which chronicles the Beatles' recordings with George Martin during the 1960s. The band also sought to combine electronic manipulations with jam sessions in the studio, saying their model was the German band Can.Kid A has been described as a work of electronica, experimental rock, post-rock, alternative rock, post-prog, ambient, electronic rock, art rock, and art pop. Though guitar is less prominent than on previous Radiohead albums, guitars were still used on most tracks. "Treefingers", an ambient instrumental, was created by digitally processing O'Brien's guitar loops. Many of Yorke's vocals were manipulated with effects; for example, his vocals on the title track were simply spoken, then vocoded with the ondes Martenot to create the melody.
Lyrics
Yorke's lyrics on Kid A are less personal than on earlier albums, and instead incorporate abstract and surreal themes. He cut up phrases and assembled them at random, combining cliches and banal observations; for example, "Morning Bell" features repeated contrasting lines such as "Where'd you park the car?" and "Cut the kids in half". Yorke denied that he was "trying to get anything across" with the lyrics, and described them as "like shattered bits of mirror ... like pieces of something broken. ... it's not like I'm trying to get anything across."Yorke cited David Byrne's approach to lyrics on Remain in Light as an influence: "When they made that record, they had no real songs, just wrote it all as they went along. Byrne turned up with pages and pages, and just picked stuff up and threw bits in all the time. And that's exactly how I approached Kid A." Radiohead used Yorke's lyrics "like pieces in a collage ... [creating] an artwork out of a lot of different little things". The lyrics are not included in the liner notes, as Radiohead felt they could not be considered independently of the music, and Yorke did not want listeners to focus on them.Yorke wrote "Everything in Its Right Place" about the depression he experienced on the OK Computer tour, feeling he could not speak. The refrain of "How to Disappear Completely" was inspired by R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe, who advised Yorke to relieve tour stress by repeating to himself: "I'm not here, this isn't happening". The refrain of "Optimistic" ("try the best you can / the best you can is good enough") was an assurance by Yorke's partner, Rachel Owen, when Yorke was frustrated with the band's progress. The title Kid A came from a filename on one of Yorke's sequencers. Yorke said he liked its "non-meaning", saying: "If you call [an album] something specific, it drives the record in a certain way."
Artwork
The Kid A artwork and packaging was created by Yorke with Stanley Donwood, who has worked with Radiohead since their 1994 EP My Iron Lung. Donwood painted on large canvases with knives and sticks, then photographed the paintings and manipulated them with Photoshop. While working on the artwork, Yorke and Donwood became "obsessed" with the Worldwatch Institute website, which was full of "scary statistics about ice caps melting, and weather patterns changing"; this inspired them to use an image of a mountain range as the cover art. Donwood said he saw the mountains as "some sort of cataclysmic power".Donwood was inspired by a photograph taken during the Kosovo War depicting a square metre of snow full of the "detritus of war", such as military equipment and cigarette stains. He said: "I was upset by it in a way war had never upset me before. It felt like it was happening in my street." The red swimming pool on the album spine and disc was inspired by the 1988 graphic novel Brought to Light by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz, in which the number of people killed by state terrorism is measured in swimming pools filled with blood. Donwood said this image "haunted" him during the recording of the album, calling it "a symbol of looming danger and shattered expectations". Yorke and Donwood cited a Paris exhibition of paintings by David Hockney as another influence.Yorke and Donwood made many versions of the album cover, with different pictures and different titles in different typefaces. Unable to pick one, they taped them to cupboards of the studio kitchen and went to bed. According to Donwood, the choice the next day "was obvious". In October 2021, Yorke and Donwood curated an exhibition of Kid A artwork at Christie's headquarters in London.
Promotion
Radiohead minimised their involvement in promotion for Kid A, conducting few interviews or photoshoots. Though "Optimistic" and promotional copies of other tracks received radio play, Radiohead released no singles from the album. Yorke said this was to avoid the stress of publicity, which he had struggled with on OK Computer, rather than for artistic reasons.Radiohead were careful to present it as a cohesive work rather than a series of separate tracks. Rather than give EMI executives their own copies, they had them listen to the album in its entirety on a bus from Hollywood to Malibu. Rob Gordon, the vice president of marketing at Capitol Records, the American subsidiary of Radiohead's label EMI, praised the album but said promoting it would be a "business challenge".No advance copies of Kid A were circulated, but it was played under controlled conditions for critics and fans. On September 5, 2000, it was played for the public for the first time at the IMAX theatre in Lincoln Square, Manhattan. Promotional copies of Kid A came with stickers prohibiting broadcast before September 19. At midnight, it was played in its entirety by the London radio station Xfm. MTV2, KROQ, and WXRK also played the album.Rather than agree to a standard magazine photoshoot for Q, Radiohead supplied digitally altered portraits, with their skin smoothed, their irises recoloured, and Yorke's drooping eyelid removed. The Q editor Andrew Harrison described the images as "aggressively weird to the point of taking the piss ... All five of Radiohead had been given the aspect of gawking aliens." Yorke said: "I'd like to see them try to put these pictures on a poster." Q projected the images onto the Houses of Parliament, placed them on posters and billboards in the London Underground and on the Old Street Roundabout, and had them printed on key rings, mugs and mouse mats, to "turn Radiohead back into a product".
Videos
Instead of releasing traditional music videos for Kid A, Radiohead commissioned dozens of 10-second videos featuring Donwood artwork they called "blips", which were aired on music channels and distributed online. Pitchfork described them as "context-free animated nightmares that radiated mystery", with "arch hints of surveillance". Five of the videos were serviced as exclusives to MTV, and "helped play into the arty mystique that endeared Radiohead to its core audience", according to Billboard. Much of the promotional material featured pointy-toothed bear characters created by Donwood. The bears originated in stories Donwood made for his young children about teddy bears who came to life and ate the "grown-ups" who had abandoned them.
Internet
Though Radiohead had experimented with internet promotion for OK Computer in 1997, by 2000 online music promotion was not widespread, with record labels still reliant on MTV and radio. Donwood wrote that EMI was not interested in the Radiohead website, and left him and the band to update it with "discursive and random content".To promote Kid A, Capitol created the "iBlip", a Java applet that could be embedded in fan sites. It allowed users to stream the album, and included artwork, photos and links to order Kid A on Amazon. It was used by more than 1000 sites, and the album was streamed more than 400,000 times. Capitol also streamed Kid A through Amazon, MTV.com and heavy.com, and ran a campaign with the peer-to-peer filesharing service Aimster, allowing users to swap iBlips and Radiohead-branded Aimster skins.Three weeks before release, Kid A was leaked online and shared on the peer-to-peer service Napster. Asked whether he believed Napster had damaged sales, Capitol president Ray Lott likened the situation to unfounded concern about home taping in the 1980s and said: "I'm trying to sell as many Radiohead albums as possible. If I worried about what Napster would do, I wouldn't sell as many albums." Yorke said Napster "encourages enthusiasm for music in a way that the music industry has long forgotten to do".
Tour
Radiohead rearranged the Kid A songs to perform them live. O'Brien said, "You couldn't do Kid A live and be true to the record. You would have to do it like an art installation ... When we played live, we put the human element back into it." Selway said they "found some new life" in the songs when they came to perform them.In mid-2000, months before Kid A was released, Radiohead toured the Mediterranean, performing Kid A and Amnesiac songs for the first time. Fans shared concert bootlegs online. Colin Greenwood said: "We played in Barcelona and the next day the entire performance was up on Napster. Three weeks later when we got to play in Israel the audience knew the words to all the new songs and it was wonderful." Later that year, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos, playing mostly new songs. The tour included a homecoming show in South Park, Oxford, with supporting performances by Humphrey Lyttelton (who performed on Amnesiac), Beck and Sigur Rós. According to the journalist Alex Ross, the show may have been the largest public gathering in Oxford history.Radiohead also performed three concerts in North American theatres, their first in nearly three years. The small venues sold out rapidly, attracting celebrities, and fans camped overnight. In October, Radiohead performed on the American TV show Saturday Night Live; the performance shocked viewers expecting rock songs, with Jonny Greenwood playing electronic instruments, the house brass band improvising over "The National Anthem", and Yorke dancing erratically to "Idioteque". Rolling Stone described the Kid A tour as "a revelation, exposing rock and roll humanity" in the songs. In November 2001, Radiohead released I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings, comprising performances from the Kid A and Amnesiac tours.
Sales
Kid A reached number one on Amazon's sales chart, with more than 10,000 pre-orders. It debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, selling 55,000 copies in its first day – the biggest first-day sales of the year and more than every other album in the top ten combined. Kid A also debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, selling more than 207,000 copies in its first week. It was Radiohead's first US top-20 album, and the first US number one in three years for any British act. Kid A also debuted at number one in Canada, where it sold more than 44,000 copies in its first week, and in France, Ireland and New Zealand. European sales slowed on 2 October 2000, the day of release, when EMI recalled 150,000 faulty CDs. By June 2001, Kid A had sold 310,000 copies in the UK, less than a third of OK Computer sales. It is certified platinum in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Japan and the US.
Critical reception
Kid A was widely anticipated. Spin described it as the most anticipated rock record since Nirvana's In Utero. According to Andrew Harrison, the editor of Q, journalists expected it to provide more of the "rousing, cathartic, lots-of-guitar, Saturday-night-at-Glastonbury big future rock moments" of OK Computer. Months before its release, Pat Blashill of Melody Maker wrote: "If there's one band that promises to return rock to us, it's Radiohead."After Kid A had been played for critics, many bemoaned the lack of guitar, the obscured vocals and the unconventional song structures. Some called it "a commercial suicide note". The Guardian wrote of the "muted electronic hums, pulses and tones", predicting that it would confuse listeners. In Mojo, Jim Irvin wrote that "upon first listen, Kid A is just awful ... Too often it sounds like the fragments that they began the writing process with – a loop, a riff, a mumbled line of text, have been set in concrete and had other, lesser ideas piled on top." The Guardian critic Adam Sweeting wrote that "even listeners raised on krautrock or Ornette Coleman will find Kid A a mystifying experience", and that it pandered to "the worst cliches" about Radiohead's "relentless miserabilism". Several critics found the free jazz of "The National Anthem" discordant and unpleasant.Several critics felt Kid A was pretentious or deliberately obscure. The Irish Times bemoaned the lack of conventional song structures and panned the album as "deliberately abstruse, wilfully esoteric and wantonly unfathomable ... The only thing challenging about Kid A is the very real challenge to your attention span." In the New Yorker, the novelist Nick Hornby wrote that it was "morbid proof that this sort of self-indulgence results in a weird kind of anonymity rather than something distinctive and original". The Melody Maker critic Mark Beaumont called it "tubby, ostentatious, self-congratulatory, look-ma-I-can-suck-my-own-cock whiny old rubbish ... About 60 songs were started that no one had a bloody clue how to finish." Alexis Petridis of The Guardian described it as "self-consciously awkward and bloody-minded, the noise made by a band trying so hard to make a 'difficult' album that they felt it beneath them to write any songs". Rolling Stone published a piece mocking Kid A as humourless, derivative and lacking in songs: "Because it was decided that Radiohead were Important and Significant last time around, no one can accept the album as the crackpot art project it so obviously is."Some critics felt Kid A was unoriginal. In the New York Times, Howard Hampton dismissed Radiohead as a "rock composite" and wrote that Kid A "recycles Pink Floyd's dark-side-of-the-moon solipsism to Me-Decade perfection". Beaumont said Radiohead were "simply ploughing furrows dug by DJ Shadow and Brian Eno before them". The Irish Times felt the ambient elements were inferior to Eno's 1978 album Music For Airports and its "scary" elements inferior to Scott Walker's 1995 album Tilt. Select wrote: "What do they want for sounding like the Aphex Twin circa 1993, a medal?" In a retrospective, the journalist Rob Sheffield wrote that the "mastery of Warp-style electronic effects" had appeared "clumsy and dated" at the time of Kid A's release. In an NME editorial, James Oldham wrote that the electronic influences were "mired in compromise", with Radiohead still operating as a rock band, and concluded: "Time will judge it. But right now, Kid A has the ring of a lengthy, over-analysed mistake." Rob Mitchell, the co-founder of Warp, felt Kid A represented "an honest interpretation of [Warp] influences" and was not "gratuitously" electronic. He predicted it might one day be seen in the same way as David Bowie's 1977 album Low, which alienated some Bowie fans but was later acclaimed.AllMusic gave Kid A a favourable review, but wrote that it "never is as visionary or stunning as OK Computer, nor does it really repay the intensive time it demands in order for it to sink in". The NME was also positive, but described some songs as "meandering" and "anticlimactic", and concluded: "For all its feats of brinkmanship, the patently magnificent construct called Kid A betrays a band playing one-handed just to prove they can, scared to commit itself emotionally." In Rolling Stone, David Fricke called Kid A "a work of deliberately inky, often irritating obsession ... But this is pop, a music of ornery, glistening guile and honest ache, and it will feel good under your skin once you let it get there."Spin said Kid A was "not the act of career suicide or feat of self-indulgence it will be castigated as", and predicted that fans would recognise it as Radiohead's best and "bravest" album. Billboard described it as "an ocean of unparalleled musical depth" and "the first truly groundbreaking album of the 21st century". The music critic Robert Christgau wrote that Kid A was "an imaginative, imitative variation on a pop staple: sadness made pretty". The Village Voice called it "oblique oblique oblique ... Also incredibly beautiful." Brent DiCrescenzo of Pitchfork gave Kid A a perfect score, calling it "cacophonous yet tranquil, experimental yet familiar, foreign yet womb-like, spacious yet visceral, textured yet vaporous, awakening yet dreamlike". He concluded that Radiohead "must be the greatest band alive, if not the best since you know who". One of the first Kid A reviews posted online, DiCrescenzo's review helped popularise Pitchfork and became notorious for its "obtuse" writing.At Metacritic, which aggregates ratings from critics, Kid A has a score of 80 based on 24 reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews". It was named one of the best albums of 2000 by publications including the Los Angeles Times, Spin, Melody Maker, Mojo, NME, Pitchfork, Q, the Times, Uncut and the Wire. At the 2001 Grammy Awards, Kid A was nominated for Album of the Year and won for Best Alternative Album.
Legacy
In the years following its release, Kid A attracted acclaim. In 2005, Pitchfork wrote that it had "challenged and confounded" Radiohead's audience, and subsequently "transformed into an intellectual symbol of sorts ... Owning it became 'getting it'; getting it became 'anointing it'." In 2015, Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone likened Radiohead's change in style to Bob Dylan's controversial move to rock music, writing that critics now hesitated to say they had disliked it at the time. He described Kid A as the "defining moment in the Radiohead legend". A year later, Billboard argued that Kid A was the first album since Bowie's Low to have moved "rock and electronic music forward in such a mature fashion". In an article for Kid A's 20th anniversary, the Quietus suggested that the negative reviews had been motivated by rockism, the tendency among music critics to venerate rock music over other genres.In a 2011 Guardian article about his critical Melody Maker review, Beaumont wrote that though his opinion had not changed, "Kid A's status as a cultural cornerstone has proved me, if not wrong, then very much in the minority ... People whose opinions I trust claim it to be their favourite album ever." In 2014, Brice Ezell of PopMatters wrote that Kid A is "more fun to think and write about than it is to actually listen to" and a "far less compelling representation of the band's talents than The Bends and OK Computer". In 2016, Dorian Lysnkey wrote in The Guardian: "At times, Kid A is dull enough to make you fervently wish that they'd merged the highlights with the best bits of the similarly spotty Amnesiac ... Yorke had given up on coherent lyrics so one can only guess at what he was worrying about."Radiohead denied that they had set out to create "difficult" music. Jonny Greenwood argued that the tracks were short and melodic, and suggested that "people basically want their hands held through 12 'Mull Of Kintyre's". Yorke said: "We're actually trying to communicate but, somewhere along the line, we just seemed to piss off a lot of people ... What we're doing isn't that radical." He recalled that the band had been "white as a sheet" before early performances on the Kid A tour, thinking they had been "absolutely trashed". At the same time, the reaction motivated them: "There was a sense of a fight to convince people, which was actually really exciting." He regretted having released no singles, feeling it meant much of the early judgement of the album came from critics.Grantland credited Kid A for pioneering the use of internet to stream and promote music, writing: "For many music fans of a certain age and persuasion, Kid A was the first album experienced primarily via the internet – it's where you went to hear it, read the reviews, and argue about whether it was a masterpiece ... Listen early, form an opinion quickly, state it publicly, and move on to the next big record by the official release date. In that way, Kid A invented modern music culture as we know it." In his 2005 book Killing Yourself to Live, critic Chuck Klosterman interpreted Kid A as a prediction of the September 11 attacks.Speaking at Radiohead's induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2019, David Byrne of Talking Heads, one of Radiohead's formative influences, said: "What was really weird and very encouraging was that [Kid A] was popular. It was a hit! It proved to me that the artistic risk paid off and music fans sometimes are not stupid." In 2020, Billboard wrote that the success of Kid A, despite its "challenging" content, established Radiohead as "heavy hitters in the business for the long run".
Accolades
In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked Kid A number 20 on its updated "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list, describing it as "a new, uniquely fearless kind of rock record for a new, increasingly fearful century ... [It] remains one of the more stunning sonic makeovers in music history." In previous versions of the list, Kid A ranked at number 67 (2012) and number 428 (2003). In 2005, Stylus and Pitchfork named Kid A the best album of the previous five years, with Pitchfork calling it "the perfect record for its time: ominous, surreal, and impossibly millennial".In 2006, Time named Kid A one of the 100 best albums, calling it "the opposite of easy listening, and the weirdest album to ever sell a million copies, but ... also a testament to just how complicated pop music can be". At the end of the decade, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and the Times ranked Kid A the greatest album of the 2000s. The Guardian ranked it second best, calling it "a jittery premonition of the troubled, disconnected, overloaded decade to come. The sound of today, in other words, a decade early." In 2021, Pitchfork readers voted Kid A the greatest album of the previous 25 years. In 2011, Rolling Stone named "Everything in Its Right Place" the 24th-best song of the 2000s, describing it as "oddness at its most hummable". "Idioteque" was named one of the best songs of the decade by Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, and Rolling Stone ranked it #33 on its 2018 list of the "greatest songs of the century so far".
(*) designates unordered list
Reissues
Radiohead left EMI after their contract ended in 2003. After a period of being out of print on vinyl, Kid A was reissued as a double LP on 19 August 2008 as part of the "From the Capitol Vaults" series, along with other Radiohead albums. In 2007, EMI released Radiohead Box Set, a compilation of albums recorded while Radiohead were signed to EMI, including Kid A. On 25 August 2009, EMI reissued Kid A in a two-CD "Collector's Edition" and a "Special Collector's Edition" containing an additional DVD. Both versions feature live tracks, taken mostly from television performances. Radiohead had no input into the reissues and the music was not remastered.The EMI reissues were discontinued after Radiohead's back catalogue transferred to XL Recordings in 2016. In May 2016, XL reissued Kid A on vinyl, along with the rest of Radiohead's back catalogue. An early demo of "The National Anthem" was included in the special edition of the 2017 OK Computer reissue OKNOTOK 1997 2017. In February 2020, Radiohead released an extended version of "Treefingers", previously released on the soundtrack for the 2000 film Memento, to digital platforms.On November 5, 2021, Radiohead released Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A and Amnesiac. It includes a third album, Kid Amnesiae, comprising previously unreleased material from the sessions. Radiohead promoted the reissue with singles for the previously unreleased tracks "If You Say the Word" and "Follow Me Around". Kid A Mnesia Exhibition, an interactive experience with music and artwork from the albums, was released on November 18 for PlayStation 5, macOS and Windows.
Track listing
All songs written by Radiohead, except "Idioteque", which samples "Mild und Leise" by Paul Lansky and "Short Piece" by Arthur Kreiger.
"Everything in Its Right Place" – 4:11
"Kid A" – 4:44
"The National Anthem" – 5:51
"How to Disappear Completely" – 5:56
"Treefingers" – 3:42
"Optimistic" – 5:15
"In Limbo" – 3:31
"Idioteque" – 5:09
"Morning Bell" – 4:35
"Motion Picture Soundtrack" – 7:01
Untitled hidden track – 0:52Note: Track 10 ends at 3:20; includes an untitled hidden track from 4:17 until 5:09, followed by 1:51 of silence. On streaming services, the hidden track is listed as a separate track.
Personnel
Credits adapted from liner notes.
Charts
Certifications and sales
Notes
References
Bibliography
Randall, Mac (2012). Exit Music: The Radiohead Story Updated Edition. ISBN 9781617130472.
Further reading
Lin, Marvin (25 November 2010). Radiohead's Kid A. 33⅓ series. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8264-2343-6.
Ed's Diary: Archived 13 April 2007 at the Wayback Machine Ed O'Brien's studio diary from Kid A/Amnesiac recording sessions, 1999–2000 (archived at Green Plastic)
Marzorati, Gerald. "The Post-Rock Band". The New York Times. 1 October 2000. Retrieved on 4 November 2010.
"All Things Reconsidered: The 10th Anniversary of Radiohead's 'Kid A'" (a collection of articles). PopMatters. November 2010. Retrieved on 4 November 2010.
External links
Kid A at Discogs (list of releases) | performer | {
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Kid A is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 2 October 2000 by Parlophone. It was recorded with their producer, Nigel Godrich, in Paris, Copenhagen, Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire.
After the stress of promoting Radiohead's 1997 album OK Computer, the songwriter, Thom Yorke, wanted to depart from rock music. Drawing influence from electronic music, ambient music, krautrock, jazz and 20th-century classical music, Radiohead used instruments such as modular synthesisers, the ondes Martenot, brass and strings. They processed guitar sounds, incorporated samples and loops, and manipulated their recordings with software. Yorke wrote impersonal and abstract lyrics, cutting up phrases and assembling them at random.
In a departure from industry practice, Radiohead released no singles or music videos and conducted few interviews and photoshoots. Instead, they released short animated "blips", and became one of the first major acts to use the internet for promotion. Bootlegs of early performances were shared on filesharing services, and Kid A was leaked before release. In 2000, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos.
Kid A debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and became Radiohead's first number-one album on the Billboard 200 in the US, where it sold more than 207,000 copies in its first week. Its new sound divided listeners, and some dismissed it as pretentious, deliberately obscure, or derivative. However, it later attracted acclaim; at the end of the decade, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and the Times ranked Kid A the greatest album of the 2000s, and in 2020 Rolling Stone ranked it number 20 on its updated list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Like OK Computer, it won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. It has been certified platinum in Australia, Canada, France, Japan, the US and the UK.
A second album of material from the sessions, Amnesiac, was released eight months later. Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A, Amnesiac and previously unreleased material, was released in 2021.
Background
Following the critical and commercial success of their 1997 album OK Computer, the members of Radiohead suffered burnout. The songwriter, Thom Yorke, became ill, describing himself as "a complete fucking mess ... completely unhinged". He was troubled by new acts he felt were imitating Radiohead and became hostile to the music media. He told The Observer: "I always used to use music as a way of moving on and dealing with things, and I sort of felt like that the thing that helped me deal with things had been sold to the highest bidder and I was simply doing its bidding. And I couldn't handle that."Yorke suffered from writer's block and could not finish writing songs on guitar. He became disillusioned with the "mythology" of rock music, feeling the genre had "run its course". He began to listen almost exclusively to the electronic music of artists signed to the record label Warp, such as Aphex Twin and Autechre. Yorke said: "It was refreshing because the music was all structures and had no human voices in it. But I felt just as emotional about it as I'd ever felt about guitar music." He liked the idea of his voice being used as an instrument rather than having a leading role, and wanted to focus on sounds and textures instead of traditional songwriting.Yorke bought a house in Cornwall and spent his time walking the cliffs and drawing, restricting his musical activity to playing the grand piano he had recently bought. "Everything in Its Right Place" was the first song he wrote. He described himself as a "shit piano player", with little knowledge of electronic instruments: "I remember this Tom Waits quote from years ago, that what keeps him going as a songwriter is his complete ignorance of the instruments he's using. So everything's a novelty. That's one of the reasons I wanted to get into computers and synths, because I didn't understand how the fuck they worked. I had no idea what ADSR meant."The guitarist Ed O'Brien had hoped Radiohead's fourth album would comprise short, melodic guitar songs, but Yorke said: "There was no chance of the album sounding like that. I'd completely had it with melody. I just wanted rhythm. All melodies to me were pure embarrassment." The bassist, Colin Greenwood, said: "We felt we had to change everything. There were other guitar bands out there trying to do similar things. We had to move on."
Recording
In the late 1990s, Radiohead began building their own studio in Oxfordshire. Yorke planned to use it as the German band Can had used their studio in Cologne, recording everything they played and then editing it. However, as the studio would not be complete until late 1999, Radiohead began work in Guillaime Tell Studios, Paris, in January 1999.Radiohead worked with the OK Computer producer Nigel Godrich and no deadline. Yorke, who had the greatest control, was still facing writer's block. His new songs were incomplete, and some consisted of little more than sounds or rhythms; few had clear verses or choruses. Yorke's lack of lyrics created problems, as these had provided points of reference and inspiration for his bandmates in the past.The group struggled with Yorke's new direction. According to Godrich, Yorke did not communicate much, and according to Yorke, Godrich "didn't understand why, if we had such a strength in one thing, we would want to do something else". The lead guitarist, Jonny Greenwood, feared "awful art-rock nonsense just for its own sake". His brother, Colin, did not enjoy Yorke's Warp influences, finding them "really cold". The other band members were unsure of how to contribute, and considered leaving. O'Brien said: "It's scary – everyone feels insecure. I'm a guitarist and suddenly it's like, well, there are no guitars on this track, or no drums."Radiohead experimented with electronic instruments including modular synthesisers and the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument similar to a theremin, and used software such as Pro Tools and Cubase to edit and manipulate their recordings. They found it difficult to use electronic instruments collaboratively; according to Yorke, "We had to develop ways of going off into corners and build things on whatever sequencer, synthesiser or piece of machinery we would bring to the equation and then integrate that into the way we would normally work." O'Brien began using sustain units, which allow guitar notes to be sustained infinitely, combined with looping and delay effects to create synthesiser-like sounds.In March, Radiohead moved to Medley Studios in Copenhagen for two weeks, which were unproductive. The sessions produced about 50 reels of tape, each containing 15 minutes of music, with nothing finished. In April, Radiohead resumed recording in a mansion in Batsford Park, Gloucestershire. The lack of deadline and the number of incomplete ideas made it hard to focus, and the group held tense meetings. They agreed to disband if they could not agree on an album worth releasing.In July, O'Brien began keeping an online diary of Radiohead's progress. Radiohead moved to their new studio in Oxfordshire in September. In November, Radiohead held a live webcast from their studio, featuring a performance of new music and a DJ set. By 2000, six songs were complete. In January, at Godrich's suggestion, Radiohead split into two groups: one would generate a sound or sequence without acoustic instruments such as guitars or drums, and the other would develop it. Though the experiment produced no finished songs, it helped convince O'Brien of the potential of electronic instruments.On 19 April 2000, Yorke wrote on Radiohead's website that they had finished recording. Having completed over 20 songs, Radiohead considered releasing a double album, but felt the material was too dense. Instead, they saved half the songs for their next album, Amnesiac, released the following year. Yorke said Radiohead split the work into two albums because "they cancel each other out as overall finished things. They come from two different places." He observed that deciding the track list was not just a matter of choosing the best songs, as "you can put all the best songs in the world on a record and they'll ruin each other". He cited the later Beatles albums as examples of effective sequencing: "How in the hell can you have three different versions of 'Revolution' on the same record and get away with it? I thought about that sort of thing." Agreeing on the track list created arguments, and O'Brien said the band came close to breaking up: "That felt like it could go either way, it could break ... But we came in the next day and it was resolved." The album was mastered by Chris Blair in Abbey Road Studios, London.
Tracks
Radiohead worked on the first track, "Everything in Its Right Place", in a conventional band arrangement in Copenhagen and Paris, but without results. In Gloucestershire, Yorke and Godrich transferred the song to a Prophet-5 synthesiser, and Yorke's vocals were processed in Pro Tools using a scrubbing tool. O'Brien and the drummer, Philip Selway, said the track helped them accept that not every song needed every band member to play on it. O'Brien recalled: "To be genuinely sort of delighted that you'd been working for six months on this record and something great has come out of it, and you haven't contributed to it, is a really liberating feeling." Jonny Greenwood described it as a turning point for the album: "We knew it had to be the first song, and everything just followed after it."Yorke wrote an early version of "The National Anthem" when the band was still in school. In 1997, Radiohead recorded drums and bass for the song, intending to develop it as a B-side for OK Computer, but decided to keep it for their next album. For Kid A, Greenwood added ondes Martenot and sounds sampled from radio stations, and Yorke's vocals were processed with a ring modulator. In November 1999, Radiohead recorded a brass section inspired by the "organised chaos" of Town Hall Concert by the jazz musician Charles Mingus, instructing the musicians to sound like a "traffic jam".The strings on "How to Disappear Completely" were performed by the Orchestra of St John's and recorded in Dorchester Abbey, a 12th-century church about five miles from Radiohead's Oxfordshire studio. Radiohead chose the orchestra as they had performed pieces by Penderecki and Messiaen. Jonny Greenwood, the only Radiohead member trained in music theory, composed the string arrangement by multitracking his ondes Martenot. According to Godrich, when the orchestra members saw Greenwood's score "they all just sort of burst into giggles, because they couldn't do what he'd written, because it was impossible – or impossible for them, anyway". The orchestra leader, John Lubbock, encouraged them to experiment and work with Greenwood's ideas. The concerts director, Alison Atkinson, said the session was more experimental than the orchestra's usual bookings.
"Idioteque" samples two computer music pieces, Paul Lansky's "Mild und Leise" and Arthur Kreiger's "Short Piece". Both samples were taken from Electronic Music Winners, a 1976 experimental music LP which Jonny Greenwood stumbled upon while the band was working on Kid A. The track was built from a drum machine pattern Greenwood created with a modular synthesiser and a sample from "Mild und Leise". He gave the 50-minute recording to Yorke, who took a short section of it and used it to write the song. Yorke also referred to electronic dance music when talking about "Idioteque", and said that the song was "an attempt to capture that exploding beat sound where you're at the club and the PA's so loud, you know it's doing damage"."Motion Picture Soundtrack" was written before Radiohead's debut single "Creep" (1992), and Radiohead recorded a version on piano during the OK Computer sessions. For Kid A, Yorke recorded it on a pedal organ, influenced by the songwriter Tom Waits. The band added harp samples and double bass, attempting to emulate the soundtracks of 1950s Disney films. Radiohead also worked on several songs they did not complete until the recording sessions for future albums, including "Nude", "Burn the Witch" and "True Love Waits".
Music
Style and influences
Kid A incorporates influences from electronic artists on Warp Records such as 1990s IDM artists Autechre and Aphex Twin; 1970s Krautrock bands such as Can; the jazz of Charles Mingus, Alice Coltrane and Miles Davis; and abstract hip hop from the Mo'Wax label, including Blackalicious and DJ Krush. Yorke cited Remain in Light (1980) by Talking Heads as a "massive reference point". Björk was another major influence, particularly her 1997 album Homogenic, as was the Beta Band. Radiohead attended an Underworld concert which helped renew their enthusiasm in a difficult moment.The string orchestration for "How to Disappear Completely" was influenced by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. Jonny Greenwood's use of the ondes Martenot on several songs was inspired by Olivier Messiaen, who popularised the instrument and was one of Greenwood's teenage heroes. Greenwood described his interest in mixing old and new music technology, and during the recording sessions Yorke read Ian MacDonald's Revolution in the Head, which chronicles the Beatles' recordings with George Martin during the 1960s. The band also sought to combine electronic manipulations with jam sessions in the studio, saying their model was the German band Can.Kid A has been described as a work of electronica, experimental rock, post-rock, alternative rock, post-prog, ambient, electronic rock, art rock, and art pop. Though guitar is less prominent than on previous Radiohead albums, guitars were still used on most tracks. "Treefingers", an ambient instrumental, was created by digitally processing O'Brien's guitar loops. Many of Yorke's vocals were manipulated with effects; for example, his vocals on the title track were simply spoken, then vocoded with the ondes Martenot to create the melody.
Lyrics
Yorke's lyrics on Kid A are less personal than on earlier albums, and instead incorporate abstract and surreal themes. He cut up phrases and assembled them at random, combining cliches and banal observations; for example, "Morning Bell" features repeated contrasting lines such as "Where'd you park the car?" and "Cut the kids in half". Yorke denied that he was "trying to get anything across" with the lyrics, and described them as "like shattered bits of mirror ... like pieces of something broken. ... it's not like I'm trying to get anything across."Yorke cited David Byrne's approach to lyrics on Remain in Light as an influence: "When they made that record, they had no real songs, just wrote it all as they went along. Byrne turned up with pages and pages, and just picked stuff up and threw bits in all the time. And that's exactly how I approached Kid A." Radiohead used Yorke's lyrics "like pieces in a collage ... [creating] an artwork out of a lot of different little things". The lyrics are not included in the liner notes, as Radiohead felt they could not be considered independently of the music, and Yorke did not want listeners to focus on them.Yorke wrote "Everything in Its Right Place" about the depression he experienced on the OK Computer tour, feeling he could not speak. The refrain of "How to Disappear Completely" was inspired by R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe, who advised Yorke to relieve tour stress by repeating to himself: "I'm not here, this isn't happening". The refrain of "Optimistic" ("try the best you can / the best you can is good enough") was an assurance by Yorke's partner, Rachel Owen, when Yorke was frustrated with the band's progress. The title Kid A came from a filename on one of Yorke's sequencers. Yorke said he liked its "non-meaning", saying: "If you call [an album] something specific, it drives the record in a certain way."
Artwork
The Kid A artwork and packaging was created by Yorke with Stanley Donwood, who has worked with Radiohead since their 1994 EP My Iron Lung. Donwood painted on large canvases with knives and sticks, then photographed the paintings and manipulated them with Photoshop. While working on the artwork, Yorke and Donwood became "obsessed" with the Worldwatch Institute website, which was full of "scary statistics about ice caps melting, and weather patterns changing"; this inspired them to use an image of a mountain range as the cover art. Donwood said he saw the mountains as "some sort of cataclysmic power".Donwood was inspired by a photograph taken during the Kosovo War depicting a square metre of snow full of the "detritus of war", such as military equipment and cigarette stains. He said: "I was upset by it in a way war had never upset me before. It felt like it was happening in my street." The red swimming pool on the album spine and disc was inspired by the 1988 graphic novel Brought to Light by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz, in which the number of people killed by state terrorism is measured in swimming pools filled with blood. Donwood said this image "haunted" him during the recording of the album, calling it "a symbol of looming danger and shattered expectations". Yorke and Donwood cited a Paris exhibition of paintings by David Hockney as another influence.Yorke and Donwood made many versions of the album cover, with different pictures and different titles in different typefaces. Unable to pick one, they taped them to cupboards of the studio kitchen and went to bed. According to Donwood, the choice the next day "was obvious". In October 2021, Yorke and Donwood curated an exhibition of Kid A artwork at Christie's headquarters in London.
Promotion
Radiohead minimised their involvement in promotion for Kid A, conducting few interviews or photoshoots. Though "Optimistic" and promotional copies of other tracks received radio play, Radiohead released no singles from the album. Yorke said this was to avoid the stress of publicity, which he had struggled with on OK Computer, rather than for artistic reasons.Radiohead were careful to present it as a cohesive work rather than a series of separate tracks. Rather than give EMI executives their own copies, they had them listen to the album in its entirety on a bus from Hollywood to Malibu. Rob Gordon, the vice president of marketing at Capitol Records, the American subsidiary of Radiohead's label EMI, praised the album but said promoting it would be a "business challenge".No advance copies of Kid A were circulated, but it was played under controlled conditions for critics and fans. On September 5, 2000, it was played for the public for the first time at the IMAX theatre in Lincoln Square, Manhattan. Promotional copies of Kid A came with stickers prohibiting broadcast before September 19. At midnight, it was played in its entirety by the London radio station Xfm. MTV2, KROQ, and WXRK also played the album.Rather than agree to a standard magazine photoshoot for Q, Radiohead supplied digitally altered portraits, with their skin smoothed, their irises recoloured, and Yorke's drooping eyelid removed. The Q editor Andrew Harrison described the images as "aggressively weird to the point of taking the piss ... All five of Radiohead had been given the aspect of gawking aliens." Yorke said: "I'd like to see them try to put these pictures on a poster." Q projected the images onto the Houses of Parliament, placed them on posters and billboards in the London Underground and on the Old Street Roundabout, and had them printed on key rings, mugs and mouse mats, to "turn Radiohead back into a product".
Videos
Instead of releasing traditional music videos for Kid A, Radiohead commissioned dozens of 10-second videos featuring Donwood artwork they called "blips", which were aired on music channels and distributed online. Pitchfork described them as "context-free animated nightmares that radiated mystery", with "arch hints of surveillance". Five of the videos were serviced as exclusives to MTV, and "helped play into the arty mystique that endeared Radiohead to its core audience", according to Billboard. Much of the promotional material featured pointy-toothed bear characters created by Donwood. The bears originated in stories Donwood made for his young children about teddy bears who came to life and ate the "grown-ups" who had abandoned them.
Internet
Though Radiohead had experimented with internet promotion for OK Computer in 1997, by 2000 online music promotion was not widespread, with record labels still reliant on MTV and radio. Donwood wrote that EMI was not interested in the Radiohead website, and left him and the band to update it with "discursive and random content".To promote Kid A, Capitol created the "iBlip", a Java applet that could be embedded in fan sites. It allowed users to stream the album, and included artwork, photos and links to order Kid A on Amazon. It was used by more than 1000 sites, and the album was streamed more than 400,000 times. Capitol also streamed Kid A through Amazon, MTV.com and heavy.com, and ran a campaign with the peer-to-peer filesharing service Aimster, allowing users to swap iBlips and Radiohead-branded Aimster skins.Three weeks before release, Kid A was leaked online and shared on the peer-to-peer service Napster. Asked whether he believed Napster had damaged sales, Capitol president Ray Lott likened the situation to unfounded concern about home taping in the 1980s and said: "I'm trying to sell as many Radiohead albums as possible. If I worried about what Napster would do, I wouldn't sell as many albums." Yorke said Napster "encourages enthusiasm for music in a way that the music industry has long forgotten to do".
Tour
Radiohead rearranged the Kid A songs to perform them live. O'Brien said, "You couldn't do Kid A live and be true to the record. You would have to do it like an art installation ... When we played live, we put the human element back into it." Selway said they "found some new life" in the songs when they came to perform them.In mid-2000, months before Kid A was released, Radiohead toured the Mediterranean, performing Kid A and Amnesiac songs for the first time. Fans shared concert bootlegs online. Colin Greenwood said: "We played in Barcelona and the next day the entire performance was up on Napster. Three weeks later when we got to play in Israel the audience knew the words to all the new songs and it was wonderful." Later that year, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos, playing mostly new songs. The tour included a homecoming show in South Park, Oxford, with supporting performances by Humphrey Lyttelton (who performed on Amnesiac), Beck and Sigur Rós. According to the journalist Alex Ross, the show may have been the largest public gathering in Oxford history.Radiohead also performed three concerts in North American theatres, their first in nearly three years. The small venues sold out rapidly, attracting celebrities, and fans camped overnight. In October, Radiohead performed on the American TV show Saturday Night Live; the performance shocked viewers expecting rock songs, with Jonny Greenwood playing electronic instruments, the house brass band improvising over "The National Anthem", and Yorke dancing erratically to "Idioteque". Rolling Stone described the Kid A tour as "a revelation, exposing rock and roll humanity" in the songs. In November 2001, Radiohead released I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings, comprising performances from the Kid A and Amnesiac tours.
Sales
Kid A reached number one on Amazon's sales chart, with more than 10,000 pre-orders. It debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, selling 55,000 copies in its first day – the biggest first-day sales of the year and more than every other album in the top ten combined. Kid A also debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, selling more than 207,000 copies in its first week. It was Radiohead's first US top-20 album, and the first US number one in three years for any British act. Kid A also debuted at number one in Canada, where it sold more than 44,000 copies in its first week, and in France, Ireland and New Zealand. European sales slowed on 2 October 2000, the day of release, when EMI recalled 150,000 faulty CDs. By June 2001, Kid A had sold 310,000 copies in the UK, less than a third of OK Computer sales. It is certified platinum in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Japan and the US.
Critical reception
Kid A was widely anticipated. Spin described it as the most anticipated rock record since Nirvana's In Utero. According to Andrew Harrison, the editor of Q, journalists expected it to provide more of the "rousing, cathartic, lots-of-guitar, Saturday-night-at-Glastonbury big future rock moments" of OK Computer. Months before its release, Pat Blashill of Melody Maker wrote: "If there's one band that promises to return rock to us, it's Radiohead."After Kid A had been played for critics, many bemoaned the lack of guitar, the obscured vocals and the unconventional song structures. Some called it "a commercial suicide note". The Guardian wrote of the "muted electronic hums, pulses and tones", predicting that it would confuse listeners. In Mojo, Jim Irvin wrote that "upon first listen, Kid A is just awful ... Too often it sounds like the fragments that they began the writing process with – a loop, a riff, a mumbled line of text, have been set in concrete and had other, lesser ideas piled on top." The Guardian critic Adam Sweeting wrote that "even listeners raised on krautrock or Ornette Coleman will find Kid A a mystifying experience", and that it pandered to "the worst cliches" about Radiohead's "relentless miserabilism". Several critics found the free jazz of "The National Anthem" discordant and unpleasant.Several critics felt Kid A was pretentious or deliberately obscure. The Irish Times bemoaned the lack of conventional song structures and panned the album as "deliberately abstruse, wilfully esoteric and wantonly unfathomable ... The only thing challenging about Kid A is the very real challenge to your attention span." In the New Yorker, the novelist Nick Hornby wrote that it was "morbid proof that this sort of self-indulgence results in a weird kind of anonymity rather than something distinctive and original". The Melody Maker critic Mark Beaumont called it "tubby, ostentatious, self-congratulatory, look-ma-I-can-suck-my-own-cock whiny old rubbish ... About 60 songs were started that no one had a bloody clue how to finish." Alexis Petridis of The Guardian described it as "self-consciously awkward and bloody-minded, the noise made by a band trying so hard to make a 'difficult' album that they felt it beneath them to write any songs". Rolling Stone published a piece mocking Kid A as humourless, derivative and lacking in songs: "Because it was decided that Radiohead were Important and Significant last time around, no one can accept the album as the crackpot art project it so obviously is."Some critics felt Kid A was unoriginal. In the New York Times, Howard Hampton dismissed Radiohead as a "rock composite" and wrote that Kid A "recycles Pink Floyd's dark-side-of-the-moon solipsism to Me-Decade perfection". Beaumont said Radiohead were "simply ploughing furrows dug by DJ Shadow and Brian Eno before them". The Irish Times felt the ambient elements were inferior to Eno's 1978 album Music For Airports and its "scary" elements inferior to Scott Walker's 1995 album Tilt. Select wrote: "What do they want for sounding like the Aphex Twin circa 1993, a medal?" In a retrospective, the journalist Rob Sheffield wrote that the "mastery of Warp-style electronic effects" had appeared "clumsy and dated" at the time of Kid A's release. In an NME editorial, James Oldham wrote that the electronic influences were "mired in compromise", with Radiohead still operating as a rock band, and concluded: "Time will judge it. But right now, Kid A has the ring of a lengthy, over-analysed mistake." Rob Mitchell, the co-founder of Warp, felt Kid A represented "an honest interpretation of [Warp] influences" and was not "gratuitously" electronic. He predicted it might one day be seen in the same way as David Bowie's 1977 album Low, which alienated some Bowie fans but was later acclaimed.AllMusic gave Kid A a favourable review, but wrote that it "never is as visionary or stunning as OK Computer, nor does it really repay the intensive time it demands in order for it to sink in". The NME was also positive, but described some songs as "meandering" and "anticlimactic", and concluded: "For all its feats of brinkmanship, the patently magnificent construct called Kid A betrays a band playing one-handed just to prove they can, scared to commit itself emotionally." In Rolling Stone, David Fricke called Kid A "a work of deliberately inky, often irritating obsession ... But this is pop, a music of ornery, glistening guile and honest ache, and it will feel good under your skin once you let it get there."Spin said Kid A was "not the act of career suicide or feat of self-indulgence it will be castigated as", and predicted that fans would recognise it as Radiohead's best and "bravest" album. Billboard described it as "an ocean of unparalleled musical depth" and "the first truly groundbreaking album of the 21st century". The music critic Robert Christgau wrote that Kid A was "an imaginative, imitative variation on a pop staple: sadness made pretty". The Village Voice called it "oblique oblique oblique ... Also incredibly beautiful." Brent DiCrescenzo of Pitchfork gave Kid A a perfect score, calling it "cacophonous yet tranquil, experimental yet familiar, foreign yet womb-like, spacious yet visceral, textured yet vaporous, awakening yet dreamlike". He concluded that Radiohead "must be the greatest band alive, if not the best since you know who". One of the first Kid A reviews posted online, DiCrescenzo's review helped popularise Pitchfork and became notorious for its "obtuse" writing.At Metacritic, which aggregates ratings from critics, Kid A has a score of 80 based on 24 reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews". It was named one of the best albums of 2000 by publications including the Los Angeles Times, Spin, Melody Maker, Mojo, NME, Pitchfork, Q, the Times, Uncut and the Wire. At the 2001 Grammy Awards, Kid A was nominated for Album of the Year and won for Best Alternative Album.
Legacy
In the years following its release, Kid A attracted acclaim. In 2005, Pitchfork wrote that it had "challenged and confounded" Radiohead's audience, and subsequently "transformed into an intellectual symbol of sorts ... Owning it became 'getting it'; getting it became 'anointing it'." In 2015, Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone likened Radiohead's change in style to Bob Dylan's controversial move to rock music, writing that critics now hesitated to say they had disliked it at the time. He described Kid A as the "defining moment in the Radiohead legend". A year later, Billboard argued that Kid A was the first album since Bowie's Low to have moved "rock and electronic music forward in such a mature fashion". In an article for Kid A's 20th anniversary, the Quietus suggested that the negative reviews had been motivated by rockism, the tendency among music critics to venerate rock music over other genres.In a 2011 Guardian article about his critical Melody Maker review, Beaumont wrote that though his opinion had not changed, "Kid A's status as a cultural cornerstone has proved me, if not wrong, then very much in the minority ... People whose opinions I trust claim it to be their favourite album ever." In 2014, Brice Ezell of PopMatters wrote that Kid A is "more fun to think and write about than it is to actually listen to" and a "far less compelling representation of the band's talents than The Bends and OK Computer". In 2016, Dorian Lysnkey wrote in The Guardian: "At times, Kid A is dull enough to make you fervently wish that they'd merged the highlights with the best bits of the similarly spotty Amnesiac ... Yorke had given up on coherent lyrics so one can only guess at what he was worrying about."Radiohead denied that they had set out to create "difficult" music. Jonny Greenwood argued that the tracks were short and melodic, and suggested that "people basically want their hands held through 12 'Mull Of Kintyre's". Yorke said: "We're actually trying to communicate but, somewhere along the line, we just seemed to piss off a lot of people ... What we're doing isn't that radical." He recalled that the band had been "white as a sheet" before early performances on the Kid A tour, thinking they had been "absolutely trashed". At the same time, the reaction motivated them: "There was a sense of a fight to convince people, which was actually really exciting." He regretted having released no singles, feeling it meant much of the early judgement of the album came from critics.Grantland credited Kid A for pioneering the use of internet to stream and promote music, writing: "For many music fans of a certain age and persuasion, Kid A was the first album experienced primarily via the internet – it's where you went to hear it, read the reviews, and argue about whether it was a masterpiece ... Listen early, form an opinion quickly, state it publicly, and move on to the next big record by the official release date. In that way, Kid A invented modern music culture as we know it." In his 2005 book Killing Yourself to Live, critic Chuck Klosterman interpreted Kid A as a prediction of the September 11 attacks.Speaking at Radiohead's induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2019, David Byrne of Talking Heads, one of Radiohead's formative influences, said: "What was really weird and very encouraging was that [Kid A] was popular. It was a hit! It proved to me that the artistic risk paid off and music fans sometimes are not stupid." In 2020, Billboard wrote that the success of Kid A, despite its "challenging" content, established Radiohead as "heavy hitters in the business for the long run".
Accolades
In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked Kid A number 20 on its updated "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list, describing it as "a new, uniquely fearless kind of rock record for a new, increasingly fearful century ... [It] remains one of the more stunning sonic makeovers in music history." In previous versions of the list, Kid A ranked at number 67 (2012) and number 428 (2003). In 2005, Stylus and Pitchfork named Kid A the best album of the previous five years, with Pitchfork calling it "the perfect record for its time: ominous, surreal, and impossibly millennial".In 2006, Time named Kid A one of the 100 best albums, calling it "the opposite of easy listening, and the weirdest album to ever sell a million copies, but ... also a testament to just how complicated pop music can be". At the end of the decade, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and the Times ranked Kid A the greatest album of the 2000s. The Guardian ranked it second best, calling it "a jittery premonition of the troubled, disconnected, overloaded decade to come. The sound of today, in other words, a decade early." In 2021, Pitchfork readers voted Kid A the greatest album of the previous 25 years. In 2011, Rolling Stone named "Everything in Its Right Place" the 24th-best song of the 2000s, describing it as "oddness at its most hummable". "Idioteque" was named one of the best songs of the decade by Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, and Rolling Stone ranked it #33 on its 2018 list of the "greatest songs of the century so far".
(*) designates unordered list
Reissues
Radiohead left EMI after their contract ended in 2003. After a period of being out of print on vinyl, Kid A was reissued as a double LP on 19 August 2008 as part of the "From the Capitol Vaults" series, along with other Radiohead albums. In 2007, EMI released Radiohead Box Set, a compilation of albums recorded while Radiohead were signed to EMI, including Kid A. On 25 August 2009, EMI reissued Kid A in a two-CD "Collector's Edition" and a "Special Collector's Edition" containing an additional DVD. Both versions feature live tracks, taken mostly from television performances. Radiohead had no input into the reissues and the music was not remastered.The EMI reissues were discontinued after Radiohead's back catalogue transferred to XL Recordings in 2016. In May 2016, XL reissued Kid A on vinyl, along with the rest of Radiohead's back catalogue. An early demo of "The National Anthem" was included in the special edition of the 2017 OK Computer reissue OKNOTOK 1997 2017. In February 2020, Radiohead released an extended version of "Treefingers", previously released on the soundtrack for the 2000 film Memento, to digital platforms.On November 5, 2021, Radiohead released Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A and Amnesiac. It includes a third album, Kid Amnesiae, comprising previously unreleased material from the sessions. Radiohead promoted the reissue with singles for the previously unreleased tracks "If You Say the Word" and "Follow Me Around". Kid A Mnesia Exhibition, an interactive experience with music and artwork from the albums, was released on November 18 for PlayStation 5, macOS and Windows.
Track listing
All songs written by Radiohead, except "Idioteque", which samples "Mild und Leise" by Paul Lansky and "Short Piece" by Arthur Kreiger.
"Everything in Its Right Place" – 4:11
"Kid A" – 4:44
"The National Anthem" – 5:51
"How to Disappear Completely" – 5:56
"Treefingers" – 3:42
"Optimistic" – 5:15
"In Limbo" – 3:31
"Idioteque" – 5:09
"Morning Bell" – 4:35
"Motion Picture Soundtrack" – 7:01
Untitled hidden track – 0:52Note: Track 10 ends at 3:20; includes an untitled hidden track from 4:17 until 5:09, followed by 1:51 of silence. On streaming services, the hidden track is listed as a separate track.
Personnel
Credits adapted from liner notes.
Charts
Certifications and sales
Notes
References
Bibliography
Randall, Mac (2012). Exit Music: The Radiohead Story Updated Edition. ISBN 9781617130472.
Further reading
Lin, Marvin (25 November 2010). Radiohead's Kid A. 33⅓ series. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8264-2343-6.
Ed's Diary: Archived 13 April 2007 at the Wayback Machine Ed O'Brien's studio diary from Kid A/Amnesiac recording sessions, 1999–2000 (archived at Green Plastic)
Marzorati, Gerald. "The Post-Rock Band". The New York Times. 1 October 2000. Retrieved on 4 November 2010.
"All Things Reconsidered: The 10th Anniversary of Radiohead's 'Kid A'" (a collection of articles). PopMatters. November 2010. Retrieved on 4 November 2010.
External links
Kid A at Discogs (list of releases) | part of | {
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Kid A is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 2 October 2000 by Parlophone. It was recorded with their producer, Nigel Godrich, in Paris, Copenhagen, Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire.
After the stress of promoting Radiohead's 1997 album OK Computer, the songwriter, Thom Yorke, wanted to depart from rock music. Drawing influence from electronic music, ambient music, krautrock, jazz and 20th-century classical music, Radiohead used instruments such as modular synthesisers, the ondes Martenot, brass and strings. They processed guitar sounds, incorporated samples and loops, and manipulated their recordings with software. Yorke wrote impersonal and abstract lyrics, cutting up phrases and assembling them at random.
In a departure from industry practice, Radiohead released no singles or music videos and conducted few interviews and photoshoots. Instead, they released short animated "blips", and became one of the first major acts to use the internet for promotion. Bootlegs of early performances were shared on filesharing services, and Kid A was leaked before release. In 2000, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos.
Kid A debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and became Radiohead's first number-one album on the Billboard 200 in the US, where it sold more than 207,000 copies in its first week. Its new sound divided listeners, and some dismissed it as pretentious, deliberately obscure, or derivative. However, it later attracted acclaim; at the end of the decade, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and the Times ranked Kid A the greatest album of the 2000s, and in 2020 Rolling Stone ranked it number 20 on its updated list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Like OK Computer, it won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. It has been certified platinum in Australia, Canada, France, Japan, the US and the UK.
A second album of material from the sessions, Amnesiac, was released eight months later. Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A, Amnesiac and previously unreleased material, was released in 2021.
Background
Following the critical and commercial success of their 1997 album OK Computer, the members of Radiohead suffered burnout. The songwriter, Thom Yorke, became ill, describing himself as "a complete fucking mess ... completely unhinged". He was troubled by new acts he felt were imitating Radiohead and became hostile to the music media. He told The Observer: "I always used to use music as a way of moving on and dealing with things, and I sort of felt like that the thing that helped me deal with things had been sold to the highest bidder and I was simply doing its bidding. And I couldn't handle that."Yorke suffered from writer's block and could not finish writing songs on guitar. He became disillusioned with the "mythology" of rock music, feeling the genre had "run its course". He began to listen almost exclusively to the electronic music of artists signed to the record label Warp, such as Aphex Twin and Autechre. Yorke said: "It was refreshing because the music was all structures and had no human voices in it. But I felt just as emotional about it as I'd ever felt about guitar music." He liked the idea of his voice being used as an instrument rather than having a leading role, and wanted to focus on sounds and textures instead of traditional songwriting.Yorke bought a house in Cornwall and spent his time walking the cliffs and drawing, restricting his musical activity to playing the grand piano he had recently bought. "Everything in Its Right Place" was the first song he wrote. He described himself as a "shit piano player", with little knowledge of electronic instruments: "I remember this Tom Waits quote from years ago, that what keeps him going as a songwriter is his complete ignorance of the instruments he's using. So everything's a novelty. That's one of the reasons I wanted to get into computers and synths, because I didn't understand how the fuck they worked. I had no idea what ADSR meant."The guitarist Ed O'Brien had hoped Radiohead's fourth album would comprise short, melodic guitar songs, but Yorke said: "There was no chance of the album sounding like that. I'd completely had it with melody. I just wanted rhythm. All melodies to me were pure embarrassment." The bassist, Colin Greenwood, said: "We felt we had to change everything. There were other guitar bands out there trying to do similar things. We had to move on."
Recording
In the late 1990s, Radiohead began building their own studio in Oxfordshire. Yorke planned to use it as the German band Can had used their studio in Cologne, recording everything they played and then editing it. However, as the studio would not be complete until late 1999, Radiohead began work in Guillaime Tell Studios, Paris, in January 1999.Radiohead worked with the OK Computer producer Nigel Godrich and no deadline. Yorke, who had the greatest control, was still facing writer's block. His new songs were incomplete, and some consisted of little more than sounds or rhythms; few had clear verses or choruses. Yorke's lack of lyrics created problems, as these had provided points of reference and inspiration for his bandmates in the past.The group struggled with Yorke's new direction. According to Godrich, Yorke did not communicate much, and according to Yorke, Godrich "didn't understand why, if we had such a strength in one thing, we would want to do something else". The lead guitarist, Jonny Greenwood, feared "awful art-rock nonsense just for its own sake". His brother, Colin, did not enjoy Yorke's Warp influences, finding them "really cold". The other band members were unsure of how to contribute, and considered leaving. O'Brien said: "It's scary – everyone feels insecure. I'm a guitarist and suddenly it's like, well, there are no guitars on this track, or no drums."Radiohead experimented with electronic instruments including modular synthesisers and the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument similar to a theremin, and used software such as Pro Tools and Cubase to edit and manipulate their recordings. They found it difficult to use electronic instruments collaboratively; according to Yorke, "We had to develop ways of going off into corners and build things on whatever sequencer, synthesiser or piece of machinery we would bring to the equation and then integrate that into the way we would normally work." O'Brien began using sustain units, which allow guitar notes to be sustained infinitely, combined with looping and delay effects to create synthesiser-like sounds.In March, Radiohead moved to Medley Studios in Copenhagen for two weeks, which were unproductive. The sessions produced about 50 reels of tape, each containing 15 minutes of music, with nothing finished. In April, Radiohead resumed recording in a mansion in Batsford Park, Gloucestershire. The lack of deadline and the number of incomplete ideas made it hard to focus, and the group held tense meetings. They agreed to disband if they could not agree on an album worth releasing.In July, O'Brien began keeping an online diary of Radiohead's progress. Radiohead moved to their new studio in Oxfordshire in September. In November, Radiohead held a live webcast from their studio, featuring a performance of new music and a DJ set. By 2000, six songs were complete. In January, at Godrich's suggestion, Radiohead split into two groups: one would generate a sound or sequence without acoustic instruments such as guitars or drums, and the other would develop it. Though the experiment produced no finished songs, it helped convince O'Brien of the potential of electronic instruments.On 19 April 2000, Yorke wrote on Radiohead's website that they had finished recording. Having completed over 20 songs, Radiohead considered releasing a double album, but felt the material was too dense. Instead, they saved half the songs for their next album, Amnesiac, released the following year. Yorke said Radiohead split the work into two albums because "they cancel each other out as overall finished things. They come from two different places." He observed that deciding the track list was not just a matter of choosing the best songs, as "you can put all the best songs in the world on a record and they'll ruin each other". He cited the later Beatles albums as examples of effective sequencing: "How in the hell can you have three different versions of 'Revolution' on the same record and get away with it? I thought about that sort of thing." Agreeing on the track list created arguments, and O'Brien said the band came close to breaking up: "That felt like it could go either way, it could break ... But we came in the next day and it was resolved." The album was mastered by Chris Blair in Abbey Road Studios, London.
Tracks
Radiohead worked on the first track, "Everything in Its Right Place", in a conventional band arrangement in Copenhagen and Paris, but without results. In Gloucestershire, Yorke and Godrich transferred the song to a Prophet-5 synthesiser, and Yorke's vocals were processed in Pro Tools using a scrubbing tool. O'Brien and the drummer, Philip Selway, said the track helped them accept that not every song needed every band member to play on it. O'Brien recalled: "To be genuinely sort of delighted that you'd been working for six months on this record and something great has come out of it, and you haven't contributed to it, is a really liberating feeling." Jonny Greenwood described it as a turning point for the album: "We knew it had to be the first song, and everything just followed after it."Yorke wrote an early version of "The National Anthem" when the band was still in school. In 1997, Radiohead recorded drums and bass for the song, intending to develop it as a B-side for OK Computer, but decided to keep it for their next album. For Kid A, Greenwood added ondes Martenot and sounds sampled from radio stations, and Yorke's vocals were processed with a ring modulator. In November 1999, Radiohead recorded a brass section inspired by the "organised chaos" of Town Hall Concert by the jazz musician Charles Mingus, instructing the musicians to sound like a "traffic jam".The strings on "How to Disappear Completely" were performed by the Orchestra of St John's and recorded in Dorchester Abbey, a 12th-century church about five miles from Radiohead's Oxfordshire studio. Radiohead chose the orchestra as they had performed pieces by Penderecki and Messiaen. Jonny Greenwood, the only Radiohead member trained in music theory, composed the string arrangement by multitracking his ondes Martenot. According to Godrich, when the orchestra members saw Greenwood's score "they all just sort of burst into giggles, because they couldn't do what he'd written, because it was impossible – or impossible for them, anyway". The orchestra leader, John Lubbock, encouraged them to experiment and work with Greenwood's ideas. The concerts director, Alison Atkinson, said the session was more experimental than the orchestra's usual bookings.
"Idioteque" samples two computer music pieces, Paul Lansky's "Mild und Leise" and Arthur Kreiger's "Short Piece". Both samples were taken from Electronic Music Winners, a 1976 experimental music LP which Jonny Greenwood stumbled upon while the band was working on Kid A. The track was built from a drum machine pattern Greenwood created with a modular synthesiser and a sample from "Mild und Leise". He gave the 50-minute recording to Yorke, who took a short section of it and used it to write the song. Yorke also referred to electronic dance music when talking about "Idioteque", and said that the song was "an attempt to capture that exploding beat sound where you're at the club and the PA's so loud, you know it's doing damage"."Motion Picture Soundtrack" was written before Radiohead's debut single "Creep" (1992), and Radiohead recorded a version on piano during the OK Computer sessions. For Kid A, Yorke recorded it on a pedal organ, influenced by the songwriter Tom Waits. The band added harp samples and double bass, attempting to emulate the soundtracks of 1950s Disney films. Radiohead also worked on several songs they did not complete until the recording sessions for future albums, including "Nude", "Burn the Witch" and "True Love Waits".
Music
Style and influences
Kid A incorporates influences from electronic artists on Warp Records such as 1990s IDM artists Autechre and Aphex Twin; 1970s Krautrock bands such as Can; the jazz of Charles Mingus, Alice Coltrane and Miles Davis; and abstract hip hop from the Mo'Wax label, including Blackalicious and DJ Krush. Yorke cited Remain in Light (1980) by Talking Heads as a "massive reference point". Björk was another major influence, particularly her 1997 album Homogenic, as was the Beta Band. Radiohead attended an Underworld concert which helped renew their enthusiasm in a difficult moment.The string orchestration for "How to Disappear Completely" was influenced by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. Jonny Greenwood's use of the ondes Martenot on several songs was inspired by Olivier Messiaen, who popularised the instrument and was one of Greenwood's teenage heroes. Greenwood described his interest in mixing old and new music technology, and during the recording sessions Yorke read Ian MacDonald's Revolution in the Head, which chronicles the Beatles' recordings with George Martin during the 1960s. The band also sought to combine electronic manipulations with jam sessions in the studio, saying their model was the German band Can.Kid A has been described as a work of electronica, experimental rock, post-rock, alternative rock, post-prog, ambient, electronic rock, art rock, and art pop. Though guitar is less prominent than on previous Radiohead albums, guitars were still used on most tracks. "Treefingers", an ambient instrumental, was created by digitally processing O'Brien's guitar loops. Many of Yorke's vocals were manipulated with effects; for example, his vocals on the title track were simply spoken, then vocoded with the ondes Martenot to create the melody.
Lyrics
Yorke's lyrics on Kid A are less personal than on earlier albums, and instead incorporate abstract and surreal themes. He cut up phrases and assembled them at random, combining cliches and banal observations; for example, "Morning Bell" features repeated contrasting lines such as "Where'd you park the car?" and "Cut the kids in half". Yorke denied that he was "trying to get anything across" with the lyrics, and described them as "like shattered bits of mirror ... like pieces of something broken. ... it's not like I'm trying to get anything across."Yorke cited David Byrne's approach to lyrics on Remain in Light as an influence: "When they made that record, they had no real songs, just wrote it all as they went along. Byrne turned up with pages and pages, and just picked stuff up and threw bits in all the time. And that's exactly how I approached Kid A." Radiohead used Yorke's lyrics "like pieces in a collage ... [creating] an artwork out of a lot of different little things". The lyrics are not included in the liner notes, as Radiohead felt they could not be considered independently of the music, and Yorke did not want listeners to focus on them.Yorke wrote "Everything in Its Right Place" about the depression he experienced on the OK Computer tour, feeling he could not speak. The refrain of "How to Disappear Completely" was inspired by R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe, who advised Yorke to relieve tour stress by repeating to himself: "I'm not here, this isn't happening". The refrain of "Optimistic" ("try the best you can / the best you can is good enough") was an assurance by Yorke's partner, Rachel Owen, when Yorke was frustrated with the band's progress. The title Kid A came from a filename on one of Yorke's sequencers. Yorke said he liked its "non-meaning", saying: "If you call [an album] something specific, it drives the record in a certain way."
Artwork
The Kid A artwork and packaging was created by Yorke with Stanley Donwood, who has worked with Radiohead since their 1994 EP My Iron Lung. Donwood painted on large canvases with knives and sticks, then photographed the paintings and manipulated them with Photoshop. While working on the artwork, Yorke and Donwood became "obsessed" with the Worldwatch Institute website, which was full of "scary statistics about ice caps melting, and weather patterns changing"; this inspired them to use an image of a mountain range as the cover art. Donwood said he saw the mountains as "some sort of cataclysmic power".Donwood was inspired by a photograph taken during the Kosovo War depicting a square metre of snow full of the "detritus of war", such as military equipment and cigarette stains. He said: "I was upset by it in a way war had never upset me before. It felt like it was happening in my street." The red swimming pool on the album spine and disc was inspired by the 1988 graphic novel Brought to Light by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz, in which the number of people killed by state terrorism is measured in swimming pools filled with blood. Donwood said this image "haunted" him during the recording of the album, calling it "a symbol of looming danger and shattered expectations". Yorke and Donwood cited a Paris exhibition of paintings by David Hockney as another influence.Yorke and Donwood made many versions of the album cover, with different pictures and different titles in different typefaces. Unable to pick one, they taped them to cupboards of the studio kitchen and went to bed. According to Donwood, the choice the next day "was obvious". In October 2021, Yorke and Donwood curated an exhibition of Kid A artwork at Christie's headquarters in London.
Promotion
Radiohead minimised their involvement in promotion for Kid A, conducting few interviews or photoshoots. Though "Optimistic" and promotional copies of other tracks received radio play, Radiohead released no singles from the album. Yorke said this was to avoid the stress of publicity, which he had struggled with on OK Computer, rather than for artistic reasons.Radiohead were careful to present it as a cohesive work rather than a series of separate tracks. Rather than give EMI executives their own copies, they had them listen to the album in its entirety on a bus from Hollywood to Malibu. Rob Gordon, the vice president of marketing at Capitol Records, the American subsidiary of Radiohead's label EMI, praised the album but said promoting it would be a "business challenge".No advance copies of Kid A were circulated, but it was played under controlled conditions for critics and fans. On September 5, 2000, it was played for the public for the first time at the IMAX theatre in Lincoln Square, Manhattan. Promotional copies of Kid A came with stickers prohibiting broadcast before September 19. At midnight, it was played in its entirety by the London radio station Xfm. MTV2, KROQ, and WXRK also played the album.Rather than agree to a standard magazine photoshoot for Q, Radiohead supplied digitally altered portraits, with their skin smoothed, their irises recoloured, and Yorke's drooping eyelid removed. The Q editor Andrew Harrison described the images as "aggressively weird to the point of taking the piss ... All five of Radiohead had been given the aspect of gawking aliens." Yorke said: "I'd like to see them try to put these pictures on a poster." Q projected the images onto the Houses of Parliament, placed them on posters and billboards in the London Underground and on the Old Street Roundabout, and had them printed on key rings, mugs and mouse mats, to "turn Radiohead back into a product".
Videos
Instead of releasing traditional music videos for Kid A, Radiohead commissioned dozens of 10-second videos featuring Donwood artwork they called "blips", which were aired on music channels and distributed online. Pitchfork described them as "context-free animated nightmares that radiated mystery", with "arch hints of surveillance". Five of the videos were serviced as exclusives to MTV, and "helped play into the arty mystique that endeared Radiohead to its core audience", according to Billboard. Much of the promotional material featured pointy-toothed bear characters created by Donwood. The bears originated in stories Donwood made for his young children about teddy bears who came to life and ate the "grown-ups" who had abandoned them.
Internet
Though Radiohead had experimented with internet promotion for OK Computer in 1997, by 2000 online music promotion was not widespread, with record labels still reliant on MTV and radio. Donwood wrote that EMI was not interested in the Radiohead website, and left him and the band to update it with "discursive and random content".To promote Kid A, Capitol created the "iBlip", a Java applet that could be embedded in fan sites. It allowed users to stream the album, and included artwork, photos and links to order Kid A on Amazon. It was used by more than 1000 sites, and the album was streamed more than 400,000 times. Capitol also streamed Kid A through Amazon, MTV.com and heavy.com, and ran a campaign with the peer-to-peer filesharing service Aimster, allowing users to swap iBlips and Radiohead-branded Aimster skins.Three weeks before release, Kid A was leaked online and shared on the peer-to-peer service Napster. Asked whether he believed Napster had damaged sales, Capitol president Ray Lott likened the situation to unfounded concern about home taping in the 1980s and said: "I'm trying to sell as many Radiohead albums as possible. If I worried about what Napster would do, I wouldn't sell as many albums." Yorke said Napster "encourages enthusiasm for music in a way that the music industry has long forgotten to do".
Tour
Radiohead rearranged the Kid A songs to perform them live. O'Brien said, "You couldn't do Kid A live and be true to the record. You would have to do it like an art installation ... When we played live, we put the human element back into it." Selway said they "found some new life" in the songs when they came to perform them.In mid-2000, months before Kid A was released, Radiohead toured the Mediterranean, performing Kid A and Amnesiac songs for the first time. Fans shared concert bootlegs online. Colin Greenwood said: "We played in Barcelona and the next day the entire performance was up on Napster. Three weeks later when we got to play in Israel the audience knew the words to all the new songs and it was wonderful." Later that year, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos, playing mostly new songs. The tour included a homecoming show in South Park, Oxford, with supporting performances by Humphrey Lyttelton (who performed on Amnesiac), Beck and Sigur Rós. According to the journalist Alex Ross, the show may have been the largest public gathering in Oxford history.Radiohead also performed three concerts in North American theatres, their first in nearly three years. The small venues sold out rapidly, attracting celebrities, and fans camped overnight. In October, Radiohead performed on the American TV show Saturday Night Live; the performance shocked viewers expecting rock songs, with Jonny Greenwood playing electronic instruments, the house brass band improvising over "The National Anthem", and Yorke dancing erratically to "Idioteque". Rolling Stone described the Kid A tour as "a revelation, exposing rock and roll humanity" in the songs. In November 2001, Radiohead released I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings, comprising performances from the Kid A and Amnesiac tours.
Sales
Kid A reached number one on Amazon's sales chart, with more than 10,000 pre-orders. It debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, selling 55,000 copies in its first day – the biggest first-day sales of the year and more than every other album in the top ten combined. Kid A also debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, selling more than 207,000 copies in its first week. It was Radiohead's first US top-20 album, and the first US number one in three years for any British act. Kid A also debuted at number one in Canada, where it sold more than 44,000 copies in its first week, and in France, Ireland and New Zealand. European sales slowed on 2 October 2000, the day of release, when EMI recalled 150,000 faulty CDs. By June 2001, Kid A had sold 310,000 copies in the UK, less than a third of OK Computer sales. It is certified platinum in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Japan and the US.
Critical reception
Kid A was widely anticipated. Spin described it as the most anticipated rock record since Nirvana's In Utero. According to Andrew Harrison, the editor of Q, journalists expected it to provide more of the "rousing, cathartic, lots-of-guitar, Saturday-night-at-Glastonbury big future rock moments" of OK Computer. Months before its release, Pat Blashill of Melody Maker wrote: "If there's one band that promises to return rock to us, it's Radiohead."After Kid A had been played for critics, many bemoaned the lack of guitar, the obscured vocals and the unconventional song structures. Some called it "a commercial suicide note". The Guardian wrote of the "muted electronic hums, pulses and tones", predicting that it would confuse listeners. In Mojo, Jim Irvin wrote that "upon first listen, Kid A is just awful ... Too often it sounds like the fragments that they began the writing process with – a loop, a riff, a mumbled line of text, have been set in concrete and had other, lesser ideas piled on top." The Guardian critic Adam Sweeting wrote that "even listeners raised on krautrock or Ornette Coleman will find Kid A a mystifying experience", and that it pandered to "the worst cliches" about Radiohead's "relentless miserabilism". Several critics found the free jazz of "The National Anthem" discordant and unpleasant.Several critics felt Kid A was pretentious or deliberately obscure. The Irish Times bemoaned the lack of conventional song structures and panned the album as "deliberately abstruse, wilfully esoteric and wantonly unfathomable ... The only thing challenging about Kid A is the very real challenge to your attention span." In the New Yorker, the novelist Nick Hornby wrote that it was "morbid proof that this sort of self-indulgence results in a weird kind of anonymity rather than something distinctive and original". The Melody Maker critic Mark Beaumont called it "tubby, ostentatious, self-congratulatory, look-ma-I-can-suck-my-own-cock whiny old rubbish ... About 60 songs were started that no one had a bloody clue how to finish." Alexis Petridis of The Guardian described it as "self-consciously awkward and bloody-minded, the noise made by a band trying so hard to make a 'difficult' album that they felt it beneath them to write any songs". Rolling Stone published a piece mocking Kid A as humourless, derivative and lacking in songs: "Because it was decided that Radiohead were Important and Significant last time around, no one can accept the album as the crackpot art project it so obviously is."Some critics felt Kid A was unoriginal. In the New York Times, Howard Hampton dismissed Radiohead as a "rock composite" and wrote that Kid A "recycles Pink Floyd's dark-side-of-the-moon solipsism to Me-Decade perfection". Beaumont said Radiohead were "simply ploughing furrows dug by DJ Shadow and Brian Eno before them". The Irish Times felt the ambient elements were inferior to Eno's 1978 album Music For Airports and its "scary" elements inferior to Scott Walker's 1995 album Tilt. Select wrote: "What do they want for sounding like the Aphex Twin circa 1993, a medal?" In a retrospective, the journalist Rob Sheffield wrote that the "mastery of Warp-style electronic effects" had appeared "clumsy and dated" at the time of Kid A's release. In an NME editorial, James Oldham wrote that the electronic influences were "mired in compromise", with Radiohead still operating as a rock band, and concluded: "Time will judge it. But right now, Kid A has the ring of a lengthy, over-analysed mistake." Rob Mitchell, the co-founder of Warp, felt Kid A represented "an honest interpretation of [Warp] influences" and was not "gratuitously" electronic. He predicted it might one day be seen in the same way as David Bowie's 1977 album Low, which alienated some Bowie fans but was later acclaimed.AllMusic gave Kid A a favourable review, but wrote that it "never is as visionary or stunning as OK Computer, nor does it really repay the intensive time it demands in order for it to sink in". The NME was also positive, but described some songs as "meandering" and "anticlimactic", and concluded: "For all its feats of brinkmanship, the patently magnificent construct called Kid A betrays a band playing one-handed just to prove they can, scared to commit itself emotionally." In Rolling Stone, David Fricke called Kid A "a work of deliberately inky, often irritating obsession ... But this is pop, a music of ornery, glistening guile and honest ache, and it will feel good under your skin once you let it get there."Spin said Kid A was "not the act of career suicide or feat of self-indulgence it will be castigated as", and predicted that fans would recognise it as Radiohead's best and "bravest" album. Billboard described it as "an ocean of unparalleled musical depth" and "the first truly groundbreaking album of the 21st century". The music critic Robert Christgau wrote that Kid A was "an imaginative, imitative variation on a pop staple: sadness made pretty". The Village Voice called it "oblique oblique oblique ... Also incredibly beautiful." Brent DiCrescenzo of Pitchfork gave Kid A a perfect score, calling it "cacophonous yet tranquil, experimental yet familiar, foreign yet womb-like, spacious yet visceral, textured yet vaporous, awakening yet dreamlike". He concluded that Radiohead "must be the greatest band alive, if not the best since you know who". One of the first Kid A reviews posted online, DiCrescenzo's review helped popularise Pitchfork and became notorious for its "obtuse" writing.At Metacritic, which aggregates ratings from critics, Kid A has a score of 80 based on 24 reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews". It was named one of the best albums of 2000 by publications including the Los Angeles Times, Spin, Melody Maker, Mojo, NME, Pitchfork, Q, the Times, Uncut and the Wire. At the 2001 Grammy Awards, Kid A was nominated for Album of the Year and won for Best Alternative Album.
Legacy
In the years following its release, Kid A attracted acclaim. In 2005, Pitchfork wrote that it had "challenged and confounded" Radiohead's audience, and subsequently "transformed into an intellectual symbol of sorts ... Owning it became 'getting it'; getting it became 'anointing it'." In 2015, Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone likened Radiohead's change in style to Bob Dylan's controversial move to rock music, writing that critics now hesitated to say they had disliked it at the time. He described Kid A as the "defining moment in the Radiohead legend". A year later, Billboard argued that Kid A was the first album since Bowie's Low to have moved "rock and electronic music forward in such a mature fashion". In an article for Kid A's 20th anniversary, the Quietus suggested that the negative reviews had been motivated by rockism, the tendency among music critics to venerate rock music over other genres.In a 2011 Guardian article about his critical Melody Maker review, Beaumont wrote that though his opinion had not changed, "Kid A's status as a cultural cornerstone has proved me, if not wrong, then very much in the minority ... People whose opinions I trust claim it to be their favourite album ever." In 2014, Brice Ezell of PopMatters wrote that Kid A is "more fun to think and write about than it is to actually listen to" and a "far less compelling representation of the band's talents than The Bends and OK Computer". In 2016, Dorian Lysnkey wrote in The Guardian: "At times, Kid A is dull enough to make you fervently wish that they'd merged the highlights with the best bits of the similarly spotty Amnesiac ... Yorke had given up on coherent lyrics so one can only guess at what he was worrying about."Radiohead denied that they had set out to create "difficult" music. Jonny Greenwood argued that the tracks were short and melodic, and suggested that "people basically want their hands held through 12 'Mull Of Kintyre's". Yorke said: "We're actually trying to communicate but, somewhere along the line, we just seemed to piss off a lot of people ... What we're doing isn't that radical." He recalled that the band had been "white as a sheet" before early performances on the Kid A tour, thinking they had been "absolutely trashed". At the same time, the reaction motivated them: "There was a sense of a fight to convince people, which was actually really exciting." He regretted having released no singles, feeling it meant much of the early judgement of the album came from critics.Grantland credited Kid A for pioneering the use of internet to stream and promote music, writing: "For many music fans of a certain age and persuasion, Kid A was the first album experienced primarily via the internet – it's where you went to hear it, read the reviews, and argue about whether it was a masterpiece ... Listen early, form an opinion quickly, state it publicly, and move on to the next big record by the official release date. In that way, Kid A invented modern music culture as we know it." In his 2005 book Killing Yourself to Live, critic Chuck Klosterman interpreted Kid A as a prediction of the September 11 attacks.Speaking at Radiohead's induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2019, David Byrne of Talking Heads, one of Radiohead's formative influences, said: "What was really weird and very encouraging was that [Kid A] was popular. It was a hit! It proved to me that the artistic risk paid off and music fans sometimes are not stupid." In 2020, Billboard wrote that the success of Kid A, despite its "challenging" content, established Radiohead as "heavy hitters in the business for the long run".
Accolades
In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked Kid A number 20 on its updated "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list, describing it as "a new, uniquely fearless kind of rock record for a new, increasingly fearful century ... [It] remains one of the more stunning sonic makeovers in music history." In previous versions of the list, Kid A ranked at number 67 (2012) and number 428 (2003). In 2005, Stylus and Pitchfork named Kid A the best album of the previous five years, with Pitchfork calling it "the perfect record for its time: ominous, surreal, and impossibly millennial".In 2006, Time named Kid A one of the 100 best albums, calling it "the opposite of easy listening, and the weirdest album to ever sell a million copies, but ... also a testament to just how complicated pop music can be". At the end of the decade, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and the Times ranked Kid A the greatest album of the 2000s. The Guardian ranked it second best, calling it "a jittery premonition of the troubled, disconnected, overloaded decade to come. The sound of today, in other words, a decade early." In 2021, Pitchfork readers voted Kid A the greatest album of the previous 25 years. In 2011, Rolling Stone named "Everything in Its Right Place" the 24th-best song of the 2000s, describing it as "oddness at its most hummable". "Idioteque" was named one of the best songs of the decade by Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, and Rolling Stone ranked it #33 on its 2018 list of the "greatest songs of the century so far".
(*) designates unordered list
Reissues
Radiohead left EMI after their contract ended in 2003. After a period of being out of print on vinyl, Kid A was reissued as a double LP on 19 August 2008 as part of the "From the Capitol Vaults" series, along with other Radiohead albums. In 2007, EMI released Radiohead Box Set, a compilation of albums recorded while Radiohead were signed to EMI, including Kid A. On 25 August 2009, EMI reissued Kid A in a two-CD "Collector's Edition" and a "Special Collector's Edition" containing an additional DVD. Both versions feature live tracks, taken mostly from television performances. Radiohead had no input into the reissues and the music was not remastered.The EMI reissues were discontinued after Radiohead's back catalogue transferred to XL Recordings in 2016. In May 2016, XL reissued Kid A on vinyl, along with the rest of Radiohead's back catalogue. An early demo of "The National Anthem" was included in the special edition of the 2017 OK Computer reissue OKNOTOK 1997 2017. In February 2020, Radiohead released an extended version of "Treefingers", previously released on the soundtrack for the 2000 film Memento, to digital platforms.On November 5, 2021, Radiohead released Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A and Amnesiac. It includes a third album, Kid Amnesiae, comprising previously unreleased material from the sessions. Radiohead promoted the reissue with singles for the previously unreleased tracks "If You Say the Word" and "Follow Me Around". Kid A Mnesia Exhibition, an interactive experience with music and artwork from the albums, was released on November 18 for PlayStation 5, macOS and Windows.
Track listing
All songs written by Radiohead, except "Idioteque", which samples "Mild und Leise" by Paul Lansky and "Short Piece" by Arthur Kreiger.
"Everything in Its Right Place" – 4:11
"Kid A" – 4:44
"The National Anthem" – 5:51
"How to Disappear Completely" – 5:56
"Treefingers" – 3:42
"Optimistic" – 5:15
"In Limbo" – 3:31
"Idioteque" – 5:09
"Morning Bell" – 4:35
"Motion Picture Soundtrack" – 7:01
Untitled hidden track – 0:52Note: Track 10 ends at 3:20; includes an untitled hidden track from 4:17 until 5:09, followed by 1:51 of silence. On streaming services, the hidden track is listed as a separate track.
Personnel
Credits adapted from liner notes.
Charts
Certifications and sales
Notes
References
Bibliography
Randall, Mac (2012). Exit Music: The Radiohead Story Updated Edition. ISBN 9781617130472.
Further reading
Lin, Marvin (25 November 2010). Radiohead's Kid A. 33⅓ series. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8264-2343-6.
Ed's Diary: Archived 13 April 2007 at the Wayback Machine Ed O'Brien's studio diary from Kid A/Amnesiac recording sessions, 1999–2000 (archived at Green Plastic)
Marzorati, Gerald. "The Post-Rock Band". The New York Times. 1 October 2000. Retrieved on 4 November 2010.
"All Things Reconsidered: The 10th Anniversary of Radiohead's 'Kid A'" (a collection of articles). PopMatters. November 2010. Retrieved on 4 November 2010.
External links
Kid A at Discogs (list of releases) | language of work or name | {
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Kid A is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 2 October 2000 by Parlophone. It was recorded with their producer, Nigel Godrich, in Paris, Copenhagen, Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire.
After the stress of promoting Radiohead's 1997 album OK Computer, the songwriter, Thom Yorke, wanted to depart from rock music. Drawing influence from electronic music, ambient music, krautrock, jazz and 20th-century classical music, Radiohead used instruments such as modular synthesisers, the ondes Martenot, brass and strings. They processed guitar sounds, incorporated samples and loops, and manipulated their recordings with software. Yorke wrote impersonal and abstract lyrics, cutting up phrases and assembling them at random.
In a departure from industry practice, Radiohead released no singles or music videos and conducted few interviews and photoshoots. Instead, they released short animated "blips", and became one of the first major acts to use the internet for promotion. Bootlegs of early performances were shared on filesharing services, and Kid A was leaked before release. In 2000, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos.
Kid A debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and became Radiohead's first number-one album on the Billboard 200 in the US, where it sold more than 207,000 copies in its first week. Its new sound divided listeners, and some dismissed it as pretentious, deliberately obscure, or derivative. However, it later attracted acclaim; at the end of the decade, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and the Times ranked Kid A the greatest album of the 2000s, and in 2020 Rolling Stone ranked it number 20 on its updated list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Like OK Computer, it won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. It has been certified platinum in Australia, Canada, France, Japan, the US and the UK.
A second album of material from the sessions, Amnesiac, was released eight months later. Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A, Amnesiac and previously unreleased material, was released in 2021.
Background
Following the critical and commercial success of their 1997 album OK Computer, the members of Radiohead suffered burnout. The songwriter, Thom Yorke, became ill, describing himself as "a complete fucking mess ... completely unhinged". He was troubled by new acts he felt were imitating Radiohead and became hostile to the music media. He told The Observer: "I always used to use music as a way of moving on and dealing with things, and I sort of felt like that the thing that helped me deal with things had been sold to the highest bidder and I was simply doing its bidding. And I couldn't handle that."Yorke suffered from writer's block and could not finish writing songs on guitar. He became disillusioned with the "mythology" of rock music, feeling the genre had "run its course". He began to listen almost exclusively to the electronic music of artists signed to the record label Warp, such as Aphex Twin and Autechre. Yorke said: "It was refreshing because the music was all structures and had no human voices in it. But I felt just as emotional about it as I'd ever felt about guitar music." He liked the idea of his voice being used as an instrument rather than having a leading role, and wanted to focus on sounds and textures instead of traditional songwriting.Yorke bought a house in Cornwall and spent his time walking the cliffs and drawing, restricting his musical activity to playing the grand piano he had recently bought. "Everything in Its Right Place" was the first song he wrote. He described himself as a "shit piano player", with little knowledge of electronic instruments: "I remember this Tom Waits quote from years ago, that what keeps him going as a songwriter is his complete ignorance of the instruments he's using. So everything's a novelty. That's one of the reasons I wanted to get into computers and synths, because I didn't understand how the fuck they worked. I had no idea what ADSR meant."The guitarist Ed O'Brien had hoped Radiohead's fourth album would comprise short, melodic guitar songs, but Yorke said: "There was no chance of the album sounding like that. I'd completely had it with melody. I just wanted rhythm. All melodies to me were pure embarrassment." The bassist, Colin Greenwood, said: "We felt we had to change everything. There were other guitar bands out there trying to do similar things. We had to move on."
Recording
In the late 1990s, Radiohead began building their own studio in Oxfordshire. Yorke planned to use it as the German band Can had used their studio in Cologne, recording everything they played and then editing it. However, as the studio would not be complete until late 1999, Radiohead began work in Guillaime Tell Studios, Paris, in January 1999.Radiohead worked with the OK Computer producer Nigel Godrich and no deadline. Yorke, who had the greatest control, was still facing writer's block. His new songs were incomplete, and some consisted of little more than sounds or rhythms; few had clear verses or choruses. Yorke's lack of lyrics created problems, as these had provided points of reference and inspiration for his bandmates in the past.The group struggled with Yorke's new direction. According to Godrich, Yorke did not communicate much, and according to Yorke, Godrich "didn't understand why, if we had such a strength in one thing, we would want to do something else". The lead guitarist, Jonny Greenwood, feared "awful art-rock nonsense just for its own sake". His brother, Colin, did not enjoy Yorke's Warp influences, finding them "really cold". The other band members were unsure of how to contribute, and considered leaving. O'Brien said: "It's scary – everyone feels insecure. I'm a guitarist and suddenly it's like, well, there are no guitars on this track, or no drums."Radiohead experimented with electronic instruments including modular synthesisers and the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument similar to a theremin, and used software such as Pro Tools and Cubase to edit and manipulate their recordings. They found it difficult to use electronic instruments collaboratively; according to Yorke, "We had to develop ways of going off into corners and build things on whatever sequencer, synthesiser or piece of machinery we would bring to the equation and then integrate that into the way we would normally work." O'Brien began using sustain units, which allow guitar notes to be sustained infinitely, combined with looping and delay effects to create synthesiser-like sounds.In March, Radiohead moved to Medley Studios in Copenhagen for two weeks, which were unproductive. The sessions produced about 50 reels of tape, each containing 15 minutes of music, with nothing finished. In April, Radiohead resumed recording in a mansion in Batsford Park, Gloucestershire. The lack of deadline and the number of incomplete ideas made it hard to focus, and the group held tense meetings. They agreed to disband if they could not agree on an album worth releasing.In July, O'Brien began keeping an online diary of Radiohead's progress. Radiohead moved to their new studio in Oxfordshire in September. In November, Radiohead held a live webcast from their studio, featuring a performance of new music and a DJ set. By 2000, six songs were complete. In January, at Godrich's suggestion, Radiohead split into two groups: one would generate a sound or sequence without acoustic instruments such as guitars or drums, and the other would develop it. Though the experiment produced no finished songs, it helped convince O'Brien of the potential of electronic instruments.On 19 April 2000, Yorke wrote on Radiohead's website that they had finished recording. Having completed over 20 songs, Radiohead considered releasing a double album, but felt the material was too dense. Instead, they saved half the songs for their next album, Amnesiac, released the following year. Yorke said Radiohead split the work into two albums because "they cancel each other out as overall finished things. They come from two different places." He observed that deciding the track list was not just a matter of choosing the best songs, as "you can put all the best songs in the world on a record and they'll ruin each other". He cited the later Beatles albums as examples of effective sequencing: "How in the hell can you have three different versions of 'Revolution' on the same record and get away with it? I thought about that sort of thing." Agreeing on the track list created arguments, and O'Brien said the band came close to breaking up: "That felt like it could go either way, it could break ... But we came in the next day and it was resolved." The album was mastered by Chris Blair in Abbey Road Studios, London.
Tracks
Radiohead worked on the first track, "Everything in Its Right Place", in a conventional band arrangement in Copenhagen and Paris, but without results. In Gloucestershire, Yorke and Godrich transferred the song to a Prophet-5 synthesiser, and Yorke's vocals were processed in Pro Tools using a scrubbing tool. O'Brien and the drummer, Philip Selway, said the track helped them accept that not every song needed every band member to play on it. O'Brien recalled: "To be genuinely sort of delighted that you'd been working for six months on this record and something great has come out of it, and you haven't contributed to it, is a really liberating feeling." Jonny Greenwood described it as a turning point for the album: "We knew it had to be the first song, and everything just followed after it."Yorke wrote an early version of "The National Anthem" when the band was still in school. In 1997, Radiohead recorded drums and bass for the song, intending to develop it as a B-side for OK Computer, but decided to keep it for their next album. For Kid A, Greenwood added ondes Martenot and sounds sampled from radio stations, and Yorke's vocals were processed with a ring modulator. In November 1999, Radiohead recorded a brass section inspired by the "organised chaos" of Town Hall Concert by the jazz musician Charles Mingus, instructing the musicians to sound like a "traffic jam".The strings on "How to Disappear Completely" were performed by the Orchestra of St John's and recorded in Dorchester Abbey, a 12th-century church about five miles from Radiohead's Oxfordshire studio. Radiohead chose the orchestra as they had performed pieces by Penderecki and Messiaen. Jonny Greenwood, the only Radiohead member trained in music theory, composed the string arrangement by multitracking his ondes Martenot. According to Godrich, when the orchestra members saw Greenwood's score "they all just sort of burst into giggles, because they couldn't do what he'd written, because it was impossible – or impossible for them, anyway". The orchestra leader, John Lubbock, encouraged them to experiment and work with Greenwood's ideas. The concerts director, Alison Atkinson, said the session was more experimental than the orchestra's usual bookings.
"Idioteque" samples two computer music pieces, Paul Lansky's "Mild und Leise" and Arthur Kreiger's "Short Piece". Both samples were taken from Electronic Music Winners, a 1976 experimental music LP which Jonny Greenwood stumbled upon while the band was working on Kid A. The track was built from a drum machine pattern Greenwood created with a modular synthesiser and a sample from "Mild und Leise". He gave the 50-minute recording to Yorke, who took a short section of it and used it to write the song. Yorke also referred to electronic dance music when talking about "Idioteque", and said that the song was "an attempt to capture that exploding beat sound where you're at the club and the PA's so loud, you know it's doing damage"."Motion Picture Soundtrack" was written before Radiohead's debut single "Creep" (1992), and Radiohead recorded a version on piano during the OK Computer sessions. For Kid A, Yorke recorded it on a pedal organ, influenced by the songwriter Tom Waits. The band added harp samples and double bass, attempting to emulate the soundtracks of 1950s Disney films. Radiohead also worked on several songs they did not complete until the recording sessions for future albums, including "Nude", "Burn the Witch" and "True Love Waits".
Music
Style and influences
Kid A incorporates influences from electronic artists on Warp Records such as 1990s IDM artists Autechre and Aphex Twin; 1970s Krautrock bands such as Can; the jazz of Charles Mingus, Alice Coltrane and Miles Davis; and abstract hip hop from the Mo'Wax label, including Blackalicious and DJ Krush. Yorke cited Remain in Light (1980) by Talking Heads as a "massive reference point". Björk was another major influence, particularly her 1997 album Homogenic, as was the Beta Band. Radiohead attended an Underworld concert which helped renew their enthusiasm in a difficult moment.The string orchestration for "How to Disappear Completely" was influenced by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. Jonny Greenwood's use of the ondes Martenot on several songs was inspired by Olivier Messiaen, who popularised the instrument and was one of Greenwood's teenage heroes. Greenwood described his interest in mixing old and new music technology, and during the recording sessions Yorke read Ian MacDonald's Revolution in the Head, which chronicles the Beatles' recordings with George Martin during the 1960s. The band also sought to combine electronic manipulations with jam sessions in the studio, saying their model was the German band Can.Kid A has been described as a work of electronica, experimental rock, post-rock, alternative rock, post-prog, ambient, electronic rock, art rock, and art pop. Though guitar is less prominent than on previous Radiohead albums, guitars were still used on most tracks. "Treefingers", an ambient instrumental, was created by digitally processing O'Brien's guitar loops. Many of Yorke's vocals were manipulated with effects; for example, his vocals on the title track were simply spoken, then vocoded with the ondes Martenot to create the melody.
Lyrics
Yorke's lyrics on Kid A are less personal than on earlier albums, and instead incorporate abstract and surreal themes. He cut up phrases and assembled them at random, combining cliches and banal observations; for example, "Morning Bell" features repeated contrasting lines such as "Where'd you park the car?" and "Cut the kids in half". Yorke denied that he was "trying to get anything across" with the lyrics, and described them as "like shattered bits of mirror ... like pieces of something broken. ... it's not like I'm trying to get anything across."Yorke cited David Byrne's approach to lyrics on Remain in Light as an influence: "When they made that record, they had no real songs, just wrote it all as they went along. Byrne turned up with pages and pages, and just picked stuff up and threw bits in all the time. And that's exactly how I approached Kid A." Radiohead used Yorke's lyrics "like pieces in a collage ... [creating] an artwork out of a lot of different little things". The lyrics are not included in the liner notes, as Radiohead felt they could not be considered independently of the music, and Yorke did not want listeners to focus on them.Yorke wrote "Everything in Its Right Place" about the depression he experienced on the OK Computer tour, feeling he could not speak. The refrain of "How to Disappear Completely" was inspired by R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe, who advised Yorke to relieve tour stress by repeating to himself: "I'm not here, this isn't happening". The refrain of "Optimistic" ("try the best you can / the best you can is good enough") was an assurance by Yorke's partner, Rachel Owen, when Yorke was frustrated with the band's progress. The title Kid A came from a filename on one of Yorke's sequencers. Yorke said he liked its "non-meaning", saying: "If you call [an album] something specific, it drives the record in a certain way."
Artwork
The Kid A artwork and packaging was created by Yorke with Stanley Donwood, who has worked with Radiohead since their 1994 EP My Iron Lung. Donwood painted on large canvases with knives and sticks, then photographed the paintings and manipulated them with Photoshop. While working on the artwork, Yorke and Donwood became "obsessed" with the Worldwatch Institute website, which was full of "scary statistics about ice caps melting, and weather patterns changing"; this inspired them to use an image of a mountain range as the cover art. Donwood said he saw the mountains as "some sort of cataclysmic power".Donwood was inspired by a photograph taken during the Kosovo War depicting a square metre of snow full of the "detritus of war", such as military equipment and cigarette stains. He said: "I was upset by it in a way war had never upset me before. It felt like it was happening in my street." The red swimming pool on the album spine and disc was inspired by the 1988 graphic novel Brought to Light by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz, in which the number of people killed by state terrorism is measured in swimming pools filled with blood. Donwood said this image "haunted" him during the recording of the album, calling it "a symbol of looming danger and shattered expectations". Yorke and Donwood cited a Paris exhibition of paintings by David Hockney as another influence.Yorke and Donwood made many versions of the album cover, with different pictures and different titles in different typefaces. Unable to pick one, they taped them to cupboards of the studio kitchen and went to bed. According to Donwood, the choice the next day "was obvious". In October 2021, Yorke and Donwood curated an exhibition of Kid A artwork at Christie's headquarters in London.
Promotion
Radiohead minimised their involvement in promotion for Kid A, conducting few interviews or photoshoots. Though "Optimistic" and promotional copies of other tracks received radio play, Radiohead released no singles from the album. Yorke said this was to avoid the stress of publicity, which he had struggled with on OK Computer, rather than for artistic reasons.Radiohead were careful to present it as a cohesive work rather than a series of separate tracks. Rather than give EMI executives their own copies, they had them listen to the album in its entirety on a bus from Hollywood to Malibu. Rob Gordon, the vice president of marketing at Capitol Records, the American subsidiary of Radiohead's label EMI, praised the album but said promoting it would be a "business challenge".No advance copies of Kid A were circulated, but it was played under controlled conditions for critics and fans. On September 5, 2000, it was played for the public for the first time at the IMAX theatre in Lincoln Square, Manhattan. Promotional copies of Kid A came with stickers prohibiting broadcast before September 19. At midnight, it was played in its entirety by the London radio station Xfm. MTV2, KROQ, and WXRK also played the album.Rather than agree to a standard magazine photoshoot for Q, Radiohead supplied digitally altered portraits, with their skin smoothed, their irises recoloured, and Yorke's drooping eyelid removed. The Q editor Andrew Harrison described the images as "aggressively weird to the point of taking the piss ... All five of Radiohead had been given the aspect of gawking aliens." Yorke said: "I'd like to see them try to put these pictures on a poster." Q projected the images onto the Houses of Parliament, placed them on posters and billboards in the London Underground and on the Old Street Roundabout, and had them printed on key rings, mugs and mouse mats, to "turn Radiohead back into a product".
Videos
Instead of releasing traditional music videos for Kid A, Radiohead commissioned dozens of 10-second videos featuring Donwood artwork they called "blips", which were aired on music channels and distributed online. Pitchfork described them as "context-free animated nightmares that radiated mystery", with "arch hints of surveillance". Five of the videos were serviced as exclusives to MTV, and "helped play into the arty mystique that endeared Radiohead to its core audience", according to Billboard. Much of the promotional material featured pointy-toothed bear characters created by Donwood. The bears originated in stories Donwood made for his young children about teddy bears who came to life and ate the "grown-ups" who had abandoned them.
Internet
Though Radiohead had experimented with internet promotion for OK Computer in 1997, by 2000 online music promotion was not widespread, with record labels still reliant on MTV and radio. Donwood wrote that EMI was not interested in the Radiohead website, and left him and the band to update it with "discursive and random content".To promote Kid A, Capitol created the "iBlip", a Java applet that could be embedded in fan sites. It allowed users to stream the album, and included artwork, photos and links to order Kid A on Amazon. It was used by more than 1000 sites, and the album was streamed more than 400,000 times. Capitol also streamed Kid A through Amazon, MTV.com and heavy.com, and ran a campaign with the peer-to-peer filesharing service Aimster, allowing users to swap iBlips and Radiohead-branded Aimster skins.Three weeks before release, Kid A was leaked online and shared on the peer-to-peer service Napster. Asked whether he believed Napster had damaged sales, Capitol president Ray Lott likened the situation to unfounded concern about home taping in the 1980s and said: "I'm trying to sell as many Radiohead albums as possible. If I worried about what Napster would do, I wouldn't sell as many albums." Yorke said Napster "encourages enthusiasm for music in a way that the music industry has long forgotten to do".
Tour
Radiohead rearranged the Kid A songs to perform them live. O'Brien said, "You couldn't do Kid A live and be true to the record. You would have to do it like an art installation ... When we played live, we put the human element back into it." Selway said they "found some new life" in the songs when they came to perform them.In mid-2000, months before Kid A was released, Radiohead toured the Mediterranean, performing Kid A and Amnesiac songs for the first time. Fans shared concert bootlegs online. Colin Greenwood said: "We played in Barcelona and the next day the entire performance was up on Napster. Three weeks later when we got to play in Israel the audience knew the words to all the new songs and it was wonderful." Later that year, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos, playing mostly new songs. The tour included a homecoming show in South Park, Oxford, with supporting performances by Humphrey Lyttelton (who performed on Amnesiac), Beck and Sigur Rós. According to the journalist Alex Ross, the show may have been the largest public gathering in Oxford history.Radiohead also performed three concerts in North American theatres, their first in nearly three years. The small venues sold out rapidly, attracting celebrities, and fans camped overnight. In October, Radiohead performed on the American TV show Saturday Night Live; the performance shocked viewers expecting rock songs, with Jonny Greenwood playing electronic instruments, the house brass band improvising over "The National Anthem", and Yorke dancing erratically to "Idioteque". Rolling Stone described the Kid A tour as "a revelation, exposing rock and roll humanity" in the songs. In November 2001, Radiohead released I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings, comprising performances from the Kid A and Amnesiac tours.
Sales
Kid A reached number one on Amazon's sales chart, with more than 10,000 pre-orders. It debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, selling 55,000 copies in its first day – the biggest first-day sales of the year and more than every other album in the top ten combined. Kid A also debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, selling more than 207,000 copies in its first week. It was Radiohead's first US top-20 album, and the first US number one in three years for any British act. Kid A also debuted at number one in Canada, where it sold more than 44,000 copies in its first week, and in France, Ireland and New Zealand. European sales slowed on 2 October 2000, the day of release, when EMI recalled 150,000 faulty CDs. By June 2001, Kid A had sold 310,000 copies in the UK, less than a third of OK Computer sales. It is certified platinum in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Japan and the US.
Critical reception
Kid A was widely anticipated. Spin described it as the most anticipated rock record since Nirvana's In Utero. According to Andrew Harrison, the editor of Q, journalists expected it to provide more of the "rousing, cathartic, lots-of-guitar, Saturday-night-at-Glastonbury big future rock moments" of OK Computer. Months before its release, Pat Blashill of Melody Maker wrote: "If there's one band that promises to return rock to us, it's Radiohead."After Kid A had been played for critics, many bemoaned the lack of guitar, the obscured vocals and the unconventional song structures. Some called it "a commercial suicide note". The Guardian wrote of the "muted electronic hums, pulses and tones", predicting that it would confuse listeners. In Mojo, Jim Irvin wrote that "upon first listen, Kid A is just awful ... Too often it sounds like the fragments that they began the writing process with – a loop, a riff, a mumbled line of text, have been set in concrete and had other, lesser ideas piled on top." The Guardian critic Adam Sweeting wrote that "even listeners raised on krautrock or Ornette Coleman will find Kid A a mystifying experience", and that it pandered to "the worst cliches" about Radiohead's "relentless miserabilism". Several critics found the free jazz of "The National Anthem" discordant and unpleasant.Several critics felt Kid A was pretentious or deliberately obscure. The Irish Times bemoaned the lack of conventional song structures and panned the album as "deliberately abstruse, wilfully esoteric and wantonly unfathomable ... The only thing challenging about Kid A is the very real challenge to your attention span." In the New Yorker, the novelist Nick Hornby wrote that it was "morbid proof that this sort of self-indulgence results in a weird kind of anonymity rather than something distinctive and original". The Melody Maker critic Mark Beaumont called it "tubby, ostentatious, self-congratulatory, look-ma-I-can-suck-my-own-cock whiny old rubbish ... About 60 songs were started that no one had a bloody clue how to finish." Alexis Petridis of The Guardian described it as "self-consciously awkward and bloody-minded, the noise made by a band trying so hard to make a 'difficult' album that they felt it beneath them to write any songs". Rolling Stone published a piece mocking Kid A as humourless, derivative and lacking in songs: "Because it was decided that Radiohead were Important and Significant last time around, no one can accept the album as the crackpot art project it so obviously is."Some critics felt Kid A was unoriginal. In the New York Times, Howard Hampton dismissed Radiohead as a "rock composite" and wrote that Kid A "recycles Pink Floyd's dark-side-of-the-moon solipsism to Me-Decade perfection". Beaumont said Radiohead were "simply ploughing furrows dug by DJ Shadow and Brian Eno before them". The Irish Times felt the ambient elements were inferior to Eno's 1978 album Music For Airports and its "scary" elements inferior to Scott Walker's 1995 album Tilt. Select wrote: "What do they want for sounding like the Aphex Twin circa 1993, a medal?" In a retrospective, the journalist Rob Sheffield wrote that the "mastery of Warp-style electronic effects" had appeared "clumsy and dated" at the time of Kid A's release. In an NME editorial, James Oldham wrote that the electronic influences were "mired in compromise", with Radiohead still operating as a rock band, and concluded: "Time will judge it. But right now, Kid A has the ring of a lengthy, over-analysed mistake." Rob Mitchell, the co-founder of Warp, felt Kid A represented "an honest interpretation of [Warp] influences" and was not "gratuitously" electronic. He predicted it might one day be seen in the same way as David Bowie's 1977 album Low, which alienated some Bowie fans but was later acclaimed.AllMusic gave Kid A a favourable review, but wrote that it "never is as visionary or stunning as OK Computer, nor does it really repay the intensive time it demands in order for it to sink in". The NME was also positive, but described some songs as "meandering" and "anticlimactic", and concluded: "For all its feats of brinkmanship, the patently magnificent construct called Kid A betrays a band playing one-handed just to prove they can, scared to commit itself emotionally." In Rolling Stone, David Fricke called Kid A "a work of deliberately inky, often irritating obsession ... But this is pop, a music of ornery, glistening guile and honest ache, and it will feel good under your skin once you let it get there."Spin said Kid A was "not the act of career suicide or feat of self-indulgence it will be castigated as", and predicted that fans would recognise it as Radiohead's best and "bravest" album. Billboard described it as "an ocean of unparalleled musical depth" and "the first truly groundbreaking album of the 21st century". The music critic Robert Christgau wrote that Kid A was "an imaginative, imitative variation on a pop staple: sadness made pretty". The Village Voice called it "oblique oblique oblique ... Also incredibly beautiful." Brent DiCrescenzo of Pitchfork gave Kid A a perfect score, calling it "cacophonous yet tranquil, experimental yet familiar, foreign yet womb-like, spacious yet visceral, textured yet vaporous, awakening yet dreamlike". He concluded that Radiohead "must be the greatest band alive, if not the best since you know who". One of the first Kid A reviews posted online, DiCrescenzo's review helped popularise Pitchfork and became notorious for its "obtuse" writing.At Metacritic, which aggregates ratings from critics, Kid A has a score of 80 based on 24 reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews". It was named one of the best albums of 2000 by publications including the Los Angeles Times, Spin, Melody Maker, Mojo, NME, Pitchfork, Q, the Times, Uncut and the Wire. At the 2001 Grammy Awards, Kid A was nominated for Album of the Year and won for Best Alternative Album.
Legacy
In the years following its release, Kid A attracted acclaim. In 2005, Pitchfork wrote that it had "challenged and confounded" Radiohead's audience, and subsequently "transformed into an intellectual symbol of sorts ... Owning it became 'getting it'; getting it became 'anointing it'." In 2015, Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone likened Radiohead's change in style to Bob Dylan's controversial move to rock music, writing that critics now hesitated to say they had disliked it at the time. He described Kid A as the "defining moment in the Radiohead legend". A year later, Billboard argued that Kid A was the first album since Bowie's Low to have moved "rock and electronic music forward in such a mature fashion". In an article for Kid A's 20th anniversary, the Quietus suggested that the negative reviews had been motivated by rockism, the tendency among music critics to venerate rock music over other genres.In a 2011 Guardian article about his critical Melody Maker review, Beaumont wrote that though his opinion had not changed, "Kid A's status as a cultural cornerstone has proved me, if not wrong, then very much in the minority ... People whose opinions I trust claim it to be their favourite album ever." In 2014, Brice Ezell of PopMatters wrote that Kid A is "more fun to think and write about than it is to actually listen to" and a "far less compelling representation of the band's talents than The Bends and OK Computer". In 2016, Dorian Lysnkey wrote in The Guardian: "At times, Kid A is dull enough to make you fervently wish that they'd merged the highlights with the best bits of the similarly spotty Amnesiac ... Yorke had given up on coherent lyrics so one can only guess at what he was worrying about."Radiohead denied that they had set out to create "difficult" music. Jonny Greenwood argued that the tracks were short and melodic, and suggested that "people basically want their hands held through 12 'Mull Of Kintyre's". Yorke said: "We're actually trying to communicate but, somewhere along the line, we just seemed to piss off a lot of people ... What we're doing isn't that radical." He recalled that the band had been "white as a sheet" before early performances on the Kid A tour, thinking they had been "absolutely trashed". At the same time, the reaction motivated them: "There was a sense of a fight to convince people, which was actually really exciting." He regretted having released no singles, feeling it meant much of the early judgement of the album came from critics.Grantland credited Kid A for pioneering the use of internet to stream and promote music, writing: "For many music fans of a certain age and persuasion, Kid A was the first album experienced primarily via the internet – it's where you went to hear it, read the reviews, and argue about whether it was a masterpiece ... Listen early, form an opinion quickly, state it publicly, and move on to the next big record by the official release date. In that way, Kid A invented modern music culture as we know it." In his 2005 book Killing Yourself to Live, critic Chuck Klosterman interpreted Kid A as a prediction of the September 11 attacks.Speaking at Radiohead's induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2019, David Byrne of Talking Heads, one of Radiohead's formative influences, said: "What was really weird and very encouraging was that [Kid A] was popular. It was a hit! It proved to me that the artistic risk paid off and music fans sometimes are not stupid." In 2020, Billboard wrote that the success of Kid A, despite its "challenging" content, established Radiohead as "heavy hitters in the business for the long run".
Accolades
In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked Kid A number 20 on its updated "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list, describing it as "a new, uniquely fearless kind of rock record for a new, increasingly fearful century ... [It] remains one of the more stunning sonic makeovers in music history." In previous versions of the list, Kid A ranked at number 67 (2012) and number 428 (2003). In 2005, Stylus and Pitchfork named Kid A the best album of the previous five years, with Pitchfork calling it "the perfect record for its time: ominous, surreal, and impossibly millennial".In 2006, Time named Kid A one of the 100 best albums, calling it "the opposite of easy listening, and the weirdest album to ever sell a million copies, but ... also a testament to just how complicated pop music can be". At the end of the decade, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and the Times ranked Kid A the greatest album of the 2000s. The Guardian ranked it second best, calling it "a jittery premonition of the troubled, disconnected, overloaded decade to come. The sound of today, in other words, a decade early." In 2021, Pitchfork readers voted Kid A the greatest album of the previous 25 years. In 2011, Rolling Stone named "Everything in Its Right Place" the 24th-best song of the 2000s, describing it as "oddness at its most hummable". "Idioteque" was named one of the best songs of the decade by Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, and Rolling Stone ranked it #33 on its 2018 list of the "greatest songs of the century so far".
(*) designates unordered list
Reissues
Radiohead left EMI after their contract ended in 2003. After a period of being out of print on vinyl, Kid A was reissued as a double LP on 19 August 2008 as part of the "From the Capitol Vaults" series, along with other Radiohead albums. In 2007, EMI released Radiohead Box Set, a compilation of albums recorded while Radiohead were signed to EMI, including Kid A. On 25 August 2009, EMI reissued Kid A in a two-CD "Collector's Edition" and a "Special Collector's Edition" containing an additional DVD. Both versions feature live tracks, taken mostly from television performances. Radiohead had no input into the reissues and the music was not remastered.The EMI reissues were discontinued after Radiohead's back catalogue transferred to XL Recordings in 2016. In May 2016, XL reissued Kid A on vinyl, along with the rest of Radiohead's back catalogue. An early demo of "The National Anthem" was included in the special edition of the 2017 OK Computer reissue OKNOTOK 1997 2017. In February 2020, Radiohead released an extended version of "Treefingers", previously released on the soundtrack for the 2000 film Memento, to digital platforms.On November 5, 2021, Radiohead released Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A and Amnesiac. It includes a third album, Kid Amnesiae, comprising previously unreleased material from the sessions. Radiohead promoted the reissue with singles for the previously unreleased tracks "If You Say the Word" and "Follow Me Around". Kid A Mnesia Exhibition, an interactive experience with music and artwork from the albums, was released on November 18 for PlayStation 5, macOS and Windows.
Track listing
All songs written by Radiohead, except "Idioteque", which samples "Mild und Leise" by Paul Lansky and "Short Piece" by Arthur Kreiger.
"Everything in Its Right Place" – 4:11
"Kid A" – 4:44
"The National Anthem" – 5:51
"How to Disappear Completely" – 5:56
"Treefingers" – 3:42
"Optimistic" – 5:15
"In Limbo" – 3:31
"Idioteque" – 5:09
"Morning Bell" – 4:35
"Motion Picture Soundtrack" – 7:01
Untitled hidden track – 0:52Note: Track 10 ends at 3:20; includes an untitled hidden track from 4:17 until 5:09, followed by 1:51 of silence. On streaming services, the hidden track is listed as a separate track.
Personnel
Credits adapted from liner notes.
Charts
Certifications and sales
Notes
References
Bibliography
Randall, Mac (2012). Exit Music: The Radiohead Story Updated Edition. ISBN 9781617130472.
Further reading
Lin, Marvin (25 November 2010). Radiohead's Kid A. 33⅓ series. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8264-2343-6.
Ed's Diary: Archived 13 April 2007 at the Wayback Machine Ed O'Brien's studio diary from Kid A/Amnesiac recording sessions, 1999–2000 (archived at Green Plastic)
Marzorati, Gerald. "The Post-Rock Band". The New York Times. 1 October 2000. Retrieved on 4 November 2010.
"All Things Reconsidered: The 10th Anniversary of Radiohead's 'Kid A'" (a collection of articles). PopMatters. November 2010. Retrieved on 4 November 2010.
External links
Kid A at Discogs (list of releases) | form of creative work | {
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Kid A is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 2 October 2000 by Parlophone. It was recorded with their producer, Nigel Godrich, in Paris, Copenhagen, Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire.
After the stress of promoting Radiohead's 1997 album OK Computer, the songwriter, Thom Yorke, wanted to depart from rock music. Drawing influence from electronic music, ambient music, krautrock, jazz and 20th-century classical music, Radiohead used instruments such as modular synthesisers, the ondes Martenot, brass and strings. They processed guitar sounds, incorporated samples and loops, and manipulated their recordings with software. Yorke wrote impersonal and abstract lyrics, cutting up phrases and assembling them at random.
In a departure from industry practice, Radiohead released no singles or music videos and conducted few interviews and photoshoots. Instead, they released short animated "blips", and became one of the first major acts to use the internet for promotion. Bootlegs of early performances were shared on filesharing services, and Kid A was leaked before release. In 2000, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos.
Kid A debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and became Radiohead's first number-one album on the Billboard 200 in the US, where it sold more than 207,000 copies in its first week. Its new sound divided listeners, and some dismissed it as pretentious, deliberately obscure, or derivative. However, it later attracted acclaim; at the end of the decade, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and the Times ranked Kid A the greatest album of the 2000s, and in 2020 Rolling Stone ranked it number 20 on its updated list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Like OK Computer, it won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. It has been certified platinum in Australia, Canada, France, Japan, the US and the UK.
A second album of material from the sessions, Amnesiac, was released eight months later. Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A, Amnesiac and previously unreleased material, was released in 2021.
Background
Following the critical and commercial success of their 1997 album OK Computer, the members of Radiohead suffered burnout. The songwriter, Thom Yorke, became ill, describing himself as "a complete fucking mess ... completely unhinged". He was troubled by new acts he felt were imitating Radiohead and became hostile to the music media. He told The Observer: "I always used to use music as a way of moving on and dealing with things, and I sort of felt like that the thing that helped me deal with things had been sold to the highest bidder and I was simply doing its bidding. And I couldn't handle that."Yorke suffered from writer's block and could not finish writing songs on guitar. He became disillusioned with the "mythology" of rock music, feeling the genre had "run its course". He began to listen almost exclusively to the electronic music of artists signed to the record label Warp, such as Aphex Twin and Autechre. Yorke said: "It was refreshing because the music was all structures and had no human voices in it. But I felt just as emotional about it as I'd ever felt about guitar music." He liked the idea of his voice being used as an instrument rather than having a leading role, and wanted to focus on sounds and textures instead of traditional songwriting.Yorke bought a house in Cornwall and spent his time walking the cliffs and drawing, restricting his musical activity to playing the grand piano he had recently bought. "Everything in Its Right Place" was the first song he wrote. He described himself as a "shit piano player", with little knowledge of electronic instruments: "I remember this Tom Waits quote from years ago, that what keeps him going as a songwriter is his complete ignorance of the instruments he's using. So everything's a novelty. That's one of the reasons I wanted to get into computers and synths, because I didn't understand how the fuck they worked. I had no idea what ADSR meant."The guitarist Ed O'Brien had hoped Radiohead's fourth album would comprise short, melodic guitar songs, but Yorke said: "There was no chance of the album sounding like that. I'd completely had it with melody. I just wanted rhythm. All melodies to me were pure embarrassment." The bassist, Colin Greenwood, said: "We felt we had to change everything. There were other guitar bands out there trying to do similar things. We had to move on."
Recording
In the late 1990s, Radiohead began building their own studio in Oxfordshire. Yorke planned to use it as the German band Can had used their studio in Cologne, recording everything they played and then editing it. However, as the studio would not be complete until late 1999, Radiohead began work in Guillaime Tell Studios, Paris, in January 1999.Radiohead worked with the OK Computer producer Nigel Godrich and no deadline. Yorke, who had the greatest control, was still facing writer's block. His new songs were incomplete, and some consisted of little more than sounds or rhythms; few had clear verses or choruses. Yorke's lack of lyrics created problems, as these had provided points of reference and inspiration for his bandmates in the past.The group struggled with Yorke's new direction. According to Godrich, Yorke did not communicate much, and according to Yorke, Godrich "didn't understand why, if we had such a strength in one thing, we would want to do something else". The lead guitarist, Jonny Greenwood, feared "awful art-rock nonsense just for its own sake". His brother, Colin, did not enjoy Yorke's Warp influences, finding them "really cold". The other band members were unsure of how to contribute, and considered leaving. O'Brien said: "It's scary – everyone feels insecure. I'm a guitarist and suddenly it's like, well, there are no guitars on this track, or no drums."Radiohead experimented with electronic instruments including modular synthesisers and the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument similar to a theremin, and used software such as Pro Tools and Cubase to edit and manipulate their recordings. They found it difficult to use electronic instruments collaboratively; according to Yorke, "We had to develop ways of going off into corners and build things on whatever sequencer, synthesiser or piece of machinery we would bring to the equation and then integrate that into the way we would normally work." O'Brien began using sustain units, which allow guitar notes to be sustained infinitely, combined with looping and delay effects to create synthesiser-like sounds.In March, Radiohead moved to Medley Studios in Copenhagen for two weeks, which were unproductive. The sessions produced about 50 reels of tape, each containing 15 minutes of music, with nothing finished. In April, Radiohead resumed recording in a mansion in Batsford Park, Gloucestershire. The lack of deadline and the number of incomplete ideas made it hard to focus, and the group held tense meetings. They agreed to disband if they could not agree on an album worth releasing.In July, O'Brien began keeping an online diary of Radiohead's progress. Radiohead moved to their new studio in Oxfordshire in September. In November, Radiohead held a live webcast from their studio, featuring a performance of new music and a DJ set. By 2000, six songs were complete. In January, at Godrich's suggestion, Radiohead split into two groups: one would generate a sound or sequence without acoustic instruments such as guitars or drums, and the other would develop it. Though the experiment produced no finished songs, it helped convince O'Brien of the potential of electronic instruments.On 19 April 2000, Yorke wrote on Radiohead's website that they had finished recording. Having completed over 20 songs, Radiohead considered releasing a double album, but felt the material was too dense. Instead, they saved half the songs for their next album, Amnesiac, released the following year. Yorke said Radiohead split the work into two albums because "they cancel each other out as overall finished things. They come from two different places." He observed that deciding the track list was not just a matter of choosing the best songs, as "you can put all the best songs in the world on a record and they'll ruin each other". He cited the later Beatles albums as examples of effective sequencing: "How in the hell can you have three different versions of 'Revolution' on the same record and get away with it? I thought about that sort of thing." Agreeing on the track list created arguments, and O'Brien said the band came close to breaking up: "That felt like it could go either way, it could break ... But we came in the next day and it was resolved." The album was mastered by Chris Blair in Abbey Road Studios, London.
Tracks
Radiohead worked on the first track, "Everything in Its Right Place", in a conventional band arrangement in Copenhagen and Paris, but without results. In Gloucestershire, Yorke and Godrich transferred the song to a Prophet-5 synthesiser, and Yorke's vocals were processed in Pro Tools using a scrubbing tool. O'Brien and the drummer, Philip Selway, said the track helped them accept that not every song needed every band member to play on it. O'Brien recalled: "To be genuinely sort of delighted that you'd been working for six months on this record and something great has come out of it, and you haven't contributed to it, is a really liberating feeling." Jonny Greenwood described it as a turning point for the album: "We knew it had to be the first song, and everything just followed after it."Yorke wrote an early version of "The National Anthem" when the band was still in school. In 1997, Radiohead recorded drums and bass for the song, intending to develop it as a B-side for OK Computer, but decided to keep it for their next album. For Kid A, Greenwood added ondes Martenot and sounds sampled from radio stations, and Yorke's vocals were processed with a ring modulator. In November 1999, Radiohead recorded a brass section inspired by the "organised chaos" of Town Hall Concert by the jazz musician Charles Mingus, instructing the musicians to sound like a "traffic jam".The strings on "How to Disappear Completely" were performed by the Orchestra of St John's and recorded in Dorchester Abbey, a 12th-century church about five miles from Radiohead's Oxfordshire studio. Radiohead chose the orchestra as they had performed pieces by Penderecki and Messiaen. Jonny Greenwood, the only Radiohead member trained in music theory, composed the string arrangement by multitracking his ondes Martenot. According to Godrich, when the orchestra members saw Greenwood's score "they all just sort of burst into giggles, because they couldn't do what he'd written, because it was impossible – or impossible for them, anyway". The orchestra leader, John Lubbock, encouraged them to experiment and work with Greenwood's ideas. The concerts director, Alison Atkinson, said the session was more experimental than the orchestra's usual bookings.
"Idioteque" samples two computer music pieces, Paul Lansky's "Mild und Leise" and Arthur Kreiger's "Short Piece". Both samples were taken from Electronic Music Winners, a 1976 experimental music LP which Jonny Greenwood stumbled upon while the band was working on Kid A. The track was built from a drum machine pattern Greenwood created with a modular synthesiser and a sample from "Mild und Leise". He gave the 50-minute recording to Yorke, who took a short section of it and used it to write the song. Yorke also referred to electronic dance music when talking about "Idioteque", and said that the song was "an attempt to capture that exploding beat sound where you're at the club and the PA's so loud, you know it's doing damage"."Motion Picture Soundtrack" was written before Radiohead's debut single "Creep" (1992), and Radiohead recorded a version on piano during the OK Computer sessions. For Kid A, Yorke recorded it on a pedal organ, influenced by the songwriter Tom Waits. The band added harp samples and double bass, attempting to emulate the soundtracks of 1950s Disney films. Radiohead also worked on several songs they did not complete until the recording sessions for future albums, including "Nude", "Burn the Witch" and "True Love Waits".
Music
Style and influences
Kid A incorporates influences from electronic artists on Warp Records such as 1990s IDM artists Autechre and Aphex Twin; 1970s Krautrock bands such as Can; the jazz of Charles Mingus, Alice Coltrane and Miles Davis; and abstract hip hop from the Mo'Wax label, including Blackalicious and DJ Krush. Yorke cited Remain in Light (1980) by Talking Heads as a "massive reference point". Björk was another major influence, particularly her 1997 album Homogenic, as was the Beta Band. Radiohead attended an Underworld concert which helped renew their enthusiasm in a difficult moment.The string orchestration for "How to Disappear Completely" was influenced by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. Jonny Greenwood's use of the ondes Martenot on several songs was inspired by Olivier Messiaen, who popularised the instrument and was one of Greenwood's teenage heroes. Greenwood described his interest in mixing old and new music technology, and during the recording sessions Yorke read Ian MacDonald's Revolution in the Head, which chronicles the Beatles' recordings with George Martin during the 1960s. The band also sought to combine electronic manipulations with jam sessions in the studio, saying their model was the German band Can.Kid A has been described as a work of electronica, experimental rock, post-rock, alternative rock, post-prog, ambient, electronic rock, art rock, and art pop. Though guitar is less prominent than on previous Radiohead albums, guitars were still used on most tracks. "Treefingers", an ambient instrumental, was created by digitally processing O'Brien's guitar loops. Many of Yorke's vocals were manipulated with effects; for example, his vocals on the title track were simply spoken, then vocoded with the ondes Martenot to create the melody.
Lyrics
Yorke's lyrics on Kid A are less personal than on earlier albums, and instead incorporate abstract and surreal themes. He cut up phrases and assembled them at random, combining cliches and banal observations; for example, "Morning Bell" features repeated contrasting lines such as "Where'd you park the car?" and "Cut the kids in half". Yorke denied that he was "trying to get anything across" with the lyrics, and described them as "like shattered bits of mirror ... like pieces of something broken. ... it's not like I'm trying to get anything across."Yorke cited David Byrne's approach to lyrics on Remain in Light as an influence: "When they made that record, they had no real songs, just wrote it all as they went along. Byrne turned up with pages and pages, and just picked stuff up and threw bits in all the time. And that's exactly how I approached Kid A." Radiohead used Yorke's lyrics "like pieces in a collage ... [creating] an artwork out of a lot of different little things". The lyrics are not included in the liner notes, as Radiohead felt they could not be considered independently of the music, and Yorke did not want listeners to focus on them.Yorke wrote "Everything in Its Right Place" about the depression he experienced on the OK Computer tour, feeling he could not speak. The refrain of "How to Disappear Completely" was inspired by R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe, who advised Yorke to relieve tour stress by repeating to himself: "I'm not here, this isn't happening". The refrain of "Optimistic" ("try the best you can / the best you can is good enough") was an assurance by Yorke's partner, Rachel Owen, when Yorke was frustrated with the band's progress. The title Kid A came from a filename on one of Yorke's sequencers. Yorke said he liked its "non-meaning", saying: "If you call [an album] something specific, it drives the record in a certain way."
Artwork
The Kid A artwork and packaging was created by Yorke with Stanley Donwood, who has worked with Radiohead since their 1994 EP My Iron Lung. Donwood painted on large canvases with knives and sticks, then photographed the paintings and manipulated them with Photoshop. While working on the artwork, Yorke and Donwood became "obsessed" with the Worldwatch Institute website, which was full of "scary statistics about ice caps melting, and weather patterns changing"; this inspired them to use an image of a mountain range as the cover art. Donwood said he saw the mountains as "some sort of cataclysmic power".Donwood was inspired by a photograph taken during the Kosovo War depicting a square metre of snow full of the "detritus of war", such as military equipment and cigarette stains. He said: "I was upset by it in a way war had never upset me before. It felt like it was happening in my street." The red swimming pool on the album spine and disc was inspired by the 1988 graphic novel Brought to Light by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz, in which the number of people killed by state terrorism is measured in swimming pools filled with blood. Donwood said this image "haunted" him during the recording of the album, calling it "a symbol of looming danger and shattered expectations". Yorke and Donwood cited a Paris exhibition of paintings by David Hockney as another influence.Yorke and Donwood made many versions of the album cover, with different pictures and different titles in different typefaces. Unable to pick one, they taped them to cupboards of the studio kitchen and went to bed. According to Donwood, the choice the next day "was obvious". In October 2021, Yorke and Donwood curated an exhibition of Kid A artwork at Christie's headquarters in London.
Promotion
Radiohead minimised their involvement in promotion for Kid A, conducting few interviews or photoshoots. Though "Optimistic" and promotional copies of other tracks received radio play, Radiohead released no singles from the album. Yorke said this was to avoid the stress of publicity, which he had struggled with on OK Computer, rather than for artistic reasons.Radiohead were careful to present it as a cohesive work rather than a series of separate tracks. Rather than give EMI executives their own copies, they had them listen to the album in its entirety on a bus from Hollywood to Malibu. Rob Gordon, the vice president of marketing at Capitol Records, the American subsidiary of Radiohead's label EMI, praised the album but said promoting it would be a "business challenge".No advance copies of Kid A were circulated, but it was played under controlled conditions for critics and fans. On September 5, 2000, it was played for the public for the first time at the IMAX theatre in Lincoln Square, Manhattan. Promotional copies of Kid A came with stickers prohibiting broadcast before September 19. At midnight, it was played in its entirety by the London radio station Xfm. MTV2, KROQ, and WXRK also played the album.Rather than agree to a standard magazine photoshoot for Q, Radiohead supplied digitally altered portraits, with their skin smoothed, their irises recoloured, and Yorke's drooping eyelid removed. The Q editor Andrew Harrison described the images as "aggressively weird to the point of taking the piss ... All five of Radiohead had been given the aspect of gawking aliens." Yorke said: "I'd like to see them try to put these pictures on a poster." Q projected the images onto the Houses of Parliament, placed them on posters and billboards in the London Underground and on the Old Street Roundabout, and had them printed on key rings, mugs and mouse mats, to "turn Radiohead back into a product".
Videos
Instead of releasing traditional music videos for Kid A, Radiohead commissioned dozens of 10-second videos featuring Donwood artwork they called "blips", which were aired on music channels and distributed online. Pitchfork described them as "context-free animated nightmares that radiated mystery", with "arch hints of surveillance". Five of the videos were serviced as exclusives to MTV, and "helped play into the arty mystique that endeared Radiohead to its core audience", according to Billboard. Much of the promotional material featured pointy-toothed bear characters created by Donwood. The bears originated in stories Donwood made for his young children about teddy bears who came to life and ate the "grown-ups" who had abandoned them.
Internet
Though Radiohead had experimented with internet promotion for OK Computer in 1997, by 2000 online music promotion was not widespread, with record labels still reliant on MTV and radio. Donwood wrote that EMI was not interested in the Radiohead website, and left him and the band to update it with "discursive and random content".To promote Kid A, Capitol created the "iBlip", a Java applet that could be embedded in fan sites. It allowed users to stream the album, and included artwork, photos and links to order Kid A on Amazon. It was used by more than 1000 sites, and the album was streamed more than 400,000 times. Capitol also streamed Kid A through Amazon, MTV.com and heavy.com, and ran a campaign with the peer-to-peer filesharing service Aimster, allowing users to swap iBlips and Radiohead-branded Aimster skins.Three weeks before release, Kid A was leaked online and shared on the peer-to-peer service Napster. Asked whether he believed Napster had damaged sales, Capitol president Ray Lott likened the situation to unfounded concern about home taping in the 1980s and said: "I'm trying to sell as many Radiohead albums as possible. If I worried about what Napster would do, I wouldn't sell as many albums." Yorke said Napster "encourages enthusiasm for music in a way that the music industry has long forgotten to do".
Tour
Radiohead rearranged the Kid A songs to perform them live. O'Brien said, "You couldn't do Kid A live and be true to the record. You would have to do it like an art installation ... When we played live, we put the human element back into it." Selway said they "found some new life" in the songs when they came to perform them.In mid-2000, months before Kid A was released, Radiohead toured the Mediterranean, performing Kid A and Amnesiac songs for the first time. Fans shared concert bootlegs online. Colin Greenwood said: "We played in Barcelona and the next day the entire performance was up on Napster. Three weeks later when we got to play in Israel the audience knew the words to all the new songs and it was wonderful." Later that year, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos, playing mostly new songs. The tour included a homecoming show in South Park, Oxford, with supporting performances by Humphrey Lyttelton (who performed on Amnesiac), Beck and Sigur Rós. According to the journalist Alex Ross, the show may have been the largest public gathering in Oxford history.Radiohead also performed three concerts in North American theatres, their first in nearly three years. The small venues sold out rapidly, attracting celebrities, and fans camped overnight. In October, Radiohead performed on the American TV show Saturday Night Live; the performance shocked viewers expecting rock songs, with Jonny Greenwood playing electronic instruments, the house brass band improvising over "The National Anthem", and Yorke dancing erratically to "Idioteque". Rolling Stone described the Kid A tour as "a revelation, exposing rock and roll humanity" in the songs. In November 2001, Radiohead released I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings, comprising performances from the Kid A and Amnesiac tours.
Sales
Kid A reached number one on Amazon's sales chart, with more than 10,000 pre-orders. It debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, selling 55,000 copies in its first day – the biggest first-day sales of the year and more than every other album in the top ten combined. Kid A also debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, selling more than 207,000 copies in its first week. It was Radiohead's first US top-20 album, and the first US number one in three years for any British act. Kid A also debuted at number one in Canada, where it sold more than 44,000 copies in its first week, and in France, Ireland and New Zealand. European sales slowed on 2 October 2000, the day of release, when EMI recalled 150,000 faulty CDs. By June 2001, Kid A had sold 310,000 copies in the UK, less than a third of OK Computer sales. It is certified platinum in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Japan and the US.
Critical reception
Kid A was widely anticipated. Spin described it as the most anticipated rock record since Nirvana's In Utero. According to Andrew Harrison, the editor of Q, journalists expected it to provide more of the "rousing, cathartic, lots-of-guitar, Saturday-night-at-Glastonbury big future rock moments" of OK Computer. Months before its release, Pat Blashill of Melody Maker wrote: "If there's one band that promises to return rock to us, it's Radiohead."After Kid A had been played for critics, many bemoaned the lack of guitar, the obscured vocals and the unconventional song structures. Some called it "a commercial suicide note". The Guardian wrote of the "muted electronic hums, pulses and tones", predicting that it would confuse listeners. In Mojo, Jim Irvin wrote that "upon first listen, Kid A is just awful ... Too often it sounds like the fragments that they began the writing process with – a loop, a riff, a mumbled line of text, have been set in concrete and had other, lesser ideas piled on top." The Guardian critic Adam Sweeting wrote that "even listeners raised on krautrock or Ornette Coleman will find Kid A a mystifying experience", and that it pandered to "the worst cliches" about Radiohead's "relentless miserabilism". Several critics found the free jazz of "The National Anthem" discordant and unpleasant.Several critics felt Kid A was pretentious or deliberately obscure. The Irish Times bemoaned the lack of conventional song structures and panned the album as "deliberately abstruse, wilfully esoteric and wantonly unfathomable ... The only thing challenging about Kid A is the very real challenge to your attention span." In the New Yorker, the novelist Nick Hornby wrote that it was "morbid proof that this sort of self-indulgence results in a weird kind of anonymity rather than something distinctive and original". The Melody Maker critic Mark Beaumont called it "tubby, ostentatious, self-congratulatory, look-ma-I-can-suck-my-own-cock whiny old rubbish ... About 60 songs were started that no one had a bloody clue how to finish." Alexis Petridis of The Guardian described it as "self-consciously awkward and bloody-minded, the noise made by a band trying so hard to make a 'difficult' album that they felt it beneath them to write any songs". Rolling Stone published a piece mocking Kid A as humourless, derivative and lacking in songs: "Because it was decided that Radiohead were Important and Significant last time around, no one can accept the album as the crackpot art project it so obviously is."Some critics felt Kid A was unoriginal. In the New York Times, Howard Hampton dismissed Radiohead as a "rock composite" and wrote that Kid A "recycles Pink Floyd's dark-side-of-the-moon solipsism to Me-Decade perfection". Beaumont said Radiohead were "simply ploughing furrows dug by DJ Shadow and Brian Eno before them". The Irish Times felt the ambient elements were inferior to Eno's 1978 album Music For Airports and its "scary" elements inferior to Scott Walker's 1995 album Tilt. Select wrote: "What do they want for sounding like the Aphex Twin circa 1993, a medal?" In a retrospective, the journalist Rob Sheffield wrote that the "mastery of Warp-style electronic effects" had appeared "clumsy and dated" at the time of Kid A's release. In an NME editorial, James Oldham wrote that the electronic influences were "mired in compromise", with Radiohead still operating as a rock band, and concluded: "Time will judge it. But right now, Kid A has the ring of a lengthy, over-analysed mistake." Rob Mitchell, the co-founder of Warp, felt Kid A represented "an honest interpretation of [Warp] influences" and was not "gratuitously" electronic. He predicted it might one day be seen in the same way as David Bowie's 1977 album Low, which alienated some Bowie fans but was later acclaimed.AllMusic gave Kid A a favourable review, but wrote that it "never is as visionary or stunning as OK Computer, nor does it really repay the intensive time it demands in order for it to sink in". The NME was also positive, but described some songs as "meandering" and "anticlimactic", and concluded: "For all its feats of brinkmanship, the patently magnificent construct called Kid A betrays a band playing one-handed just to prove they can, scared to commit itself emotionally." In Rolling Stone, David Fricke called Kid A "a work of deliberately inky, often irritating obsession ... But this is pop, a music of ornery, glistening guile and honest ache, and it will feel good under your skin once you let it get there."Spin said Kid A was "not the act of career suicide or feat of self-indulgence it will be castigated as", and predicted that fans would recognise it as Radiohead's best and "bravest" album. Billboard described it as "an ocean of unparalleled musical depth" and "the first truly groundbreaking album of the 21st century". The music critic Robert Christgau wrote that Kid A was "an imaginative, imitative variation on a pop staple: sadness made pretty". The Village Voice called it "oblique oblique oblique ... Also incredibly beautiful." Brent DiCrescenzo of Pitchfork gave Kid A a perfect score, calling it "cacophonous yet tranquil, experimental yet familiar, foreign yet womb-like, spacious yet visceral, textured yet vaporous, awakening yet dreamlike". He concluded that Radiohead "must be the greatest band alive, if not the best since you know who". One of the first Kid A reviews posted online, DiCrescenzo's review helped popularise Pitchfork and became notorious for its "obtuse" writing.At Metacritic, which aggregates ratings from critics, Kid A has a score of 80 based on 24 reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews". It was named one of the best albums of 2000 by publications including the Los Angeles Times, Spin, Melody Maker, Mojo, NME, Pitchfork, Q, the Times, Uncut and the Wire. At the 2001 Grammy Awards, Kid A was nominated for Album of the Year and won for Best Alternative Album.
Legacy
In the years following its release, Kid A attracted acclaim. In 2005, Pitchfork wrote that it had "challenged and confounded" Radiohead's audience, and subsequently "transformed into an intellectual symbol of sorts ... Owning it became 'getting it'; getting it became 'anointing it'." In 2015, Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone likened Radiohead's change in style to Bob Dylan's controversial move to rock music, writing that critics now hesitated to say they had disliked it at the time. He described Kid A as the "defining moment in the Radiohead legend". A year later, Billboard argued that Kid A was the first album since Bowie's Low to have moved "rock and electronic music forward in such a mature fashion". In an article for Kid A's 20th anniversary, the Quietus suggested that the negative reviews had been motivated by rockism, the tendency among music critics to venerate rock music over other genres.In a 2011 Guardian article about his critical Melody Maker review, Beaumont wrote that though his opinion had not changed, "Kid A's status as a cultural cornerstone has proved me, if not wrong, then very much in the minority ... People whose opinions I trust claim it to be their favourite album ever." In 2014, Brice Ezell of PopMatters wrote that Kid A is "more fun to think and write about than it is to actually listen to" and a "far less compelling representation of the band's talents than The Bends and OK Computer". In 2016, Dorian Lysnkey wrote in The Guardian: "At times, Kid A is dull enough to make you fervently wish that they'd merged the highlights with the best bits of the similarly spotty Amnesiac ... Yorke had given up on coherent lyrics so one can only guess at what he was worrying about."Radiohead denied that they had set out to create "difficult" music. Jonny Greenwood argued that the tracks were short and melodic, and suggested that "people basically want their hands held through 12 'Mull Of Kintyre's". Yorke said: "We're actually trying to communicate but, somewhere along the line, we just seemed to piss off a lot of people ... What we're doing isn't that radical." He recalled that the band had been "white as a sheet" before early performances on the Kid A tour, thinking they had been "absolutely trashed". At the same time, the reaction motivated them: "There was a sense of a fight to convince people, which was actually really exciting." He regretted having released no singles, feeling it meant much of the early judgement of the album came from critics.Grantland credited Kid A for pioneering the use of internet to stream and promote music, writing: "For many music fans of a certain age and persuasion, Kid A was the first album experienced primarily via the internet – it's where you went to hear it, read the reviews, and argue about whether it was a masterpiece ... Listen early, form an opinion quickly, state it publicly, and move on to the next big record by the official release date. In that way, Kid A invented modern music culture as we know it." In his 2005 book Killing Yourself to Live, critic Chuck Klosterman interpreted Kid A as a prediction of the September 11 attacks.Speaking at Radiohead's induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2019, David Byrne of Talking Heads, one of Radiohead's formative influences, said: "What was really weird and very encouraging was that [Kid A] was popular. It was a hit! It proved to me that the artistic risk paid off and music fans sometimes are not stupid." In 2020, Billboard wrote that the success of Kid A, despite its "challenging" content, established Radiohead as "heavy hitters in the business for the long run".
Accolades
In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked Kid A number 20 on its updated "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list, describing it as "a new, uniquely fearless kind of rock record for a new, increasingly fearful century ... [It] remains one of the more stunning sonic makeovers in music history." In previous versions of the list, Kid A ranked at number 67 (2012) and number 428 (2003). In 2005, Stylus and Pitchfork named Kid A the best album of the previous five years, with Pitchfork calling it "the perfect record for its time: ominous, surreal, and impossibly millennial".In 2006, Time named Kid A one of the 100 best albums, calling it "the opposite of easy listening, and the weirdest album to ever sell a million copies, but ... also a testament to just how complicated pop music can be". At the end of the decade, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and the Times ranked Kid A the greatest album of the 2000s. The Guardian ranked it second best, calling it "a jittery premonition of the troubled, disconnected, overloaded decade to come. The sound of today, in other words, a decade early." In 2021, Pitchfork readers voted Kid A the greatest album of the previous 25 years. In 2011, Rolling Stone named "Everything in Its Right Place" the 24th-best song of the 2000s, describing it as "oddness at its most hummable". "Idioteque" was named one of the best songs of the decade by Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, and Rolling Stone ranked it #33 on its 2018 list of the "greatest songs of the century so far".
(*) designates unordered list
Reissues
Radiohead left EMI after their contract ended in 2003. After a period of being out of print on vinyl, Kid A was reissued as a double LP on 19 August 2008 as part of the "From the Capitol Vaults" series, along with other Radiohead albums. In 2007, EMI released Radiohead Box Set, a compilation of albums recorded while Radiohead were signed to EMI, including Kid A. On 25 August 2009, EMI reissued Kid A in a two-CD "Collector's Edition" and a "Special Collector's Edition" containing an additional DVD. Both versions feature live tracks, taken mostly from television performances. Radiohead had no input into the reissues and the music was not remastered.The EMI reissues were discontinued after Radiohead's back catalogue transferred to XL Recordings in 2016. In May 2016, XL reissued Kid A on vinyl, along with the rest of Radiohead's back catalogue. An early demo of "The National Anthem" was included in the special edition of the 2017 OK Computer reissue OKNOTOK 1997 2017. In February 2020, Radiohead released an extended version of "Treefingers", previously released on the soundtrack for the 2000 film Memento, to digital platforms.On November 5, 2021, Radiohead released Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A and Amnesiac. It includes a third album, Kid Amnesiae, comprising previously unreleased material from the sessions. Radiohead promoted the reissue with singles for the previously unreleased tracks "If You Say the Word" and "Follow Me Around". Kid A Mnesia Exhibition, an interactive experience with music and artwork from the albums, was released on November 18 for PlayStation 5, macOS and Windows.
Track listing
All songs written by Radiohead, except "Idioteque", which samples "Mild und Leise" by Paul Lansky and "Short Piece" by Arthur Kreiger.
"Everything in Its Right Place" – 4:11
"Kid A" – 4:44
"The National Anthem" – 5:51
"How to Disappear Completely" – 5:56
"Treefingers" – 3:42
"Optimistic" – 5:15
"In Limbo" – 3:31
"Idioteque" – 5:09
"Morning Bell" – 4:35
"Motion Picture Soundtrack" – 7:01
Untitled hidden track – 0:52Note: Track 10 ends at 3:20; includes an untitled hidden track from 4:17 until 5:09, followed by 1:51 of silence. On streaming services, the hidden track is listed as a separate track.
Personnel
Credits adapted from liner notes.
Charts
Certifications and sales
Notes
References
Bibliography
Randall, Mac (2012). Exit Music: The Radiohead Story Updated Edition. ISBN 9781617130472.
Further reading
Lin, Marvin (25 November 2010). Radiohead's Kid A. 33⅓ series. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8264-2343-6.
Ed's Diary: Archived 13 April 2007 at the Wayback Machine Ed O'Brien's studio diary from Kid A/Amnesiac recording sessions, 1999–2000 (archived at Green Plastic)
Marzorati, Gerald. "The Post-Rock Band". The New York Times. 1 October 2000. Retrieved on 4 November 2010.
"All Things Reconsidered: The 10th Anniversary of Radiohead's 'Kid A'" (a collection of articles). PopMatters. November 2010. Retrieved on 4 November 2010.
External links
Kid A at Discogs (list of releases) | record label | {
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Kid A is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 2 October 2000 by Parlophone. It was recorded with their producer, Nigel Godrich, in Paris, Copenhagen, Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire.
After the stress of promoting Radiohead's 1997 album OK Computer, the songwriter, Thom Yorke, wanted to depart from rock music. Drawing influence from electronic music, ambient music, krautrock, jazz and 20th-century classical music, Radiohead used instruments such as modular synthesisers, the ondes Martenot, brass and strings. They processed guitar sounds, incorporated samples and loops, and manipulated their recordings with software. Yorke wrote impersonal and abstract lyrics, cutting up phrases and assembling them at random.
In a departure from industry practice, Radiohead released no singles or music videos and conducted few interviews and photoshoots. Instead, they released short animated "blips", and became one of the first major acts to use the internet for promotion. Bootlegs of early performances were shared on filesharing services, and Kid A was leaked before release. In 2000, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos.
Kid A debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and became Radiohead's first number-one album on the Billboard 200 in the US, where it sold more than 207,000 copies in its first week. Its new sound divided listeners, and some dismissed it as pretentious, deliberately obscure, or derivative. However, it later attracted acclaim; at the end of the decade, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and the Times ranked Kid A the greatest album of the 2000s, and in 2020 Rolling Stone ranked it number 20 on its updated list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Like OK Computer, it won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. It has been certified platinum in Australia, Canada, France, Japan, the US and the UK.
A second album of material from the sessions, Amnesiac, was released eight months later. Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A, Amnesiac and previously unreleased material, was released in 2021.
Background
Following the critical and commercial success of their 1997 album OK Computer, the members of Radiohead suffered burnout. The songwriter, Thom Yorke, became ill, describing himself as "a complete fucking mess ... completely unhinged". He was troubled by new acts he felt were imitating Radiohead and became hostile to the music media. He told The Observer: "I always used to use music as a way of moving on and dealing with things, and I sort of felt like that the thing that helped me deal with things had been sold to the highest bidder and I was simply doing its bidding. And I couldn't handle that."Yorke suffered from writer's block and could not finish writing songs on guitar. He became disillusioned with the "mythology" of rock music, feeling the genre had "run its course". He began to listen almost exclusively to the electronic music of artists signed to the record label Warp, such as Aphex Twin and Autechre. Yorke said: "It was refreshing because the music was all structures and had no human voices in it. But I felt just as emotional about it as I'd ever felt about guitar music." He liked the idea of his voice being used as an instrument rather than having a leading role, and wanted to focus on sounds and textures instead of traditional songwriting.Yorke bought a house in Cornwall and spent his time walking the cliffs and drawing, restricting his musical activity to playing the grand piano he had recently bought. "Everything in Its Right Place" was the first song he wrote. He described himself as a "shit piano player", with little knowledge of electronic instruments: "I remember this Tom Waits quote from years ago, that what keeps him going as a songwriter is his complete ignorance of the instruments he's using. So everything's a novelty. That's one of the reasons I wanted to get into computers and synths, because I didn't understand how the fuck they worked. I had no idea what ADSR meant."The guitarist Ed O'Brien had hoped Radiohead's fourth album would comprise short, melodic guitar songs, but Yorke said: "There was no chance of the album sounding like that. I'd completely had it with melody. I just wanted rhythm. All melodies to me were pure embarrassment." The bassist, Colin Greenwood, said: "We felt we had to change everything. There were other guitar bands out there trying to do similar things. We had to move on."
Recording
In the late 1990s, Radiohead began building their own studio in Oxfordshire. Yorke planned to use it as the German band Can had used their studio in Cologne, recording everything they played and then editing it. However, as the studio would not be complete until late 1999, Radiohead began work in Guillaime Tell Studios, Paris, in January 1999.Radiohead worked with the OK Computer producer Nigel Godrich and no deadline. Yorke, who had the greatest control, was still facing writer's block. His new songs were incomplete, and some consisted of little more than sounds or rhythms; few had clear verses or choruses. Yorke's lack of lyrics created problems, as these had provided points of reference and inspiration for his bandmates in the past.The group struggled with Yorke's new direction. According to Godrich, Yorke did not communicate much, and according to Yorke, Godrich "didn't understand why, if we had such a strength in one thing, we would want to do something else". The lead guitarist, Jonny Greenwood, feared "awful art-rock nonsense just for its own sake". His brother, Colin, did not enjoy Yorke's Warp influences, finding them "really cold". The other band members were unsure of how to contribute, and considered leaving. O'Brien said: "It's scary – everyone feels insecure. I'm a guitarist and suddenly it's like, well, there are no guitars on this track, or no drums."Radiohead experimented with electronic instruments including modular synthesisers and the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument similar to a theremin, and used software such as Pro Tools and Cubase to edit and manipulate their recordings. They found it difficult to use electronic instruments collaboratively; according to Yorke, "We had to develop ways of going off into corners and build things on whatever sequencer, synthesiser or piece of machinery we would bring to the equation and then integrate that into the way we would normally work." O'Brien began using sustain units, which allow guitar notes to be sustained infinitely, combined with looping and delay effects to create synthesiser-like sounds.In March, Radiohead moved to Medley Studios in Copenhagen for two weeks, which were unproductive. The sessions produced about 50 reels of tape, each containing 15 minutes of music, with nothing finished. In April, Radiohead resumed recording in a mansion in Batsford Park, Gloucestershire. The lack of deadline and the number of incomplete ideas made it hard to focus, and the group held tense meetings. They agreed to disband if they could not agree on an album worth releasing.In July, O'Brien began keeping an online diary of Radiohead's progress. Radiohead moved to their new studio in Oxfordshire in September. In November, Radiohead held a live webcast from their studio, featuring a performance of new music and a DJ set. By 2000, six songs were complete. In January, at Godrich's suggestion, Radiohead split into two groups: one would generate a sound or sequence without acoustic instruments such as guitars or drums, and the other would develop it. Though the experiment produced no finished songs, it helped convince O'Brien of the potential of electronic instruments.On 19 April 2000, Yorke wrote on Radiohead's website that they had finished recording. Having completed over 20 songs, Radiohead considered releasing a double album, but felt the material was too dense. Instead, they saved half the songs for their next album, Amnesiac, released the following year. Yorke said Radiohead split the work into two albums because "they cancel each other out as overall finished things. They come from two different places." He observed that deciding the track list was not just a matter of choosing the best songs, as "you can put all the best songs in the world on a record and they'll ruin each other". He cited the later Beatles albums as examples of effective sequencing: "How in the hell can you have three different versions of 'Revolution' on the same record and get away with it? I thought about that sort of thing." Agreeing on the track list created arguments, and O'Brien said the band came close to breaking up: "That felt like it could go either way, it could break ... But we came in the next day and it was resolved." The album was mastered by Chris Blair in Abbey Road Studios, London.
Tracks
Radiohead worked on the first track, "Everything in Its Right Place", in a conventional band arrangement in Copenhagen and Paris, but without results. In Gloucestershire, Yorke and Godrich transferred the song to a Prophet-5 synthesiser, and Yorke's vocals were processed in Pro Tools using a scrubbing tool. O'Brien and the drummer, Philip Selway, said the track helped them accept that not every song needed every band member to play on it. O'Brien recalled: "To be genuinely sort of delighted that you'd been working for six months on this record and something great has come out of it, and you haven't contributed to it, is a really liberating feeling." Jonny Greenwood described it as a turning point for the album: "We knew it had to be the first song, and everything just followed after it."Yorke wrote an early version of "The National Anthem" when the band was still in school. In 1997, Radiohead recorded drums and bass for the song, intending to develop it as a B-side for OK Computer, but decided to keep it for their next album. For Kid A, Greenwood added ondes Martenot and sounds sampled from radio stations, and Yorke's vocals were processed with a ring modulator. In November 1999, Radiohead recorded a brass section inspired by the "organised chaos" of Town Hall Concert by the jazz musician Charles Mingus, instructing the musicians to sound like a "traffic jam".The strings on "How to Disappear Completely" were performed by the Orchestra of St John's and recorded in Dorchester Abbey, a 12th-century church about five miles from Radiohead's Oxfordshire studio. Radiohead chose the orchestra as they had performed pieces by Penderecki and Messiaen. Jonny Greenwood, the only Radiohead member trained in music theory, composed the string arrangement by multitracking his ondes Martenot. According to Godrich, when the orchestra members saw Greenwood's score "they all just sort of burst into giggles, because they couldn't do what he'd written, because it was impossible – or impossible for them, anyway". The orchestra leader, John Lubbock, encouraged them to experiment and work with Greenwood's ideas. The concerts director, Alison Atkinson, said the session was more experimental than the orchestra's usual bookings.
"Idioteque" samples two computer music pieces, Paul Lansky's "Mild und Leise" and Arthur Kreiger's "Short Piece". Both samples were taken from Electronic Music Winners, a 1976 experimental music LP which Jonny Greenwood stumbled upon while the band was working on Kid A. The track was built from a drum machine pattern Greenwood created with a modular synthesiser and a sample from "Mild und Leise". He gave the 50-minute recording to Yorke, who took a short section of it and used it to write the song. Yorke also referred to electronic dance music when talking about "Idioteque", and said that the song was "an attempt to capture that exploding beat sound where you're at the club and the PA's so loud, you know it's doing damage"."Motion Picture Soundtrack" was written before Radiohead's debut single "Creep" (1992), and Radiohead recorded a version on piano during the OK Computer sessions. For Kid A, Yorke recorded it on a pedal organ, influenced by the songwriter Tom Waits. The band added harp samples and double bass, attempting to emulate the soundtracks of 1950s Disney films. Radiohead also worked on several songs they did not complete until the recording sessions for future albums, including "Nude", "Burn the Witch" and "True Love Waits".
Music
Style and influences
Kid A incorporates influences from electronic artists on Warp Records such as 1990s IDM artists Autechre and Aphex Twin; 1970s Krautrock bands such as Can; the jazz of Charles Mingus, Alice Coltrane and Miles Davis; and abstract hip hop from the Mo'Wax label, including Blackalicious and DJ Krush. Yorke cited Remain in Light (1980) by Talking Heads as a "massive reference point". Björk was another major influence, particularly her 1997 album Homogenic, as was the Beta Band. Radiohead attended an Underworld concert which helped renew their enthusiasm in a difficult moment.The string orchestration for "How to Disappear Completely" was influenced by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. Jonny Greenwood's use of the ondes Martenot on several songs was inspired by Olivier Messiaen, who popularised the instrument and was one of Greenwood's teenage heroes. Greenwood described his interest in mixing old and new music technology, and during the recording sessions Yorke read Ian MacDonald's Revolution in the Head, which chronicles the Beatles' recordings with George Martin during the 1960s. The band also sought to combine electronic manipulations with jam sessions in the studio, saying their model was the German band Can.Kid A has been described as a work of electronica, experimental rock, post-rock, alternative rock, post-prog, ambient, electronic rock, art rock, and art pop. Though guitar is less prominent than on previous Radiohead albums, guitars were still used on most tracks. "Treefingers", an ambient instrumental, was created by digitally processing O'Brien's guitar loops. Many of Yorke's vocals were manipulated with effects; for example, his vocals on the title track were simply spoken, then vocoded with the ondes Martenot to create the melody.
Lyrics
Yorke's lyrics on Kid A are less personal than on earlier albums, and instead incorporate abstract and surreal themes. He cut up phrases and assembled them at random, combining cliches and banal observations; for example, "Morning Bell" features repeated contrasting lines such as "Where'd you park the car?" and "Cut the kids in half". Yorke denied that he was "trying to get anything across" with the lyrics, and described them as "like shattered bits of mirror ... like pieces of something broken. ... it's not like I'm trying to get anything across."Yorke cited David Byrne's approach to lyrics on Remain in Light as an influence: "When they made that record, they had no real songs, just wrote it all as they went along. Byrne turned up with pages and pages, and just picked stuff up and threw bits in all the time. And that's exactly how I approached Kid A." Radiohead used Yorke's lyrics "like pieces in a collage ... [creating] an artwork out of a lot of different little things". The lyrics are not included in the liner notes, as Radiohead felt they could not be considered independently of the music, and Yorke did not want listeners to focus on them.Yorke wrote "Everything in Its Right Place" about the depression he experienced on the OK Computer tour, feeling he could not speak. The refrain of "How to Disappear Completely" was inspired by R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe, who advised Yorke to relieve tour stress by repeating to himself: "I'm not here, this isn't happening". The refrain of "Optimistic" ("try the best you can / the best you can is good enough") was an assurance by Yorke's partner, Rachel Owen, when Yorke was frustrated with the band's progress. The title Kid A came from a filename on one of Yorke's sequencers. Yorke said he liked its "non-meaning", saying: "If you call [an album] something specific, it drives the record in a certain way."
Artwork
The Kid A artwork and packaging was created by Yorke with Stanley Donwood, who has worked with Radiohead since their 1994 EP My Iron Lung. Donwood painted on large canvases with knives and sticks, then photographed the paintings and manipulated them with Photoshop. While working on the artwork, Yorke and Donwood became "obsessed" with the Worldwatch Institute website, which was full of "scary statistics about ice caps melting, and weather patterns changing"; this inspired them to use an image of a mountain range as the cover art. Donwood said he saw the mountains as "some sort of cataclysmic power".Donwood was inspired by a photograph taken during the Kosovo War depicting a square metre of snow full of the "detritus of war", such as military equipment and cigarette stains. He said: "I was upset by it in a way war had never upset me before. It felt like it was happening in my street." The red swimming pool on the album spine and disc was inspired by the 1988 graphic novel Brought to Light by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz, in which the number of people killed by state terrorism is measured in swimming pools filled with blood. Donwood said this image "haunted" him during the recording of the album, calling it "a symbol of looming danger and shattered expectations". Yorke and Donwood cited a Paris exhibition of paintings by David Hockney as another influence.Yorke and Donwood made many versions of the album cover, with different pictures and different titles in different typefaces. Unable to pick one, they taped them to cupboards of the studio kitchen and went to bed. According to Donwood, the choice the next day "was obvious". In October 2021, Yorke and Donwood curated an exhibition of Kid A artwork at Christie's headquarters in London.
Promotion
Radiohead minimised their involvement in promotion for Kid A, conducting few interviews or photoshoots. Though "Optimistic" and promotional copies of other tracks received radio play, Radiohead released no singles from the album. Yorke said this was to avoid the stress of publicity, which he had struggled with on OK Computer, rather than for artistic reasons.Radiohead were careful to present it as a cohesive work rather than a series of separate tracks. Rather than give EMI executives their own copies, they had them listen to the album in its entirety on a bus from Hollywood to Malibu. Rob Gordon, the vice president of marketing at Capitol Records, the American subsidiary of Radiohead's label EMI, praised the album but said promoting it would be a "business challenge".No advance copies of Kid A were circulated, but it was played under controlled conditions for critics and fans. On September 5, 2000, it was played for the public for the first time at the IMAX theatre in Lincoln Square, Manhattan. Promotional copies of Kid A came with stickers prohibiting broadcast before September 19. At midnight, it was played in its entirety by the London radio station Xfm. MTV2, KROQ, and WXRK also played the album.Rather than agree to a standard magazine photoshoot for Q, Radiohead supplied digitally altered portraits, with their skin smoothed, their irises recoloured, and Yorke's drooping eyelid removed. The Q editor Andrew Harrison described the images as "aggressively weird to the point of taking the piss ... All five of Radiohead had been given the aspect of gawking aliens." Yorke said: "I'd like to see them try to put these pictures on a poster." Q projected the images onto the Houses of Parliament, placed them on posters and billboards in the London Underground and on the Old Street Roundabout, and had them printed on key rings, mugs and mouse mats, to "turn Radiohead back into a product".
Videos
Instead of releasing traditional music videos for Kid A, Radiohead commissioned dozens of 10-second videos featuring Donwood artwork they called "blips", which were aired on music channels and distributed online. Pitchfork described them as "context-free animated nightmares that radiated mystery", with "arch hints of surveillance". Five of the videos were serviced as exclusives to MTV, and "helped play into the arty mystique that endeared Radiohead to its core audience", according to Billboard. Much of the promotional material featured pointy-toothed bear characters created by Donwood. The bears originated in stories Donwood made for his young children about teddy bears who came to life and ate the "grown-ups" who had abandoned them.
Internet
Though Radiohead had experimented with internet promotion for OK Computer in 1997, by 2000 online music promotion was not widespread, with record labels still reliant on MTV and radio. Donwood wrote that EMI was not interested in the Radiohead website, and left him and the band to update it with "discursive and random content".To promote Kid A, Capitol created the "iBlip", a Java applet that could be embedded in fan sites. It allowed users to stream the album, and included artwork, photos and links to order Kid A on Amazon. It was used by more than 1000 sites, and the album was streamed more than 400,000 times. Capitol also streamed Kid A through Amazon, MTV.com and heavy.com, and ran a campaign with the peer-to-peer filesharing service Aimster, allowing users to swap iBlips and Radiohead-branded Aimster skins.Three weeks before release, Kid A was leaked online and shared on the peer-to-peer service Napster. Asked whether he believed Napster had damaged sales, Capitol president Ray Lott likened the situation to unfounded concern about home taping in the 1980s and said: "I'm trying to sell as many Radiohead albums as possible. If I worried about what Napster would do, I wouldn't sell as many albums." Yorke said Napster "encourages enthusiasm for music in a way that the music industry has long forgotten to do".
Tour
Radiohead rearranged the Kid A songs to perform them live. O'Brien said, "You couldn't do Kid A live and be true to the record. You would have to do it like an art installation ... When we played live, we put the human element back into it." Selway said they "found some new life" in the songs when they came to perform them.In mid-2000, months before Kid A was released, Radiohead toured the Mediterranean, performing Kid A and Amnesiac songs for the first time. Fans shared concert bootlegs online. Colin Greenwood said: "We played in Barcelona and the next day the entire performance was up on Napster. Three weeks later when we got to play in Israel the audience knew the words to all the new songs and it was wonderful." Later that year, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos, playing mostly new songs. The tour included a homecoming show in South Park, Oxford, with supporting performances by Humphrey Lyttelton (who performed on Amnesiac), Beck and Sigur Rós. According to the journalist Alex Ross, the show may have been the largest public gathering in Oxford history.Radiohead also performed three concerts in North American theatres, their first in nearly three years. The small venues sold out rapidly, attracting celebrities, and fans camped overnight. In October, Radiohead performed on the American TV show Saturday Night Live; the performance shocked viewers expecting rock songs, with Jonny Greenwood playing electronic instruments, the house brass band improvising over "The National Anthem", and Yorke dancing erratically to "Idioteque". Rolling Stone described the Kid A tour as "a revelation, exposing rock and roll humanity" in the songs. In November 2001, Radiohead released I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings, comprising performances from the Kid A and Amnesiac tours.
Sales
Kid A reached number one on Amazon's sales chart, with more than 10,000 pre-orders. It debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, selling 55,000 copies in its first day – the biggest first-day sales of the year and more than every other album in the top ten combined. Kid A also debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, selling more than 207,000 copies in its first week. It was Radiohead's first US top-20 album, and the first US number one in three years for any British act. Kid A also debuted at number one in Canada, where it sold more than 44,000 copies in its first week, and in France, Ireland and New Zealand. European sales slowed on 2 October 2000, the day of release, when EMI recalled 150,000 faulty CDs. By June 2001, Kid A had sold 310,000 copies in the UK, less than a third of OK Computer sales. It is certified platinum in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Japan and the US.
Critical reception
Kid A was widely anticipated. Spin described it as the most anticipated rock record since Nirvana's In Utero. According to Andrew Harrison, the editor of Q, journalists expected it to provide more of the "rousing, cathartic, lots-of-guitar, Saturday-night-at-Glastonbury big future rock moments" of OK Computer. Months before its release, Pat Blashill of Melody Maker wrote: "If there's one band that promises to return rock to us, it's Radiohead."After Kid A had been played for critics, many bemoaned the lack of guitar, the obscured vocals and the unconventional song structures. Some called it "a commercial suicide note". The Guardian wrote of the "muted electronic hums, pulses and tones", predicting that it would confuse listeners. In Mojo, Jim Irvin wrote that "upon first listen, Kid A is just awful ... Too often it sounds like the fragments that they began the writing process with – a loop, a riff, a mumbled line of text, have been set in concrete and had other, lesser ideas piled on top." The Guardian critic Adam Sweeting wrote that "even listeners raised on krautrock or Ornette Coleman will find Kid A a mystifying experience", and that it pandered to "the worst cliches" about Radiohead's "relentless miserabilism". Several critics found the free jazz of "The National Anthem" discordant and unpleasant.Several critics felt Kid A was pretentious or deliberately obscure. The Irish Times bemoaned the lack of conventional song structures and panned the album as "deliberately abstruse, wilfully esoteric and wantonly unfathomable ... The only thing challenging about Kid A is the very real challenge to your attention span." In the New Yorker, the novelist Nick Hornby wrote that it was "morbid proof that this sort of self-indulgence results in a weird kind of anonymity rather than something distinctive and original". The Melody Maker critic Mark Beaumont called it "tubby, ostentatious, self-congratulatory, look-ma-I-can-suck-my-own-cock whiny old rubbish ... About 60 songs were started that no one had a bloody clue how to finish." Alexis Petridis of The Guardian described it as "self-consciously awkward and bloody-minded, the noise made by a band trying so hard to make a 'difficult' album that they felt it beneath them to write any songs". Rolling Stone published a piece mocking Kid A as humourless, derivative and lacking in songs: "Because it was decided that Radiohead were Important and Significant last time around, no one can accept the album as the crackpot art project it so obviously is."Some critics felt Kid A was unoriginal. In the New York Times, Howard Hampton dismissed Radiohead as a "rock composite" and wrote that Kid A "recycles Pink Floyd's dark-side-of-the-moon solipsism to Me-Decade perfection". Beaumont said Radiohead were "simply ploughing furrows dug by DJ Shadow and Brian Eno before them". The Irish Times felt the ambient elements were inferior to Eno's 1978 album Music For Airports and its "scary" elements inferior to Scott Walker's 1995 album Tilt. Select wrote: "What do they want for sounding like the Aphex Twin circa 1993, a medal?" In a retrospective, the journalist Rob Sheffield wrote that the "mastery of Warp-style electronic effects" had appeared "clumsy and dated" at the time of Kid A's release. In an NME editorial, James Oldham wrote that the electronic influences were "mired in compromise", with Radiohead still operating as a rock band, and concluded: "Time will judge it. But right now, Kid A has the ring of a lengthy, over-analysed mistake." Rob Mitchell, the co-founder of Warp, felt Kid A represented "an honest interpretation of [Warp] influences" and was not "gratuitously" electronic. He predicted it might one day be seen in the same way as David Bowie's 1977 album Low, which alienated some Bowie fans but was later acclaimed.AllMusic gave Kid A a favourable review, but wrote that it "never is as visionary or stunning as OK Computer, nor does it really repay the intensive time it demands in order for it to sink in". The NME was also positive, but described some songs as "meandering" and "anticlimactic", and concluded: "For all its feats of brinkmanship, the patently magnificent construct called Kid A betrays a band playing one-handed just to prove they can, scared to commit itself emotionally." In Rolling Stone, David Fricke called Kid A "a work of deliberately inky, often irritating obsession ... But this is pop, a music of ornery, glistening guile and honest ache, and it will feel good under your skin once you let it get there."Spin said Kid A was "not the act of career suicide or feat of self-indulgence it will be castigated as", and predicted that fans would recognise it as Radiohead's best and "bravest" album. Billboard described it as "an ocean of unparalleled musical depth" and "the first truly groundbreaking album of the 21st century". The music critic Robert Christgau wrote that Kid A was "an imaginative, imitative variation on a pop staple: sadness made pretty". The Village Voice called it "oblique oblique oblique ... Also incredibly beautiful." Brent DiCrescenzo of Pitchfork gave Kid A a perfect score, calling it "cacophonous yet tranquil, experimental yet familiar, foreign yet womb-like, spacious yet visceral, textured yet vaporous, awakening yet dreamlike". He concluded that Radiohead "must be the greatest band alive, if not the best since you know who". One of the first Kid A reviews posted online, DiCrescenzo's review helped popularise Pitchfork and became notorious for its "obtuse" writing.At Metacritic, which aggregates ratings from critics, Kid A has a score of 80 based on 24 reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews". It was named one of the best albums of 2000 by publications including the Los Angeles Times, Spin, Melody Maker, Mojo, NME, Pitchfork, Q, the Times, Uncut and the Wire. At the 2001 Grammy Awards, Kid A was nominated for Album of the Year and won for Best Alternative Album.
Legacy
In the years following its release, Kid A attracted acclaim. In 2005, Pitchfork wrote that it had "challenged and confounded" Radiohead's audience, and subsequently "transformed into an intellectual symbol of sorts ... Owning it became 'getting it'; getting it became 'anointing it'." In 2015, Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone likened Radiohead's change in style to Bob Dylan's controversial move to rock music, writing that critics now hesitated to say they had disliked it at the time. He described Kid A as the "defining moment in the Radiohead legend". A year later, Billboard argued that Kid A was the first album since Bowie's Low to have moved "rock and electronic music forward in such a mature fashion". In an article for Kid A's 20th anniversary, the Quietus suggested that the negative reviews had been motivated by rockism, the tendency among music critics to venerate rock music over other genres.In a 2011 Guardian article about his critical Melody Maker review, Beaumont wrote that though his opinion had not changed, "Kid A's status as a cultural cornerstone has proved me, if not wrong, then very much in the minority ... People whose opinions I trust claim it to be their favourite album ever." In 2014, Brice Ezell of PopMatters wrote that Kid A is "more fun to think and write about than it is to actually listen to" and a "far less compelling representation of the band's talents than The Bends and OK Computer". In 2016, Dorian Lysnkey wrote in The Guardian: "At times, Kid A is dull enough to make you fervently wish that they'd merged the highlights with the best bits of the similarly spotty Amnesiac ... Yorke had given up on coherent lyrics so one can only guess at what he was worrying about."Radiohead denied that they had set out to create "difficult" music. Jonny Greenwood argued that the tracks were short and melodic, and suggested that "people basically want their hands held through 12 'Mull Of Kintyre's". Yorke said: "We're actually trying to communicate but, somewhere along the line, we just seemed to piss off a lot of people ... What we're doing isn't that radical." He recalled that the band had been "white as a sheet" before early performances on the Kid A tour, thinking they had been "absolutely trashed". At the same time, the reaction motivated them: "There was a sense of a fight to convince people, which was actually really exciting." He regretted having released no singles, feeling it meant much of the early judgement of the album came from critics.Grantland credited Kid A for pioneering the use of internet to stream and promote music, writing: "For many music fans of a certain age and persuasion, Kid A was the first album experienced primarily via the internet – it's where you went to hear it, read the reviews, and argue about whether it was a masterpiece ... Listen early, form an opinion quickly, state it publicly, and move on to the next big record by the official release date. In that way, Kid A invented modern music culture as we know it." In his 2005 book Killing Yourself to Live, critic Chuck Klosterman interpreted Kid A as a prediction of the September 11 attacks.Speaking at Radiohead's induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2019, David Byrne of Talking Heads, one of Radiohead's formative influences, said: "What was really weird and very encouraging was that [Kid A] was popular. It was a hit! It proved to me that the artistic risk paid off and music fans sometimes are not stupid." In 2020, Billboard wrote that the success of Kid A, despite its "challenging" content, established Radiohead as "heavy hitters in the business for the long run".
Accolades
In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked Kid A number 20 on its updated "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list, describing it as "a new, uniquely fearless kind of rock record for a new, increasingly fearful century ... [It] remains one of the more stunning sonic makeovers in music history." In previous versions of the list, Kid A ranked at number 67 (2012) and number 428 (2003). In 2005, Stylus and Pitchfork named Kid A the best album of the previous five years, with Pitchfork calling it "the perfect record for its time: ominous, surreal, and impossibly millennial".In 2006, Time named Kid A one of the 100 best albums, calling it "the opposite of easy listening, and the weirdest album to ever sell a million copies, but ... also a testament to just how complicated pop music can be". At the end of the decade, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and the Times ranked Kid A the greatest album of the 2000s. The Guardian ranked it second best, calling it "a jittery premonition of the troubled, disconnected, overloaded decade to come. The sound of today, in other words, a decade early." In 2021, Pitchfork readers voted Kid A the greatest album of the previous 25 years. In 2011, Rolling Stone named "Everything in Its Right Place" the 24th-best song of the 2000s, describing it as "oddness at its most hummable". "Idioteque" was named one of the best songs of the decade by Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, and Rolling Stone ranked it #33 on its 2018 list of the "greatest songs of the century so far".
(*) designates unordered list
Reissues
Radiohead left EMI after their contract ended in 2003. After a period of being out of print on vinyl, Kid A was reissued as a double LP on 19 August 2008 as part of the "From the Capitol Vaults" series, along with other Radiohead albums. In 2007, EMI released Radiohead Box Set, a compilation of albums recorded while Radiohead were signed to EMI, including Kid A. On 25 August 2009, EMI reissued Kid A in a two-CD "Collector's Edition" and a "Special Collector's Edition" containing an additional DVD. Both versions feature live tracks, taken mostly from television performances. Radiohead had no input into the reissues and the music was not remastered.The EMI reissues were discontinued after Radiohead's back catalogue transferred to XL Recordings in 2016. In May 2016, XL reissued Kid A on vinyl, along with the rest of Radiohead's back catalogue. An early demo of "The National Anthem" was included in the special edition of the 2017 OK Computer reissue OKNOTOK 1997 2017. In February 2020, Radiohead released an extended version of "Treefingers", previously released on the soundtrack for the 2000 film Memento, to digital platforms.On November 5, 2021, Radiohead released Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A and Amnesiac. It includes a third album, Kid Amnesiae, comprising previously unreleased material from the sessions. Radiohead promoted the reissue with singles for the previously unreleased tracks "If You Say the Word" and "Follow Me Around". Kid A Mnesia Exhibition, an interactive experience with music and artwork from the albums, was released on November 18 for PlayStation 5, macOS and Windows.
Track listing
All songs written by Radiohead, except "Idioteque", which samples "Mild und Leise" by Paul Lansky and "Short Piece" by Arthur Kreiger.
"Everything in Its Right Place" – 4:11
"Kid A" – 4:44
"The National Anthem" – 5:51
"How to Disappear Completely" – 5:56
"Treefingers" – 3:42
"Optimistic" – 5:15
"In Limbo" – 3:31
"Idioteque" – 5:09
"Morning Bell" – 4:35
"Motion Picture Soundtrack" – 7:01
Untitled hidden track – 0:52Note: Track 10 ends at 3:20; includes an untitled hidden track from 4:17 until 5:09, followed by 1:51 of silence. On streaming services, the hidden track is listed as a separate track.
Personnel
Credits adapted from liner notes.
Charts
Certifications and sales
Notes
References
Bibliography
Randall, Mac (2012). Exit Music: The Radiohead Story Updated Edition. ISBN 9781617130472.
Further reading
Lin, Marvin (25 November 2010). Radiohead's Kid A. 33⅓ series. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8264-2343-6.
Ed's Diary: Archived 13 April 2007 at the Wayback Machine Ed O'Brien's studio diary from Kid A/Amnesiac recording sessions, 1999–2000 (archived at Green Plastic)
Marzorati, Gerald. "The Post-Rock Band". The New York Times. 1 October 2000. Retrieved on 4 November 2010.
"All Things Reconsidered: The 10th Anniversary of Radiohead's 'Kid A'" (a collection of articles). PopMatters. November 2010. Retrieved on 4 November 2010.
External links
Kid A at Discogs (list of releases) | tracklist | {
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Kid A is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 2 October 2000 by Parlophone. It was recorded with their producer, Nigel Godrich, in Paris, Copenhagen, Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire.
After the stress of promoting Radiohead's 1997 album OK Computer, the songwriter, Thom Yorke, wanted to depart from rock music. Drawing influence from electronic music, ambient music, krautrock, jazz and 20th-century classical music, Radiohead used instruments such as modular synthesisers, the ondes Martenot, brass and strings. They processed guitar sounds, incorporated samples and loops, and manipulated their recordings with software. Yorke wrote impersonal and abstract lyrics, cutting up phrases and assembling them at random.
In a departure from industry practice, Radiohead released no singles or music videos and conducted few interviews and photoshoots. Instead, they released short animated "blips", and became one of the first major acts to use the internet for promotion. Bootlegs of early performances were shared on filesharing services, and Kid A was leaked before release. In 2000, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos.
Kid A debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and became Radiohead's first number-one album on the Billboard 200 in the US, where it sold more than 207,000 copies in its first week. Its new sound divided listeners, and some dismissed it as pretentious, deliberately obscure, or derivative. However, it later attracted acclaim; at the end of the decade, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and the Times ranked Kid A the greatest album of the 2000s, and in 2020 Rolling Stone ranked it number 20 on its updated list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Like OK Computer, it won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. It has been certified platinum in Australia, Canada, France, Japan, the US and the UK.
A second album of material from the sessions, Amnesiac, was released eight months later. Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A, Amnesiac and previously unreleased material, was released in 2021.
Background
Following the critical and commercial success of their 1997 album OK Computer, the members of Radiohead suffered burnout. The songwriter, Thom Yorke, became ill, describing himself as "a complete fucking mess ... completely unhinged". He was troubled by new acts he felt were imitating Radiohead and became hostile to the music media. He told The Observer: "I always used to use music as a way of moving on and dealing with things, and I sort of felt like that the thing that helped me deal with things had been sold to the highest bidder and I was simply doing its bidding. And I couldn't handle that."Yorke suffered from writer's block and could not finish writing songs on guitar. He became disillusioned with the "mythology" of rock music, feeling the genre had "run its course". He began to listen almost exclusively to the electronic music of artists signed to the record label Warp, such as Aphex Twin and Autechre. Yorke said: "It was refreshing because the music was all structures and had no human voices in it. But I felt just as emotional about it as I'd ever felt about guitar music." He liked the idea of his voice being used as an instrument rather than having a leading role, and wanted to focus on sounds and textures instead of traditional songwriting.Yorke bought a house in Cornwall and spent his time walking the cliffs and drawing, restricting his musical activity to playing the grand piano he had recently bought. "Everything in Its Right Place" was the first song he wrote. He described himself as a "shit piano player", with little knowledge of electronic instruments: "I remember this Tom Waits quote from years ago, that what keeps him going as a songwriter is his complete ignorance of the instruments he's using. So everything's a novelty. That's one of the reasons I wanted to get into computers and synths, because I didn't understand how the fuck they worked. I had no idea what ADSR meant."The guitarist Ed O'Brien had hoped Radiohead's fourth album would comprise short, melodic guitar songs, but Yorke said: "There was no chance of the album sounding like that. I'd completely had it with melody. I just wanted rhythm. All melodies to me were pure embarrassment." The bassist, Colin Greenwood, said: "We felt we had to change everything. There were other guitar bands out there trying to do similar things. We had to move on."
Recording
In the late 1990s, Radiohead began building their own studio in Oxfordshire. Yorke planned to use it as the German band Can had used their studio in Cologne, recording everything they played and then editing it. However, as the studio would not be complete until late 1999, Radiohead began work in Guillaime Tell Studios, Paris, in January 1999.Radiohead worked with the OK Computer producer Nigel Godrich and no deadline. Yorke, who had the greatest control, was still facing writer's block. His new songs were incomplete, and some consisted of little more than sounds or rhythms; few had clear verses or choruses. Yorke's lack of lyrics created problems, as these had provided points of reference and inspiration for his bandmates in the past.The group struggled with Yorke's new direction. According to Godrich, Yorke did not communicate much, and according to Yorke, Godrich "didn't understand why, if we had such a strength in one thing, we would want to do something else". The lead guitarist, Jonny Greenwood, feared "awful art-rock nonsense just for its own sake". His brother, Colin, did not enjoy Yorke's Warp influences, finding them "really cold". The other band members were unsure of how to contribute, and considered leaving. O'Brien said: "It's scary – everyone feels insecure. I'm a guitarist and suddenly it's like, well, there are no guitars on this track, or no drums."Radiohead experimented with electronic instruments including modular synthesisers and the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument similar to a theremin, and used software such as Pro Tools and Cubase to edit and manipulate their recordings. They found it difficult to use electronic instruments collaboratively; according to Yorke, "We had to develop ways of going off into corners and build things on whatever sequencer, synthesiser or piece of machinery we would bring to the equation and then integrate that into the way we would normally work." O'Brien began using sustain units, which allow guitar notes to be sustained infinitely, combined with looping and delay effects to create synthesiser-like sounds.In March, Radiohead moved to Medley Studios in Copenhagen for two weeks, which were unproductive. The sessions produced about 50 reels of tape, each containing 15 minutes of music, with nothing finished. In April, Radiohead resumed recording in a mansion in Batsford Park, Gloucestershire. The lack of deadline and the number of incomplete ideas made it hard to focus, and the group held tense meetings. They agreed to disband if they could not agree on an album worth releasing.In July, O'Brien began keeping an online diary of Radiohead's progress. Radiohead moved to their new studio in Oxfordshire in September. In November, Radiohead held a live webcast from their studio, featuring a performance of new music and a DJ set. By 2000, six songs were complete. In January, at Godrich's suggestion, Radiohead split into two groups: one would generate a sound or sequence without acoustic instruments such as guitars or drums, and the other would develop it. Though the experiment produced no finished songs, it helped convince O'Brien of the potential of electronic instruments.On 19 April 2000, Yorke wrote on Radiohead's website that they had finished recording. Having completed over 20 songs, Radiohead considered releasing a double album, but felt the material was too dense. Instead, they saved half the songs for their next album, Amnesiac, released the following year. Yorke said Radiohead split the work into two albums because "they cancel each other out as overall finished things. They come from two different places." He observed that deciding the track list was not just a matter of choosing the best songs, as "you can put all the best songs in the world on a record and they'll ruin each other". He cited the later Beatles albums as examples of effective sequencing: "How in the hell can you have three different versions of 'Revolution' on the same record and get away with it? I thought about that sort of thing." Agreeing on the track list created arguments, and O'Brien said the band came close to breaking up: "That felt like it could go either way, it could break ... But we came in the next day and it was resolved." The album was mastered by Chris Blair in Abbey Road Studios, London.
Tracks
Radiohead worked on the first track, "Everything in Its Right Place", in a conventional band arrangement in Copenhagen and Paris, but without results. In Gloucestershire, Yorke and Godrich transferred the song to a Prophet-5 synthesiser, and Yorke's vocals were processed in Pro Tools using a scrubbing tool. O'Brien and the drummer, Philip Selway, said the track helped them accept that not every song needed every band member to play on it. O'Brien recalled: "To be genuinely sort of delighted that you'd been working for six months on this record and something great has come out of it, and you haven't contributed to it, is a really liberating feeling." Jonny Greenwood described it as a turning point for the album: "We knew it had to be the first song, and everything just followed after it."Yorke wrote an early version of "The National Anthem" when the band was still in school. In 1997, Radiohead recorded drums and bass for the song, intending to develop it as a B-side for OK Computer, but decided to keep it for their next album. For Kid A, Greenwood added ondes Martenot and sounds sampled from radio stations, and Yorke's vocals were processed with a ring modulator. In November 1999, Radiohead recorded a brass section inspired by the "organised chaos" of Town Hall Concert by the jazz musician Charles Mingus, instructing the musicians to sound like a "traffic jam".The strings on "How to Disappear Completely" were performed by the Orchestra of St John's and recorded in Dorchester Abbey, a 12th-century church about five miles from Radiohead's Oxfordshire studio. Radiohead chose the orchestra as they had performed pieces by Penderecki and Messiaen. Jonny Greenwood, the only Radiohead member trained in music theory, composed the string arrangement by multitracking his ondes Martenot. According to Godrich, when the orchestra members saw Greenwood's score "they all just sort of burst into giggles, because they couldn't do what he'd written, because it was impossible – or impossible for them, anyway". The orchestra leader, John Lubbock, encouraged them to experiment and work with Greenwood's ideas. The concerts director, Alison Atkinson, said the session was more experimental than the orchestra's usual bookings.
"Idioteque" samples two computer music pieces, Paul Lansky's "Mild und Leise" and Arthur Kreiger's "Short Piece". Both samples were taken from Electronic Music Winners, a 1976 experimental music LP which Jonny Greenwood stumbled upon while the band was working on Kid A. The track was built from a drum machine pattern Greenwood created with a modular synthesiser and a sample from "Mild und Leise". He gave the 50-minute recording to Yorke, who took a short section of it and used it to write the song. Yorke also referred to electronic dance music when talking about "Idioteque", and said that the song was "an attempt to capture that exploding beat sound where you're at the club and the PA's so loud, you know it's doing damage"."Motion Picture Soundtrack" was written before Radiohead's debut single "Creep" (1992), and Radiohead recorded a version on piano during the OK Computer sessions. For Kid A, Yorke recorded it on a pedal organ, influenced by the songwriter Tom Waits. The band added harp samples and double bass, attempting to emulate the soundtracks of 1950s Disney films. Radiohead also worked on several songs they did not complete until the recording sessions for future albums, including "Nude", "Burn the Witch" and "True Love Waits".
Music
Style and influences
Kid A incorporates influences from electronic artists on Warp Records such as 1990s IDM artists Autechre and Aphex Twin; 1970s Krautrock bands such as Can; the jazz of Charles Mingus, Alice Coltrane and Miles Davis; and abstract hip hop from the Mo'Wax label, including Blackalicious and DJ Krush. Yorke cited Remain in Light (1980) by Talking Heads as a "massive reference point". Björk was another major influence, particularly her 1997 album Homogenic, as was the Beta Band. Radiohead attended an Underworld concert which helped renew their enthusiasm in a difficult moment.The string orchestration for "How to Disappear Completely" was influenced by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. Jonny Greenwood's use of the ondes Martenot on several songs was inspired by Olivier Messiaen, who popularised the instrument and was one of Greenwood's teenage heroes. Greenwood described his interest in mixing old and new music technology, and during the recording sessions Yorke read Ian MacDonald's Revolution in the Head, which chronicles the Beatles' recordings with George Martin during the 1960s. The band also sought to combine electronic manipulations with jam sessions in the studio, saying their model was the German band Can.Kid A has been described as a work of electronica, experimental rock, post-rock, alternative rock, post-prog, ambient, electronic rock, art rock, and art pop. Though guitar is less prominent than on previous Radiohead albums, guitars were still used on most tracks. "Treefingers", an ambient instrumental, was created by digitally processing O'Brien's guitar loops. Many of Yorke's vocals were manipulated with effects; for example, his vocals on the title track were simply spoken, then vocoded with the ondes Martenot to create the melody.
Lyrics
Yorke's lyrics on Kid A are less personal than on earlier albums, and instead incorporate abstract and surreal themes. He cut up phrases and assembled them at random, combining cliches and banal observations; for example, "Morning Bell" features repeated contrasting lines such as "Where'd you park the car?" and "Cut the kids in half". Yorke denied that he was "trying to get anything across" with the lyrics, and described them as "like shattered bits of mirror ... like pieces of something broken. ... it's not like I'm trying to get anything across."Yorke cited David Byrne's approach to lyrics on Remain in Light as an influence: "When they made that record, they had no real songs, just wrote it all as they went along. Byrne turned up with pages and pages, and just picked stuff up and threw bits in all the time. And that's exactly how I approached Kid A." Radiohead used Yorke's lyrics "like pieces in a collage ... [creating] an artwork out of a lot of different little things". The lyrics are not included in the liner notes, as Radiohead felt they could not be considered independently of the music, and Yorke did not want listeners to focus on them.Yorke wrote "Everything in Its Right Place" about the depression he experienced on the OK Computer tour, feeling he could not speak. The refrain of "How to Disappear Completely" was inspired by R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe, who advised Yorke to relieve tour stress by repeating to himself: "I'm not here, this isn't happening". The refrain of "Optimistic" ("try the best you can / the best you can is good enough") was an assurance by Yorke's partner, Rachel Owen, when Yorke was frustrated with the band's progress. The title Kid A came from a filename on one of Yorke's sequencers. Yorke said he liked its "non-meaning", saying: "If you call [an album] something specific, it drives the record in a certain way."
Artwork
The Kid A artwork and packaging was created by Yorke with Stanley Donwood, who has worked with Radiohead since their 1994 EP My Iron Lung. Donwood painted on large canvases with knives and sticks, then photographed the paintings and manipulated them with Photoshop. While working on the artwork, Yorke and Donwood became "obsessed" with the Worldwatch Institute website, which was full of "scary statistics about ice caps melting, and weather patterns changing"; this inspired them to use an image of a mountain range as the cover art. Donwood said he saw the mountains as "some sort of cataclysmic power".Donwood was inspired by a photograph taken during the Kosovo War depicting a square metre of snow full of the "detritus of war", such as military equipment and cigarette stains. He said: "I was upset by it in a way war had never upset me before. It felt like it was happening in my street." The red swimming pool on the album spine and disc was inspired by the 1988 graphic novel Brought to Light by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz, in which the number of people killed by state terrorism is measured in swimming pools filled with blood. Donwood said this image "haunted" him during the recording of the album, calling it "a symbol of looming danger and shattered expectations". Yorke and Donwood cited a Paris exhibition of paintings by David Hockney as another influence.Yorke and Donwood made many versions of the album cover, with different pictures and different titles in different typefaces. Unable to pick one, they taped them to cupboards of the studio kitchen and went to bed. According to Donwood, the choice the next day "was obvious". In October 2021, Yorke and Donwood curated an exhibition of Kid A artwork at Christie's headquarters in London.
Promotion
Radiohead minimised their involvement in promotion for Kid A, conducting few interviews or photoshoots. Though "Optimistic" and promotional copies of other tracks received radio play, Radiohead released no singles from the album. Yorke said this was to avoid the stress of publicity, which he had struggled with on OK Computer, rather than for artistic reasons.Radiohead were careful to present it as a cohesive work rather than a series of separate tracks. Rather than give EMI executives their own copies, they had them listen to the album in its entirety on a bus from Hollywood to Malibu. Rob Gordon, the vice president of marketing at Capitol Records, the American subsidiary of Radiohead's label EMI, praised the album but said promoting it would be a "business challenge".No advance copies of Kid A were circulated, but it was played under controlled conditions for critics and fans. On September 5, 2000, it was played for the public for the first time at the IMAX theatre in Lincoln Square, Manhattan. Promotional copies of Kid A came with stickers prohibiting broadcast before September 19. At midnight, it was played in its entirety by the London radio station Xfm. MTV2, KROQ, and WXRK also played the album.Rather than agree to a standard magazine photoshoot for Q, Radiohead supplied digitally altered portraits, with their skin smoothed, their irises recoloured, and Yorke's drooping eyelid removed. The Q editor Andrew Harrison described the images as "aggressively weird to the point of taking the piss ... All five of Radiohead had been given the aspect of gawking aliens." Yorke said: "I'd like to see them try to put these pictures on a poster." Q projected the images onto the Houses of Parliament, placed them on posters and billboards in the London Underground and on the Old Street Roundabout, and had them printed on key rings, mugs and mouse mats, to "turn Radiohead back into a product".
Videos
Instead of releasing traditional music videos for Kid A, Radiohead commissioned dozens of 10-second videos featuring Donwood artwork they called "blips", which were aired on music channels and distributed online. Pitchfork described them as "context-free animated nightmares that radiated mystery", with "arch hints of surveillance". Five of the videos were serviced as exclusives to MTV, and "helped play into the arty mystique that endeared Radiohead to its core audience", according to Billboard. Much of the promotional material featured pointy-toothed bear characters created by Donwood. The bears originated in stories Donwood made for his young children about teddy bears who came to life and ate the "grown-ups" who had abandoned them.
Internet
Though Radiohead had experimented with internet promotion for OK Computer in 1997, by 2000 online music promotion was not widespread, with record labels still reliant on MTV and radio. Donwood wrote that EMI was not interested in the Radiohead website, and left him and the band to update it with "discursive and random content".To promote Kid A, Capitol created the "iBlip", a Java applet that could be embedded in fan sites. It allowed users to stream the album, and included artwork, photos and links to order Kid A on Amazon. It was used by more than 1000 sites, and the album was streamed more than 400,000 times. Capitol also streamed Kid A through Amazon, MTV.com and heavy.com, and ran a campaign with the peer-to-peer filesharing service Aimster, allowing users to swap iBlips and Radiohead-branded Aimster skins.Three weeks before release, Kid A was leaked online and shared on the peer-to-peer service Napster. Asked whether he believed Napster had damaged sales, Capitol president Ray Lott likened the situation to unfounded concern about home taping in the 1980s and said: "I'm trying to sell as many Radiohead albums as possible. If I worried about what Napster would do, I wouldn't sell as many albums." Yorke said Napster "encourages enthusiasm for music in a way that the music industry has long forgotten to do".
Tour
Radiohead rearranged the Kid A songs to perform them live. O'Brien said, "You couldn't do Kid A live and be true to the record. You would have to do it like an art installation ... When we played live, we put the human element back into it." Selway said they "found some new life" in the songs when they came to perform them.In mid-2000, months before Kid A was released, Radiohead toured the Mediterranean, performing Kid A and Amnesiac songs for the first time. Fans shared concert bootlegs online. Colin Greenwood said: "We played in Barcelona and the next day the entire performance was up on Napster. Three weeks later when we got to play in Israel the audience knew the words to all the new songs and it was wonderful." Later that year, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos, playing mostly new songs. The tour included a homecoming show in South Park, Oxford, with supporting performances by Humphrey Lyttelton (who performed on Amnesiac), Beck and Sigur Rós. According to the journalist Alex Ross, the show may have been the largest public gathering in Oxford history.Radiohead also performed three concerts in North American theatres, their first in nearly three years. The small venues sold out rapidly, attracting celebrities, and fans camped overnight. In October, Radiohead performed on the American TV show Saturday Night Live; the performance shocked viewers expecting rock songs, with Jonny Greenwood playing electronic instruments, the house brass band improvising over "The National Anthem", and Yorke dancing erratically to "Idioteque". Rolling Stone described the Kid A tour as "a revelation, exposing rock and roll humanity" in the songs. In November 2001, Radiohead released I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings, comprising performances from the Kid A and Amnesiac tours.
Sales
Kid A reached number one on Amazon's sales chart, with more than 10,000 pre-orders. It debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, selling 55,000 copies in its first day – the biggest first-day sales of the year and more than every other album in the top ten combined. Kid A also debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, selling more than 207,000 copies in its first week. It was Radiohead's first US top-20 album, and the first US number one in three years for any British act. Kid A also debuted at number one in Canada, where it sold more than 44,000 copies in its first week, and in France, Ireland and New Zealand. European sales slowed on 2 October 2000, the day of release, when EMI recalled 150,000 faulty CDs. By June 2001, Kid A had sold 310,000 copies in the UK, less than a third of OK Computer sales. It is certified platinum in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Japan and the US.
Critical reception
Kid A was widely anticipated. Spin described it as the most anticipated rock record since Nirvana's In Utero. According to Andrew Harrison, the editor of Q, journalists expected it to provide more of the "rousing, cathartic, lots-of-guitar, Saturday-night-at-Glastonbury big future rock moments" of OK Computer. Months before its release, Pat Blashill of Melody Maker wrote: "If there's one band that promises to return rock to us, it's Radiohead."After Kid A had been played for critics, many bemoaned the lack of guitar, the obscured vocals and the unconventional song structures. Some called it "a commercial suicide note". The Guardian wrote of the "muted electronic hums, pulses and tones", predicting that it would confuse listeners. In Mojo, Jim Irvin wrote that "upon first listen, Kid A is just awful ... Too often it sounds like the fragments that they began the writing process with – a loop, a riff, a mumbled line of text, have been set in concrete and had other, lesser ideas piled on top." The Guardian critic Adam Sweeting wrote that "even listeners raised on krautrock or Ornette Coleman will find Kid A a mystifying experience", and that it pandered to "the worst cliches" about Radiohead's "relentless miserabilism". Several critics found the free jazz of "The National Anthem" discordant and unpleasant.Several critics felt Kid A was pretentious or deliberately obscure. The Irish Times bemoaned the lack of conventional song structures and panned the album as "deliberately abstruse, wilfully esoteric and wantonly unfathomable ... The only thing challenging about Kid A is the very real challenge to your attention span." In the New Yorker, the novelist Nick Hornby wrote that it was "morbid proof that this sort of self-indulgence results in a weird kind of anonymity rather than something distinctive and original". The Melody Maker critic Mark Beaumont called it "tubby, ostentatious, self-congratulatory, look-ma-I-can-suck-my-own-cock whiny old rubbish ... About 60 songs were started that no one had a bloody clue how to finish." Alexis Petridis of The Guardian described it as "self-consciously awkward and bloody-minded, the noise made by a band trying so hard to make a 'difficult' album that they felt it beneath them to write any songs". Rolling Stone published a piece mocking Kid A as humourless, derivative and lacking in songs: "Because it was decided that Radiohead were Important and Significant last time around, no one can accept the album as the crackpot art project it so obviously is."Some critics felt Kid A was unoriginal. In the New York Times, Howard Hampton dismissed Radiohead as a "rock composite" and wrote that Kid A "recycles Pink Floyd's dark-side-of-the-moon solipsism to Me-Decade perfection". Beaumont said Radiohead were "simply ploughing furrows dug by DJ Shadow and Brian Eno before them". The Irish Times felt the ambient elements were inferior to Eno's 1978 album Music For Airports and its "scary" elements inferior to Scott Walker's 1995 album Tilt. Select wrote: "What do they want for sounding like the Aphex Twin circa 1993, a medal?" In a retrospective, the journalist Rob Sheffield wrote that the "mastery of Warp-style electronic effects" had appeared "clumsy and dated" at the time of Kid A's release. In an NME editorial, James Oldham wrote that the electronic influences were "mired in compromise", with Radiohead still operating as a rock band, and concluded: "Time will judge it. But right now, Kid A has the ring of a lengthy, over-analysed mistake." Rob Mitchell, the co-founder of Warp, felt Kid A represented "an honest interpretation of [Warp] influences" and was not "gratuitously" electronic. He predicted it might one day be seen in the same way as David Bowie's 1977 album Low, which alienated some Bowie fans but was later acclaimed.AllMusic gave Kid A a favourable review, but wrote that it "never is as visionary or stunning as OK Computer, nor does it really repay the intensive time it demands in order for it to sink in". The NME was also positive, but described some songs as "meandering" and "anticlimactic", and concluded: "For all its feats of brinkmanship, the patently magnificent construct called Kid A betrays a band playing one-handed just to prove they can, scared to commit itself emotionally." In Rolling Stone, David Fricke called Kid A "a work of deliberately inky, often irritating obsession ... But this is pop, a music of ornery, glistening guile and honest ache, and it will feel good under your skin once you let it get there."Spin said Kid A was "not the act of career suicide or feat of self-indulgence it will be castigated as", and predicted that fans would recognise it as Radiohead's best and "bravest" album. Billboard described it as "an ocean of unparalleled musical depth" and "the first truly groundbreaking album of the 21st century". The music critic Robert Christgau wrote that Kid A was "an imaginative, imitative variation on a pop staple: sadness made pretty". The Village Voice called it "oblique oblique oblique ... Also incredibly beautiful." Brent DiCrescenzo of Pitchfork gave Kid A a perfect score, calling it "cacophonous yet tranquil, experimental yet familiar, foreign yet womb-like, spacious yet visceral, textured yet vaporous, awakening yet dreamlike". He concluded that Radiohead "must be the greatest band alive, if not the best since you know who". One of the first Kid A reviews posted online, DiCrescenzo's review helped popularise Pitchfork and became notorious for its "obtuse" writing.At Metacritic, which aggregates ratings from critics, Kid A has a score of 80 based on 24 reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews". It was named one of the best albums of 2000 by publications including the Los Angeles Times, Spin, Melody Maker, Mojo, NME, Pitchfork, Q, the Times, Uncut and the Wire. At the 2001 Grammy Awards, Kid A was nominated for Album of the Year and won for Best Alternative Album.
Legacy
In the years following its release, Kid A attracted acclaim. In 2005, Pitchfork wrote that it had "challenged and confounded" Radiohead's audience, and subsequently "transformed into an intellectual symbol of sorts ... Owning it became 'getting it'; getting it became 'anointing it'." In 2015, Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone likened Radiohead's change in style to Bob Dylan's controversial move to rock music, writing that critics now hesitated to say they had disliked it at the time. He described Kid A as the "defining moment in the Radiohead legend". A year later, Billboard argued that Kid A was the first album since Bowie's Low to have moved "rock and electronic music forward in such a mature fashion". In an article for Kid A's 20th anniversary, the Quietus suggested that the negative reviews had been motivated by rockism, the tendency among music critics to venerate rock music over other genres.In a 2011 Guardian article about his critical Melody Maker review, Beaumont wrote that though his opinion had not changed, "Kid A's status as a cultural cornerstone has proved me, if not wrong, then very much in the minority ... People whose opinions I trust claim it to be their favourite album ever." In 2014, Brice Ezell of PopMatters wrote that Kid A is "more fun to think and write about than it is to actually listen to" and a "far less compelling representation of the band's talents than The Bends and OK Computer". In 2016, Dorian Lysnkey wrote in The Guardian: "At times, Kid A is dull enough to make you fervently wish that they'd merged the highlights with the best bits of the similarly spotty Amnesiac ... Yorke had given up on coherent lyrics so one can only guess at what he was worrying about."Radiohead denied that they had set out to create "difficult" music. Jonny Greenwood argued that the tracks were short and melodic, and suggested that "people basically want their hands held through 12 'Mull Of Kintyre's". Yorke said: "We're actually trying to communicate but, somewhere along the line, we just seemed to piss off a lot of people ... What we're doing isn't that radical." He recalled that the band had been "white as a sheet" before early performances on the Kid A tour, thinking they had been "absolutely trashed". At the same time, the reaction motivated them: "There was a sense of a fight to convince people, which was actually really exciting." He regretted having released no singles, feeling it meant much of the early judgement of the album came from critics.Grantland credited Kid A for pioneering the use of internet to stream and promote music, writing: "For many music fans of a certain age and persuasion, Kid A was the first album experienced primarily via the internet – it's where you went to hear it, read the reviews, and argue about whether it was a masterpiece ... Listen early, form an opinion quickly, state it publicly, and move on to the next big record by the official release date. In that way, Kid A invented modern music culture as we know it." In his 2005 book Killing Yourself to Live, critic Chuck Klosterman interpreted Kid A as a prediction of the September 11 attacks.Speaking at Radiohead's induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2019, David Byrne of Talking Heads, one of Radiohead's formative influences, said: "What was really weird and very encouraging was that [Kid A] was popular. It was a hit! It proved to me that the artistic risk paid off and music fans sometimes are not stupid." In 2020, Billboard wrote that the success of Kid A, despite its "challenging" content, established Radiohead as "heavy hitters in the business for the long run".
Accolades
In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked Kid A number 20 on its updated "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list, describing it as "a new, uniquely fearless kind of rock record for a new, increasingly fearful century ... [It] remains one of the more stunning sonic makeovers in music history." In previous versions of the list, Kid A ranked at number 67 (2012) and number 428 (2003). In 2005, Stylus and Pitchfork named Kid A the best album of the previous five years, with Pitchfork calling it "the perfect record for its time: ominous, surreal, and impossibly millennial".In 2006, Time named Kid A one of the 100 best albums, calling it "the opposite of easy listening, and the weirdest album to ever sell a million copies, but ... also a testament to just how complicated pop music can be". At the end of the decade, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and the Times ranked Kid A the greatest album of the 2000s. The Guardian ranked it second best, calling it "a jittery premonition of the troubled, disconnected, overloaded decade to come. The sound of today, in other words, a decade early." In 2021, Pitchfork readers voted Kid A the greatest album of the previous 25 years. In 2011, Rolling Stone named "Everything in Its Right Place" the 24th-best song of the 2000s, describing it as "oddness at its most hummable". "Idioteque" was named one of the best songs of the decade by Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, and Rolling Stone ranked it #33 on its 2018 list of the "greatest songs of the century so far".
(*) designates unordered list
Reissues
Radiohead left EMI after their contract ended in 2003. After a period of being out of print on vinyl, Kid A was reissued as a double LP on 19 August 2008 as part of the "From the Capitol Vaults" series, along with other Radiohead albums. In 2007, EMI released Radiohead Box Set, a compilation of albums recorded while Radiohead were signed to EMI, including Kid A. On 25 August 2009, EMI reissued Kid A in a two-CD "Collector's Edition" and a "Special Collector's Edition" containing an additional DVD. Both versions feature live tracks, taken mostly from television performances. Radiohead had no input into the reissues and the music was not remastered.The EMI reissues were discontinued after Radiohead's back catalogue transferred to XL Recordings in 2016. In May 2016, XL reissued Kid A on vinyl, along with the rest of Radiohead's back catalogue. An early demo of "The National Anthem" was included in the special edition of the 2017 OK Computer reissue OKNOTOK 1997 2017. In February 2020, Radiohead released an extended version of "Treefingers", previously released on the soundtrack for the 2000 film Memento, to digital platforms.On November 5, 2021, Radiohead released Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A and Amnesiac. It includes a third album, Kid Amnesiae, comprising previously unreleased material from the sessions. Radiohead promoted the reissue with singles for the previously unreleased tracks "If You Say the Word" and "Follow Me Around". Kid A Mnesia Exhibition, an interactive experience with music and artwork from the albums, was released on November 18 for PlayStation 5, macOS and Windows.
Track listing
All songs written by Radiohead, except "Idioteque", which samples "Mild und Leise" by Paul Lansky and "Short Piece" by Arthur Kreiger.
"Everything in Its Right Place" – 4:11
"Kid A" – 4:44
"The National Anthem" – 5:51
"How to Disappear Completely" – 5:56
"Treefingers" – 3:42
"Optimistic" – 5:15
"In Limbo" – 3:31
"Idioteque" – 5:09
"Morning Bell" – 4:35
"Motion Picture Soundtrack" – 7:01
Untitled hidden track – 0:52Note: Track 10 ends at 3:20; includes an untitled hidden track from 4:17 until 5:09, followed by 1:51 of silence. On streaming services, the hidden track is listed as a separate track.
Personnel
Credits adapted from liner notes.
Charts
Certifications and sales
Notes
References
Bibliography
Randall, Mac (2012). Exit Music: The Radiohead Story Updated Edition. ISBN 9781617130472.
Further reading
Lin, Marvin (25 November 2010). Radiohead's Kid A. 33⅓ series. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8264-2343-6.
Ed's Diary: Archived 13 April 2007 at the Wayback Machine Ed O'Brien's studio diary from Kid A/Amnesiac recording sessions, 1999–2000 (archived at Green Plastic)
Marzorati, Gerald. "The Post-Rock Band". The New York Times. 1 October 2000. Retrieved on 4 November 2010.
"All Things Reconsidered: The 10th Anniversary of Radiohead's 'Kid A'" (a collection of articles). PopMatters. November 2010. Retrieved on 4 November 2010.
External links
Kid A at Discogs (list of releases) | title | {
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Kid A is the fourth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 2 October 2000 by Parlophone. It was recorded with their producer, Nigel Godrich, in Paris, Copenhagen, Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire.
After the stress of promoting Radiohead's 1997 album OK Computer, the songwriter, Thom Yorke, wanted to depart from rock music. Drawing influence from electronic music, ambient music, krautrock, jazz and 20th-century classical music, Radiohead used instruments such as modular synthesisers, the ondes Martenot, brass and strings. They processed guitar sounds, incorporated samples and loops, and manipulated their recordings with software. Yorke wrote impersonal and abstract lyrics, cutting up phrases and assembling them at random.
In a departure from industry practice, Radiohead released no singles or music videos and conducted few interviews and photoshoots. Instead, they released short animated "blips", and became one of the first major acts to use the internet for promotion. Bootlegs of early performances were shared on filesharing services, and Kid A was leaked before release. In 2000, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos.
Kid A debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and became Radiohead's first number-one album on the Billboard 200 in the US, where it sold more than 207,000 copies in its first week. Its new sound divided listeners, and some dismissed it as pretentious, deliberately obscure, or derivative. However, it later attracted acclaim; at the end of the decade, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and the Times ranked Kid A the greatest album of the 2000s, and in 2020 Rolling Stone ranked it number 20 on its updated list of the "500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Like OK Computer, it won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Album and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Album of the Year. It has been certified platinum in Australia, Canada, France, Japan, the US and the UK.
A second album of material from the sessions, Amnesiac, was released eight months later. Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A, Amnesiac and previously unreleased material, was released in 2021.
Background
Following the critical and commercial success of their 1997 album OK Computer, the members of Radiohead suffered burnout. The songwriter, Thom Yorke, became ill, describing himself as "a complete fucking mess ... completely unhinged". He was troubled by new acts he felt were imitating Radiohead and became hostile to the music media. He told The Observer: "I always used to use music as a way of moving on and dealing with things, and I sort of felt like that the thing that helped me deal with things had been sold to the highest bidder and I was simply doing its bidding. And I couldn't handle that."Yorke suffered from writer's block and could not finish writing songs on guitar. He became disillusioned with the "mythology" of rock music, feeling the genre had "run its course". He began to listen almost exclusively to the electronic music of artists signed to the record label Warp, such as Aphex Twin and Autechre. Yorke said: "It was refreshing because the music was all structures and had no human voices in it. But I felt just as emotional about it as I'd ever felt about guitar music." He liked the idea of his voice being used as an instrument rather than having a leading role, and wanted to focus on sounds and textures instead of traditional songwriting.Yorke bought a house in Cornwall and spent his time walking the cliffs and drawing, restricting his musical activity to playing the grand piano he had recently bought. "Everything in Its Right Place" was the first song he wrote. He described himself as a "shit piano player", with little knowledge of electronic instruments: "I remember this Tom Waits quote from years ago, that what keeps him going as a songwriter is his complete ignorance of the instruments he's using. So everything's a novelty. That's one of the reasons I wanted to get into computers and synths, because I didn't understand how the fuck they worked. I had no idea what ADSR meant."The guitarist Ed O'Brien had hoped Radiohead's fourth album would comprise short, melodic guitar songs, but Yorke said: "There was no chance of the album sounding like that. I'd completely had it with melody. I just wanted rhythm. All melodies to me were pure embarrassment." The bassist, Colin Greenwood, said: "We felt we had to change everything. There were other guitar bands out there trying to do similar things. We had to move on."
Recording
In the late 1990s, Radiohead began building their own studio in Oxfordshire. Yorke planned to use it as the German band Can had used their studio in Cologne, recording everything they played and then editing it. However, as the studio would not be complete until late 1999, Radiohead began work in Guillaime Tell Studios, Paris, in January 1999.Radiohead worked with the OK Computer producer Nigel Godrich and no deadline. Yorke, who had the greatest control, was still facing writer's block. His new songs were incomplete, and some consisted of little more than sounds or rhythms; few had clear verses or choruses. Yorke's lack of lyrics created problems, as these had provided points of reference and inspiration for his bandmates in the past.The group struggled with Yorke's new direction. According to Godrich, Yorke did not communicate much, and according to Yorke, Godrich "didn't understand why, if we had such a strength in one thing, we would want to do something else". The lead guitarist, Jonny Greenwood, feared "awful art-rock nonsense just for its own sake". His brother, Colin, did not enjoy Yorke's Warp influences, finding them "really cold". The other band members were unsure of how to contribute, and considered leaving. O'Brien said: "It's scary – everyone feels insecure. I'm a guitarist and suddenly it's like, well, there are no guitars on this track, or no drums."Radiohead experimented with electronic instruments including modular synthesisers and the ondes Martenot, an early electronic instrument similar to a theremin, and used software such as Pro Tools and Cubase to edit and manipulate their recordings. They found it difficult to use electronic instruments collaboratively; according to Yorke, "We had to develop ways of going off into corners and build things on whatever sequencer, synthesiser or piece of machinery we would bring to the equation and then integrate that into the way we would normally work." O'Brien began using sustain units, which allow guitar notes to be sustained infinitely, combined with looping and delay effects to create synthesiser-like sounds.In March, Radiohead moved to Medley Studios in Copenhagen for two weeks, which were unproductive. The sessions produced about 50 reels of tape, each containing 15 minutes of music, with nothing finished. In April, Radiohead resumed recording in a mansion in Batsford Park, Gloucestershire. The lack of deadline and the number of incomplete ideas made it hard to focus, and the group held tense meetings. They agreed to disband if they could not agree on an album worth releasing.In July, O'Brien began keeping an online diary of Radiohead's progress. Radiohead moved to their new studio in Oxfordshire in September. In November, Radiohead held a live webcast from their studio, featuring a performance of new music and a DJ set. By 2000, six songs were complete. In January, at Godrich's suggestion, Radiohead split into two groups: one would generate a sound or sequence without acoustic instruments such as guitars or drums, and the other would develop it. Though the experiment produced no finished songs, it helped convince O'Brien of the potential of electronic instruments.On 19 April 2000, Yorke wrote on Radiohead's website that they had finished recording. Having completed over 20 songs, Radiohead considered releasing a double album, but felt the material was too dense. Instead, they saved half the songs for their next album, Amnesiac, released the following year. Yorke said Radiohead split the work into two albums because "they cancel each other out as overall finished things. They come from two different places." He observed that deciding the track list was not just a matter of choosing the best songs, as "you can put all the best songs in the world on a record and they'll ruin each other". He cited the later Beatles albums as examples of effective sequencing: "How in the hell can you have three different versions of 'Revolution' on the same record and get away with it? I thought about that sort of thing." Agreeing on the track list created arguments, and O'Brien said the band came close to breaking up: "That felt like it could go either way, it could break ... But we came in the next day and it was resolved." The album was mastered by Chris Blair in Abbey Road Studios, London.
Tracks
Radiohead worked on the first track, "Everything in Its Right Place", in a conventional band arrangement in Copenhagen and Paris, but without results. In Gloucestershire, Yorke and Godrich transferred the song to a Prophet-5 synthesiser, and Yorke's vocals were processed in Pro Tools using a scrubbing tool. O'Brien and the drummer, Philip Selway, said the track helped them accept that not every song needed every band member to play on it. O'Brien recalled: "To be genuinely sort of delighted that you'd been working for six months on this record and something great has come out of it, and you haven't contributed to it, is a really liberating feeling." Jonny Greenwood described it as a turning point for the album: "We knew it had to be the first song, and everything just followed after it."Yorke wrote an early version of "The National Anthem" when the band was still in school. In 1997, Radiohead recorded drums and bass for the song, intending to develop it as a B-side for OK Computer, but decided to keep it for their next album. For Kid A, Greenwood added ondes Martenot and sounds sampled from radio stations, and Yorke's vocals were processed with a ring modulator. In November 1999, Radiohead recorded a brass section inspired by the "organised chaos" of Town Hall Concert by the jazz musician Charles Mingus, instructing the musicians to sound like a "traffic jam".The strings on "How to Disappear Completely" were performed by the Orchestra of St John's and recorded in Dorchester Abbey, a 12th-century church about five miles from Radiohead's Oxfordshire studio. Radiohead chose the orchestra as they had performed pieces by Penderecki and Messiaen. Jonny Greenwood, the only Radiohead member trained in music theory, composed the string arrangement by multitracking his ondes Martenot. According to Godrich, when the orchestra members saw Greenwood's score "they all just sort of burst into giggles, because they couldn't do what he'd written, because it was impossible – or impossible for them, anyway". The orchestra leader, John Lubbock, encouraged them to experiment and work with Greenwood's ideas. The concerts director, Alison Atkinson, said the session was more experimental than the orchestra's usual bookings.
"Idioteque" samples two computer music pieces, Paul Lansky's "Mild und Leise" and Arthur Kreiger's "Short Piece". Both samples were taken from Electronic Music Winners, a 1976 experimental music LP which Jonny Greenwood stumbled upon while the band was working on Kid A. The track was built from a drum machine pattern Greenwood created with a modular synthesiser and a sample from "Mild und Leise". He gave the 50-minute recording to Yorke, who took a short section of it and used it to write the song. Yorke also referred to electronic dance music when talking about "Idioteque", and said that the song was "an attempt to capture that exploding beat sound where you're at the club and the PA's so loud, you know it's doing damage"."Motion Picture Soundtrack" was written before Radiohead's debut single "Creep" (1992), and Radiohead recorded a version on piano during the OK Computer sessions. For Kid A, Yorke recorded it on a pedal organ, influenced by the songwriter Tom Waits. The band added harp samples and double bass, attempting to emulate the soundtracks of 1950s Disney films. Radiohead also worked on several songs they did not complete until the recording sessions for future albums, including "Nude", "Burn the Witch" and "True Love Waits".
Music
Style and influences
Kid A incorporates influences from electronic artists on Warp Records such as 1990s IDM artists Autechre and Aphex Twin; 1970s Krautrock bands such as Can; the jazz of Charles Mingus, Alice Coltrane and Miles Davis; and abstract hip hop from the Mo'Wax label, including Blackalicious and DJ Krush. Yorke cited Remain in Light (1980) by Talking Heads as a "massive reference point". Björk was another major influence, particularly her 1997 album Homogenic, as was the Beta Band. Radiohead attended an Underworld concert which helped renew their enthusiasm in a difficult moment.The string orchestration for "How to Disappear Completely" was influenced by the Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki. Jonny Greenwood's use of the ondes Martenot on several songs was inspired by Olivier Messiaen, who popularised the instrument and was one of Greenwood's teenage heroes. Greenwood described his interest in mixing old and new music technology, and during the recording sessions Yorke read Ian MacDonald's Revolution in the Head, which chronicles the Beatles' recordings with George Martin during the 1960s. The band also sought to combine electronic manipulations with jam sessions in the studio, saying their model was the German band Can.Kid A has been described as a work of electronica, experimental rock, post-rock, alternative rock, post-prog, ambient, electronic rock, art rock, and art pop. Though guitar is less prominent than on previous Radiohead albums, guitars were still used on most tracks. "Treefingers", an ambient instrumental, was created by digitally processing O'Brien's guitar loops. Many of Yorke's vocals were manipulated with effects; for example, his vocals on the title track were simply spoken, then vocoded with the ondes Martenot to create the melody.
Lyrics
Yorke's lyrics on Kid A are less personal than on earlier albums, and instead incorporate abstract and surreal themes. He cut up phrases and assembled them at random, combining cliches and banal observations; for example, "Morning Bell" features repeated contrasting lines such as "Where'd you park the car?" and "Cut the kids in half". Yorke denied that he was "trying to get anything across" with the lyrics, and described them as "like shattered bits of mirror ... like pieces of something broken. ... it's not like I'm trying to get anything across."Yorke cited David Byrne's approach to lyrics on Remain in Light as an influence: "When they made that record, they had no real songs, just wrote it all as they went along. Byrne turned up with pages and pages, and just picked stuff up and threw bits in all the time. And that's exactly how I approached Kid A." Radiohead used Yorke's lyrics "like pieces in a collage ... [creating] an artwork out of a lot of different little things". The lyrics are not included in the liner notes, as Radiohead felt they could not be considered independently of the music, and Yorke did not want listeners to focus on them.Yorke wrote "Everything in Its Right Place" about the depression he experienced on the OK Computer tour, feeling he could not speak. The refrain of "How to Disappear Completely" was inspired by R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe, who advised Yorke to relieve tour stress by repeating to himself: "I'm not here, this isn't happening". The refrain of "Optimistic" ("try the best you can / the best you can is good enough") was an assurance by Yorke's partner, Rachel Owen, when Yorke was frustrated with the band's progress. The title Kid A came from a filename on one of Yorke's sequencers. Yorke said he liked its "non-meaning", saying: "If you call [an album] something specific, it drives the record in a certain way."
Artwork
The Kid A artwork and packaging was created by Yorke with Stanley Donwood, who has worked with Radiohead since their 1994 EP My Iron Lung. Donwood painted on large canvases with knives and sticks, then photographed the paintings and manipulated them with Photoshop. While working on the artwork, Yorke and Donwood became "obsessed" with the Worldwatch Institute website, which was full of "scary statistics about ice caps melting, and weather patterns changing"; this inspired them to use an image of a mountain range as the cover art. Donwood said he saw the mountains as "some sort of cataclysmic power".Donwood was inspired by a photograph taken during the Kosovo War depicting a square metre of snow full of the "detritus of war", such as military equipment and cigarette stains. He said: "I was upset by it in a way war had never upset me before. It felt like it was happening in my street." The red swimming pool on the album spine and disc was inspired by the 1988 graphic novel Brought to Light by Alan Moore and Bill Sienkiewicz, in which the number of people killed by state terrorism is measured in swimming pools filled with blood. Donwood said this image "haunted" him during the recording of the album, calling it "a symbol of looming danger and shattered expectations". Yorke and Donwood cited a Paris exhibition of paintings by David Hockney as another influence.Yorke and Donwood made many versions of the album cover, with different pictures and different titles in different typefaces. Unable to pick one, they taped them to cupboards of the studio kitchen and went to bed. According to Donwood, the choice the next day "was obvious". In October 2021, Yorke and Donwood curated an exhibition of Kid A artwork at Christie's headquarters in London.
Promotion
Radiohead minimised their involvement in promotion for Kid A, conducting few interviews or photoshoots. Though "Optimistic" and promotional copies of other tracks received radio play, Radiohead released no singles from the album. Yorke said this was to avoid the stress of publicity, which he had struggled with on OK Computer, rather than for artistic reasons.Radiohead were careful to present it as a cohesive work rather than a series of separate tracks. Rather than give EMI executives their own copies, they had them listen to the album in its entirety on a bus from Hollywood to Malibu. Rob Gordon, the vice president of marketing at Capitol Records, the American subsidiary of Radiohead's label EMI, praised the album but said promoting it would be a "business challenge".No advance copies of Kid A were circulated, but it was played under controlled conditions for critics and fans. On September 5, 2000, it was played for the public for the first time at the IMAX theatre in Lincoln Square, Manhattan. Promotional copies of Kid A came with stickers prohibiting broadcast before September 19. At midnight, it was played in its entirety by the London radio station Xfm. MTV2, KROQ, and WXRK also played the album.Rather than agree to a standard magazine photoshoot for Q, Radiohead supplied digitally altered portraits, with their skin smoothed, their irises recoloured, and Yorke's drooping eyelid removed. The Q editor Andrew Harrison described the images as "aggressively weird to the point of taking the piss ... All five of Radiohead had been given the aspect of gawking aliens." Yorke said: "I'd like to see them try to put these pictures on a poster." Q projected the images onto the Houses of Parliament, placed them on posters and billboards in the London Underground and on the Old Street Roundabout, and had them printed on key rings, mugs and mouse mats, to "turn Radiohead back into a product".
Videos
Instead of releasing traditional music videos for Kid A, Radiohead commissioned dozens of 10-second videos featuring Donwood artwork they called "blips", which were aired on music channels and distributed online. Pitchfork described them as "context-free animated nightmares that radiated mystery", with "arch hints of surveillance". Five of the videos were serviced as exclusives to MTV, and "helped play into the arty mystique that endeared Radiohead to its core audience", according to Billboard. Much of the promotional material featured pointy-toothed bear characters created by Donwood. The bears originated in stories Donwood made for his young children about teddy bears who came to life and ate the "grown-ups" who had abandoned them.
Internet
Though Radiohead had experimented with internet promotion for OK Computer in 1997, by 2000 online music promotion was not widespread, with record labels still reliant on MTV and radio. Donwood wrote that EMI was not interested in the Radiohead website, and left him and the band to update it with "discursive and random content".To promote Kid A, Capitol created the "iBlip", a Java applet that could be embedded in fan sites. It allowed users to stream the album, and included artwork, photos and links to order Kid A on Amazon. It was used by more than 1000 sites, and the album was streamed more than 400,000 times. Capitol also streamed Kid A through Amazon, MTV.com and heavy.com, and ran a campaign with the peer-to-peer filesharing service Aimster, allowing users to swap iBlips and Radiohead-branded Aimster skins.Three weeks before release, Kid A was leaked online and shared on the peer-to-peer service Napster. Asked whether he believed Napster had damaged sales, Capitol president Ray Lott likened the situation to unfounded concern about home taping in the 1980s and said: "I'm trying to sell as many Radiohead albums as possible. If I worried about what Napster would do, I wouldn't sell as many albums." Yorke said Napster "encourages enthusiasm for music in a way that the music industry has long forgotten to do".
Tour
Radiohead rearranged the Kid A songs to perform them live. O'Brien said, "You couldn't do Kid A live and be true to the record. You would have to do it like an art installation ... When we played live, we put the human element back into it." Selway said they "found some new life" in the songs when they came to perform them.In mid-2000, months before Kid A was released, Radiohead toured the Mediterranean, performing Kid A and Amnesiac songs for the first time. Fans shared concert bootlegs online. Colin Greenwood said: "We played in Barcelona and the next day the entire performance was up on Napster. Three weeks later when we got to play in Israel the audience knew the words to all the new songs and it was wonderful." Later that year, Radiohead toured Europe in a custom-built tent without corporate logos, playing mostly new songs. The tour included a homecoming show in South Park, Oxford, with supporting performances by Humphrey Lyttelton (who performed on Amnesiac), Beck and Sigur Rós. According to the journalist Alex Ross, the show may have been the largest public gathering in Oxford history.Radiohead also performed three concerts in North American theatres, their first in nearly three years. The small venues sold out rapidly, attracting celebrities, and fans camped overnight. In October, Radiohead performed on the American TV show Saturday Night Live; the performance shocked viewers expecting rock songs, with Jonny Greenwood playing electronic instruments, the house brass band improvising over "The National Anthem", and Yorke dancing erratically to "Idioteque". Rolling Stone described the Kid A tour as "a revelation, exposing rock and roll humanity" in the songs. In November 2001, Radiohead released I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings, comprising performances from the Kid A and Amnesiac tours.
Sales
Kid A reached number one on Amazon's sales chart, with more than 10,000 pre-orders. It debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart, selling 55,000 copies in its first day – the biggest first-day sales of the year and more than every other album in the top ten combined. Kid A also debuted at number one on the US Billboard 200, selling more than 207,000 copies in its first week. It was Radiohead's first US top-20 album, and the first US number one in three years for any British act. Kid A also debuted at number one in Canada, where it sold more than 44,000 copies in its first week, and in France, Ireland and New Zealand. European sales slowed on 2 October 2000, the day of release, when EMI recalled 150,000 faulty CDs. By June 2001, Kid A had sold 310,000 copies in the UK, less than a third of OK Computer sales. It is certified platinum in the UK, Australia, Canada, France, Japan and the US.
Critical reception
Kid A was widely anticipated. Spin described it as the most anticipated rock record since Nirvana's In Utero. According to Andrew Harrison, the editor of Q, journalists expected it to provide more of the "rousing, cathartic, lots-of-guitar, Saturday-night-at-Glastonbury big future rock moments" of OK Computer. Months before its release, Pat Blashill of Melody Maker wrote: "If there's one band that promises to return rock to us, it's Radiohead."After Kid A had been played for critics, many bemoaned the lack of guitar, the obscured vocals and the unconventional song structures. Some called it "a commercial suicide note". The Guardian wrote of the "muted electronic hums, pulses and tones", predicting that it would confuse listeners. In Mojo, Jim Irvin wrote that "upon first listen, Kid A is just awful ... Too often it sounds like the fragments that they began the writing process with – a loop, a riff, a mumbled line of text, have been set in concrete and had other, lesser ideas piled on top." The Guardian critic Adam Sweeting wrote that "even listeners raised on krautrock or Ornette Coleman will find Kid A a mystifying experience", and that it pandered to "the worst cliches" about Radiohead's "relentless miserabilism". Several critics found the free jazz of "The National Anthem" discordant and unpleasant.Several critics felt Kid A was pretentious or deliberately obscure. The Irish Times bemoaned the lack of conventional song structures and panned the album as "deliberately abstruse, wilfully esoteric and wantonly unfathomable ... The only thing challenging about Kid A is the very real challenge to your attention span." In the New Yorker, the novelist Nick Hornby wrote that it was "morbid proof that this sort of self-indulgence results in a weird kind of anonymity rather than something distinctive and original". The Melody Maker critic Mark Beaumont called it "tubby, ostentatious, self-congratulatory, look-ma-I-can-suck-my-own-cock whiny old rubbish ... About 60 songs were started that no one had a bloody clue how to finish." Alexis Petridis of The Guardian described it as "self-consciously awkward and bloody-minded, the noise made by a band trying so hard to make a 'difficult' album that they felt it beneath them to write any songs". Rolling Stone published a piece mocking Kid A as humourless, derivative and lacking in songs: "Because it was decided that Radiohead were Important and Significant last time around, no one can accept the album as the crackpot art project it so obviously is."Some critics felt Kid A was unoriginal. In the New York Times, Howard Hampton dismissed Radiohead as a "rock composite" and wrote that Kid A "recycles Pink Floyd's dark-side-of-the-moon solipsism to Me-Decade perfection". Beaumont said Radiohead were "simply ploughing furrows dug by DJ Shadow and Brian Eno before them". The Irish Times felt the ambient elements were inferior to Eno's 1978 album Music For Airports and its "scary" elements inferior to Scott Walker's 1995 album Tilt. Select wrote: "What do they want for sounding like the Aphex Twin circa 1993, a medal?" In a retrospective, the journalist Rob Sheffield wrote that the "mastery of Warp-style electronic effects" had appeared "clumsy and dated" at the time of Kid A's release. In an NME editorial, James Oldham wrote that the electronic influences were "mired in compromise", with Radiohead still operating as a rock band, and concluded: "Time will judge it. But right now, Kid A has the ring of a lengthy, over-analysed mistake." Rob Mitchell, the co-founder of Warp, felt Kid A represented "an honest interpretation of [Warp] influences" and was not "gratuitously" electronic. He predicted it might one day be seen in the same way as David Bowie's 1977 album Low, which alienated some Bowie fans but was later acclaimed.AllMusic gave Kid A a favourable review, but wrote that it "never is as visionary or stunning as OK Computer, nor does it really repay the intensive time it demands in order for it to sink in". The NME was also positive, but described some songs as "meandering" and "anticlimactic", and concluded: "For all its feats of brinkmanship, the patently magnificent construct called Kid A betrays a band playing one-handed just to prove they can, scared to commit itself emotionally." In Rolling Stone, David Fricke called Kid A "a work of deliberately inky, often irritating obsession ... But this is pop, a music of ornery, glistening guile and honest ache, and it will feel good under your skin once you let it get there."Spin said Kid A was "not the act of career suicide or feat of self-indulgence it will be castigated as", and predicted that fans would recognise it as Radiohead's best and "bravest" album. Billboard described it as "an ocean of unparalleled musical depth" and "the first truly groundbreaking album of the 21st century". The music critic Robert Christgau wrote that Kid A was "an imaginative, imitative variation on a pop staple: sadness made pretty". The Village Voice called it "oblique oblique oblique ... Also incredibly beautiful." Brent DiCrescenzo of Pitchfork gave Kid A a perfect score, calling it "cacophonous yet tranquil, experimental yet familiar, foreign yet womb-like, spacious yet visceral, textured yet vaporous, awakening yet dreamlike". He concluded that Radiohead "must be the greatest band alive, if not the best since you know who". One of the first Kid A reviews posted online, DiCrescenzo's review helped popularise Pitchfork and became notorious for its "obtuse" writing.At Metacritic, which aggregates ratings from critics, Kid A has a score of 80 based on 24 reviews, indicating "generally favourable reviews". It was named one of the best albums of 2000 by publications including the Los Angeles Times, Spin, Melody Maker, Mojo, NME, Pitchfork, Q, the Times, Uncut and the Wire. At the 2001 Grammy Awards, Kid A was nominated for Album of the Year and won for Best Alternative Album.
Legacy
In the years following its release, Kid A attracted acclaim. In 2005, Pitchfork wrote that it had "challenged and confounded" Radiohead's audience, and subsequently "transformed into an intellectual symbol of sorts ... Owning it became 'getting it'; getting it became 'anointing it'." In 2015, Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone likened Radiohead's change in style to Bob Dylan's controversial move to rock music, writing that critics now hesitated to say they had disliked it at the time. He described Kid A as the "defining moment in the Radiohead legend". A year later, Billboard argued that Kid A was the first album since Bowie's Low to have moved "rock and electronic music forward in such a mature fashion". In an article for Kid A's 20th anniversary, the Quietus suggested that the negative reviews had been motivated by rockism, the tendency among music critics to venerate rock music over other genres.In a 2011 Guardian article about his critical Melody Maker review, Beaumont wrote that though his opinion had not changed, "Kid A's status as a cultural cornerstone has proved me, if not wrong, then very much in the minority ... People whose opinions I trust claim it to be their favourite album ever." In 2014, Brice Ezell of PopMatters wrote that Kid A is "more fun to think and write about than it is to actually listen to" and a "far less compelling representation of the band's talents than The Bends and OK Computer". In 2016, Dorian Lysnkey wrote in The Guardian: "At times, Kid A is dull enough to make you fervently wish that they'd merged the highlights with the best bits of the similarly spotty Amnesiac ... Yorke had given up on coherent lyrics so one can only guess at what he was worrying about."Radiohead denied that they had set out to create "difficult" music. Jonny Greenwood argued that the tracks were short and melodic, and suggested that "people basically want their hands held through 12 'Mull Of Kintyre's". Yorke said: "We're actually trying to communicate but, somewhere along the line, we just seemed to piss off a lot of people ... What we're doing isn't that radical." He recalled that the band had been "white as a sheet" before early performances on the Kid A tour, thinking they had been "absolutely trashed". At the same time, the reaction motivated them: "There was a sense of a fight to convince people, which was actually really exciting." He regretted having released no singles, feeling it meant much of the early judgement of the album came from critics.Grantland credited Kid A for pioneering the use of internet to stream and promote music, writing: "For many music fans of a certain age and persuasion, Kid A was the first album experienced primarily via the internet – it's where you went to hear it, read the reviews, and argue about whether it was a masterpiece ... Listen early, form an opinion quickly, state it publicly, and move on to the next big record by the official release date. In that way, Kid A invented modern music culture as we know it." In his 2005 book Killing Yourself to Live, critic Chuck Klosterman interpreted Kid A as a prediction of the September 11 attacks.Speaking at Radiohead's induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 2019, David Byrne of Talking Heads, one of Radiohead's formative influences, said: "What was really weird and very encouraging was that [Kid A] was popular. It was a hit! It proved to me that the artistic risk paid off and music fans sometimes are not stupid." In 2020, Billboard wrote that the success of Kid A, despite its "challenging" content, established Radiohead as "heavy hitters in the business for the long run".
Accolades
In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked Kid A number 20 on its updated "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list, describing it as "a new, uniquely fearless kind of rock record for a new, increasingly fearful century ... [It] remains one of the more stunning sonic makeovers in music history." In previous versions of the list, Kid A ranked at number 67 (2012) and number 428 (2003). In 2005, Stylus and Pitchfork named Kid A the best album of the previous five years, with Pitchfork calling it "the perfect record for its time: ominous, surreal, and impossibly millennial".In 2006, Time named Kid A one of the 100 best albums, calling it "the opposite of easy listening, and the weirdest album to ever sell a million copies, but ... also a testament to just how complicated pop music can be". At the end of the decade, Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and the Times ranked Kid A the greatest album of the 2000s. The Guardian ranked it second best, calling it "a jittery premonition of the troubled, disconnected, overloaded decade to come. The sound of today, in other words, a decade early." In 2021, Pitchfork readers voted Kid A the greatest album of the previous 25 years. In 2011, Rolling Stone named "Everything in Its Right Place" the 24th-best song of the 2000s, describing it as "oddness at its most hummable". "Idioteque" was named one of the best songs of the decade by Pitchfork and Rolling Stone, and Rolling Stone ranked it #33 on its 2018 list of the "greatest songs of the century so far".
(*) designates unordered list
Reissues
Radiohead left EMI after their contract ended in 2003. After a period of being out of print on vinyl, Kid A was reissued as a double LP on 19 August 2008 as part of the "From the Capitol Vaults" series, along with other Radiohead albums. In 2007, EMI released Radiohead Box Set, a compilation of albums recorded while Radiohead were signed to EMI, including Kid A. On 25 August 2009, EMI reissued Kid A in a two-CD "Collector's Edition" and a "Special Collector's Edition" containing an additional DVD. Both versions feature live tracks, taken mostly from television performances. Radiohead had no input into the reissues and the music was not remastered.The EMI reissues were discontinued after Radiohead's back catalogue transferred to XL Recordings in 2016. In May 2016, XL reissued Kid A on vinyl, along with the rest of Radiohead's back catalogue. An early demo of "The National Anthem" was included in the special edition of the 2017 OK Computer reissue OKNOTOK 1997 2017. In February 2020, Radiohead released an extended version of "Treefingers", previously released on the soundtrack for the 2000 film Memento, to digital platforms.On November 5, 2021, Radiohead released Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A and Amnesiac. It includes a third album, Kid Amnesiae, comprising previously unreleased material from the sessions. Radiohead promoted the reissue with singles for the previously unreleased tracks "If You Say the Word" and "Follow Me Around". Kid A Mnesia Exhibition, an interactive experience with music and artwork from the albums, was released on November 18 for PlayStation 5, macOS and Windows.
Track listing
All songs written by Radiohead, except "Idioteque", which samples "Mild und Leise" by Paul Lansky and "Short Piece" by Arthur Kreiger.
"Everything in Its Right Place" – 4:11
"Kid A" – 4:44
"The National Anthem" – 5:51
"How to Disappear Completely" – 5:56
"Treefingers" – 3:42
"Optimistic" – 5:15
"In Limbo" – 3:31
"Idioteque" – 5:09
"Morning Bell" – 4:35
"Motion Picture Soundtrack" – 7:01
Untitled hidden track – 0:52Note: Track 10 ends at 3:20; includes an untitled hidden track from 4:17 until 5:09, followed by 1:51 of silence. On streaming services, the hidden track is listed as a separate track.
Personnel
Credits adapted from liner notes.
Charts
Certifications and sales
Notes
References
Bibliography
Randall, Mac (2012). Exit Music: The Radiohead Story Updated Edition. ISBN 9781617130472.
Further reading
Lin, Marvin (25 November 2010). Radiohead's Kid A. 33⅓ series. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8264-2343-6.
Ed's Diary: Archived 13 April 2007 at the Wayback Machine Ed O'Brien's studio diary from Kid A/Amnesiac recording sessions, 1999–2000 (archived at Green Plastic)
Marzorati, Gerald. "The Post-Rock Band". The New York Times. 1 October 2000. Retrieved on 4 November 2010.
"All Things Reconsidered: The 10th Anniversary of Radiohead's 'Kid A'" (a collection of articles). PopMatters. November 2010. Retrieved on 4 November 2010.
External links
Kid A at Discogs (list of releases) | number of parts of this work | {
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Tymianek [tɨˈmjanɛk] is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Koźminek, within Kalisz County, Greater Poland Voivodeship, in west-central Poland. It lies approximately 19 kilometres (12 mi) east of Kalisz and 118 km (73 mi) south-east of the regional capital Poznań.
The village has a population of 130.
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Tymianek [tɨˈmjanɛk] is a village in the administrative district of Gmina Koźminek, within Kalisz County, Greater Poland Voivodeship, in west-central Poland. It lies approximately 19 kilometres (12 mi) east of Kalisz and 118 km (73 mi) south-east of the regional capital Poznań.
The village has a population of 130.
== References == | located in the administrative territorial entity | {
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The French Cottage or House of France is a founding member of the House of Pacific Relations (HPR) in Balboa Park, San Diego, United States. The House of France is the only French-American non-profit association in the City of San Diego.
Foundation
The House of Pacific Relations (HPR), a 501(c)(3) public benefit organization founded in 1936 and co-sponsored by the City of San Diego Department of Parks and Recreation, today encompasses 32 houses representing 32 countries which each offer visitors a window to their culture, history and traditions. Initially, 16 international houses were founded in 1935, namely the House of France, for the 1935 California Pacific International Exposition. Today the houses occupy the historic 1935 Exposition cottages plus 4 new cottages, provided by the City of San Diego in Balboa Park, which was constructed for the Panama-California Exposition in 1915 and enlarged for the California-Pacific International Exposition in 1935. The Balboa Park, a cultural urban park in San Diego, one of the oldest in the United States, includes some of the finest Spanish-Baroque Revival structures in America and it is on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP).
Initially, the House of France was a place where French War brides gathered after World War II and speak French while adjusting to their new American life. Today, the House of France endeavors to maintain and enhance the spirit of understanding, tolerance and goodwill, among its members and with the national entities residing in the city and county of San Diego, by representing the history, traditions and culture of France to the attention of schools, cultural groups and private individuals.
Activities
The House of Pacific Relations in general and the House of France in particular promote multicultural goodwill and understanding through numerous annual educational and cultural programs.
The House of France participates in city-wide events organized by the House of Pacific Relations in Balboa Park, such as the Ethnic Food Fair, Lawn Program, and December Nights. The Lawn Program features music, dance, traditional costumes, arts, crafts, and traditional French food, such as onion soup, puff pastries and mille-feuille (also known in the US as Napoléon). The Ethnic Food Fair and December Nights, initially called "Christmas on the Prado", feature live entertainment (organ music at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion) and ethnic food.
The House of France also hosts several events of its own throughout the year. Some are open to the public, namely the Open House every first and second Sunday of the month from noon to 4:00 pm. Other are reserved to members of the House of France: Crepe Day in the beginning of February, Easter Egg Hunt in April, Games Day in May, Annual Picnic in June and/or September, Santa Claus visit by the end of December and a monthly Children's Club.
See also
San Diego
Balboa Park
References
External links
French Cottage website
Internet page of the House of France on the House of Pacific Relations website
House of Pacific Relations website
December Nights website | country | {
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The French Cottage or House of France is a founding member of the House of Pacific Relations (HPR) in Balboa Park, San Diego, United States. The House of France is the only French-American non-profit association in the City of San Diego.
Foundation
The House of Pacific Relations (HPR), a 501(c)(3) public benefit organization founded in 1936 and co-sponsored by the City of San Diego Department of Parks and Recreation, today encompasses 32 houses representing 32 countries which each offer visitors a window to their culture, history and traditions. Initially, 16 international houses were founded in 1935, namely the House of France, for the 1935 California Pacific International Exposition. Today the houses occupy the historic 1935 Exposition cottages plus 4 new cottages, provided by the City of San Diego in Balboa Park, which was constructed for the Panama-California Exposition in 1915 and enlarged for the California-Pacific International Exposition in 1935. The Balboa Park, a cultural urban park in San Diego, one of the oldest in the United States, includes some of the finest Spanish-Baroque Revival structures in America and it is on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP).
Initially, the House of France was a place where French War brides gathered after World War II and speak French while adjusting to their new American life. Today, the House of France endeavors to maintain and enhance the spirit of understanding, tolerance and goodwill, among its members and with the national entities residing in the city and county of San Diego, by representing the history, traditions and culture of France to the attention of schools, cultural groups and private individuals.
Activities
The House of Pacific Relations in general and the House of France in particular promote multicultural goodwill and understanding through numerous annual educational and cultural programs.
The House of France participates in city-wide events organized by the House of Pacific Relations in Balboa Park, such as the Ethnic Food Fair, Lawn Program, and December Nights. The Lawn Program features music, dance, traditional costumes, arts, crafts, and traditional French food, such as onion soup, puff pastries and mille-feuille (also known in the US as Napoléon). The Ethnic Food Fair and December Nights, initially called "Christmas on the Prado", feature live entertainment (organ music at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion) and ethnic food.
The House of France also hosts several events of its own throughout the year. Some are open to the public, namely the Open House every first and second Sunday of the month from noon to 4:00 pm. Other are reserved to members of the House of France: Crepe Day in the beginning of February, Easter Egg Hunt in April, Games Day in May, Annual Picnic in June and/or September, Santa Claus visit by the end of December and a monthly Children's Club.
See also
San Diego
Balboa Park
References
External links
French Cottage website
Internet page of the House of France on the House of Pacific Relations website
House of Pacific Relations website
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Unnamed Battery No. 1 is an historic artillery battery located at Clark's Point, James Island, Charleston County, South Carolina. It was built in 1862, and was the southern end of the eastern James Island line. At the end of the war this battery mounted two field guns. The earthen redoubt measures approximately 240 feet long and 200 feet wide. It has a 12 foot high parapet wall and a powder magazine about 17 feet in height.It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
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Unnamed Battery No. 1 is an historic artillery battery located at Clark's Point, James Island, Charleston County, South Carolina. It was built in 1862, and was the southern end of the eastern James Island line. At the end of the war this battery mounted two field guns. The earthen redoubt measures approximately 240 feet long and 200 feet wide. It has a 12 foot high parapet wall and a powder magazine about 17 feet in height.It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
== References == | located in the administrative territorial entity | {
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Unnamed Battery No. 1 is an historic artillery battery located at Clark's Point, James Island, Charleston County, South Carolina. It was built in 1862, and was the southern end of the eastern James Island line. At the end of the war this battery mounted two field guns. The earthen redoubt measures approximately 240 feet long and 200 feet wide. It has a 12 foot high parapet wall and a powder magazine about 17 feet in height.It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
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Open aortic surgery (OAS), also known as open aortic repair (OAR), describes a technique whereby an abdominal, thoracic or retroperitoneal surgical incision is used to visualize and control the aorta for purposes of treatment, usually by the replacement of the affected segment with a prosthetic graft. OAS is used to treat aneurysms of the abdominal and thoracic aorta, aortic dissection, acute aortic syndrome, and aortic ruptures. Aortobifemoral bypass is also used to treat atherosclerotic disease of the abdominal aorta below the level of the renal arteries. In 2003, OAS was surpassed by endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR) as the most common technique for repairing abdominal aortic aneurysms in the United States.Depending on the extent of the aorta repaired, an open aortic operation may be called an Infrarenal aortic repair, a Thoracic aortic repair, or a Thoracoabdominal aortic repair. A thoracoabdominal aortic repair is a more extensive operation than either an isolated infrarenal or thoracic aortic repair.
OAS is distinct from aortic valve repair and aortic valve replacement, as OAS describes surgery of the aorta, rather than of the heart valves. When the aortic valve is diseased in addition to the ascending aorta, the Bentall procedure is used to treat the entire aortic root. An axillary-bifemoral bypass is another type of vascular bypass used to treat aortic pathology, however it is not true open aortic surgery as it reconstructs the flow of blood to the legs from the arm, rather than in the native location of the aorta.
Medical uses
Open aortic surgery (OAS) is used to treat patients with aortic aneurysms greater than 5.5 cm in diameter, to treat aortic rupture of an aneurysm any size, to treat aortic dissections, and to treat acute aortic syndrome. It is used to treat infrarenal aneurysms, as well as juxta- and pararenal aneurysm, thoracic and thoracoabdominal aneurysms, and also non-aneurysmal aortic pathology. Disease of the aorta proximal to the left subclavian artery in the chest lies within the specialty of cardiac surgery, and is treated via procedures such as the valve-sparing aortic root replacement.
Prior to the advent of endovascular aneurysm repair (EVAR), OAS was the only surgical treatment available for aortic aneurysms. It is still preferred at some institutions and by some patients as it may be more durable than EVAR, and does not require post-operative surveillance CT scans.
OAS is sometimes required for patients who have previously undergone EVAR but need further treatment, such as for degeneration of the EVAR seal zones leading to continued aneurysm growth. OAS is also sometimes required in cases of EVAR graft infection where the stent graft is removed to treat the infection.
Open repair versus endovascular repair
The shift away from open aortic surgery towards endovascular surgery since 2003 has been driven by worse perioperative mortality associated with OAS, particularly in patients in relatively frail health. Unlike endovascular repair, there are no strict anatomic contra-indications to open repair; Rather, open repair is viewed as the fall back option for patients with unfavorable anatomy for endovascular repair. The main drawback of open repair is the larger physiologic demand of the operation, which is associated with increased rates of short term mortality in most studies.Patients younger than 50 years with descending and thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysm have low surgical risks, and open repairs can be performed with excellent short-term and durable long-term results. Open surgical repairs should be considered initially in younger patients requiring descending and thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysm repairs. Heritable thoracic aortic disease (HTAD) warrants closer postoperative surveillance.
Technique
Open surgery typically involves exposure of the dilated portion of the aorta and insertion of a synthetic (Dacron or Gore-Tex) graft (tube). Once the graft is sewn into the proximal (toward the patient's head) and distal (toward the patient's foot) portions of the aorta, the aneurysmal sac is closed around the graft.
Alternatively, the anastomosis can be carried out with expandable devices, a simpler and quicker procedure The aorta and its branching arteries are cross-clamped during open surgery. This can lead to inadequate blood supply to the spinal cord, resulting in paraplegia, when repairing thoracic aneurysms. A 2004 systematic review and meta analysis found that cerebrospinal fluid drainage (CFSD), when performed in experienced centers, reduces the risk of ischemic spinal cord injury by increasing the perfusion pressure to the spinal cord. A 2012 Cochrane systematic review noted that further research regarding the effectiveness of CFSD for preventing a spinal cord injury is required.
Approach
The infrarenal aorta can be approached via a transabdominal midline or paramedian incision, or via a retroperitoneal approach.
The paravisceral and thoracic aorta are approached via a left-sided posteriolateral thoracotomy incision in approximately the 9th intercostal space. For a thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysm, this approach can be extended to a median or paramedian abdominal incision to allow access to the iliac arteries.
Sequential aortic clamping
At medical centers with a high volume of open aortic surgery, the fastest option for open aortic surgery was sequential aortic clamping or "clamp-and-sew", whereby the aorta was clamped proximally and distally to the diseased segment, and a graft sewn into the intervening segment. This technique leaves the branches of the aorta un-perfused during the time it takes to sew in the graft, potentially increasing the risk of ischemia to the organs which derive their arterial supply from the clamped segment. Critics of this technique advocate intra-operative aortic perfusion. In infrarenal aneurysms, the relative tolerance of the lower extremities to ischemia allows surgeons to clamp distally with low risk of ill effect.
Techniques to limit ischemia
A number of techniques exist for maintaining perfusion to the viscera and spinal cord during open thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysm repair, including left heart bypass, balloon perfusion catheter placement in the visceral arteries, selective spinal drainage and cold crystalloid renal perfusion. There is limited evidence supporting these techniques.
Graft configuration
The abdominal aorta is anastomosed preferentially to the main limb of a tube or bifurcated graft in an end-to-end fashion to minimize turbulent flow at the proximal anastomosis. If normal aorta exists superior to the iliac bifurcation, a tube graft can be sewn distally to that normal aorta. If the distal aorta is diseased, a bifurcated graft can be used in an aorto-billiac or aorto-bifemoral configuration. If visceral vessels are involved in the diseased aortic segment, a branched graft can be used with branches sewn directly to visceral vessels, or the visceral vessels can be separately revascularized.
Reimplantation of the inferior mesenteric artery
Because of collateral blood flow from the superior mesenteric artery (SMA) via the marginal artery, the inferior mesenteric artery usually does not have to be reimplanted into the aortic graft when performing an open abdominal aortic aneurysm repair.
Risks and complications
OAS is widely recognized as having higher rates of perioperative morbidity and mortality than endovascular procedures for comparable segments of the aorta. For example, in infrarenal aneurysms, perioperative mortality with endovascular surgery is approximately 0.5%, against 3% with open repair.Besides the risk of death, other risks and complications with OAS depend on the segment of aorta involved, and may include renal failure, spinal cord ischemia leading to paralysis, buttock claudication, ischemic colitis, embolization leading to acute limb ischemia, infection, and bleeding.
Recovery after OAS
Recovery time after OAS is substantial. Immediately following surgery, patients can expect to spend 1–3 days in the intensive care unit, followed by 4–10 days on the hospital ward. After discharge, patients will take 3–6 months to fully recover their energy and return to their pre-operative daily activities.TAAA repair requires a very large incision that cuts through muscles and bones making recovery very difficult and painful for the patient. Intraoperative intercostal nerve cryoanalgesia has been used during procedure to help reduce pain after TAAA.
History
The history of aortic surgery dates back to Greek surgeon Antyllus, who first performed surgeries for various aneurysms in the second century AD. Many advancements of OAS have been developed in the past century.
In 1955, cardiovascular surgeons, Drs. Michael DeBakey and Denton Cooley performed the first replacement of a thoracic aneurysm with a homograft. In 1958, they began using the Dacron graft, resulting in a revolution for surgeons in the surgical repair of aortic aneurysms. DeBakey was first to perform cardiopulmonary bypass to repair the ascending aorta, using antegrade perfusion of the brachiocephalic artery.
By the mid-1960s, at Baylor College of Medicine, DeBakey’s group began performing surgery on thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysms (TAAA), which presented formidable surgical challenges, often fraught with serious complications, such as paraplegia, paraparesis and renal failure. DeBakey protégé and vascular Surgeon, E. Stanley Crawford, in particular, began dedicating most of his time to TAAAs. In 1986, he classified TAAA open surgery cases into four types: Extent I, extending from the left subclavian artery to just below the renal artery; Extent II, from the left subclavian to below the renal artery; Extent III, from the sixth intercostal space to below the renal artery; and Extent IV, from the twelfth intercostal space to the iliac bifurcation (i.e. total abdominal).
In 1992, another classification, Extent V, characterized by Hazim J. Safi, MD, identified aneurysmal disease extending from the sixth intercostal space to above the renal arteries. Safi's group used experimental animal models for a prospective study on the use distal aortic perfusion, cerebrospinal fluid drainage, moderate hypothermia and sequential clamping to decrease in the incidence of neurological deficit. In 1994, they presented their experiences, showing that the incidence for Extent I and II dropped from 25% to 5%. This marked a new era for protecting the spinal cord, brain, kidneys, heart and lungs during OAS on TAAA.
Progress and future challenges
Postoperative paraplegia and paraparesis have been the scourge of thoracoabdominal aortic repair since the inception of the procedure. However, with evolving surgical strategies, identification of predictors, and use of various adjuncts over the years, the incidence of spinal cord injury after thoracic/thoracoabdominal aortic repair has declined. Embracing a multimodality approach offers a good insight into combating this grave complication
See also
Aortic valve repair
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La Salle-de-Vihiers (French pronunciation: [la sal də vije] (listen)) is a former commune in the Maine-et-Loire department in western France.
On 15 December 2015, Chanzeaux, La Chapelle-Rousselin, Chemillé-Melay, Cossé-d'Anjou, La Jumellière, Neuvy-en-Mauges, Sainte-Christine, Saint-Georges-des-Gardes, Saint-Lézin, La Salle-de-Vihiers, La Tourlandry and Valanjou merged becoming one commune called Chemillé-en-Anjou.
See also
Communes of the Maine-et-Loire department
== References == | country | {
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La Salle-de-Vihiers (French pronunciation: [la sal də vije] (listen)) is a former commune in the Maine-et-Loire department in western France.
On 15 December 2015, Chanzeaux, La Chapelle-Rousselin, Chemillé-Melay, Cossé-d'Anjou, La Jumellière, Neuvy-en-Mauges, Sainte-Christine, Saint-Georges-des-Gardes, Saint-Lézin, La Salle-de-Vihiers, La Tourlandry and Valanjou merged becoming one commune called Chemillé-en-Anjou.
See also
Communes of the Maine-et-Loire department
== References == | shares border with | {
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La Salle-de-Vihiers (French pronunciation: [la sal də vije] (listen)) is a former commune in the Maine-et-Loire department in western France.
On 15 December 2015, Chanzeaux, La Chapelle-Rousselin, Chemillé-Melay, Cossé-d'Anjou, La Jumellière, Neuvy-en-Mauges, Sainte-Christine, Saint-Georges-des-Gardes, Saint-Lézin, La Salle-de-Vihiers, La Tourlandry and Valanjou merged becoming one commune called Chemillé-en-Anjou.
See also
Communes of the Maine-et-Loire department
== References == | located in the administrative territorial entity | {
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La Salle-de-Vihiers (French pronunciation: [la sal də vije] (listen)) is a former commune in the Maine-et-Loire department in western France.
On 15 December 2015, Chanzeaux, La Chapelle-Rousselin, Chemillé-Melay, Cossé-d'Anjou, La Jumellière, Neuvy-en-Mauges, Sainte-Christine, Saint-Georges-des-Gardes, Saint-Lézin, La Salle-de-Vihiers, La Tourlandry and Valanjou merged becoming one commune called Chemillé-en-Anjou.
See also
Communes of the Maine-et-Loire department
== References == | Commons category | {
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La Salle-de-Vihiers (French pronunciation: [la sal də vije] (listen)) is a former commune in the Maine-et-Loire department in western France.
On 15 December 2015, Chanzeaux, La Chapelle-Rousselin, Chemillé-Melay, Cossé-d'Anjou, La Jumellière, Neuvy-en-Mauges, Sainte-Christine, Saint-Georges-des-Gardes, Saint-Lézin, La Salle-de-Vihiers, La Tourlandry and Valanjou merged becoming one commune called Chemillé-en-Anjou.
See also
Communes of the Maine-et-Loire department
== References == | replaced by | {
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La Salle-de-Vihiers (French pronunciation: [la sal də vije] (listen)) is a former commune in the Maine-et-Loire department in western France.
On 15 December 2015, Chanzeaux, La Chapelle-Rousselin, Chemillé-Melay, Cossé-d'Anjou, La Jumellière, Neuvy-en-Mauges, Sainte-Christine, Saint-Georges-des-Gardes, Saint-Lézin, La Salle-de-Vihiers, La Tourlandry and Valanjou merged becoming one commune called Chemillé-en-Anjou.
See also
Communes of the Maine-et-Loire department
== References == | official name | {
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Ua Huka Airport is an airport on Ua Huka in French Polynesia (IATA: UAH, ICAO: NTMU). The airport is 2.2 km southwest of the village of Hane. The airport was opened on November 4, 1970, with the first landings made by an Air Tahiti Piper Aztec and an RAI Twin Otter. Commercial flights began in 1971. As of 2021 it received 1600 passengers a year.
Airlines and destinations
Statistics
References
External links
NTMU – UA HUKA. AIP from French Service d'information aéronautique, effective 18 May 2023. | instance of | {
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Ua Huka Airport is an airport on Ua Huka in French Polynesia (IATA: UAH, ICAO: NTMU). The airport is 2.2 km southwest of the village of Hane. The airport was opened on November 4, 1970, with the first landings made by an Air Tahiti Piper Aztec and an RAI Twin Otter. Commercial flights began in 1971. As of 2021 it received 1600 passengers a year.
Airlines and destinations
Statistics
References
External links
NTMU – UA HUKA. AIP from French Service d'information aéronautique, effective 18 May 2023. | IATA airport code | {
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Ua Huka Airport is an airport on Ua Huka in French Polynesia (IATA: UAH, ICAO: NTMU). The airport is 2.2 km southwest of the village of Hane. The airport was opened on November 4, 1970, with the first landings made by an Air Tahiti Piper Aztec and an RAI Twin Otter. Commercial flights began in 1971. As of 2021 it received 1600 passengers a year.
Airlines and destinations
Statistics
References
External links
NTMU – UA HUKA. AIP from French Service d'information aéronautique, effective 18 May 2023. | ICAO airport code | {
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Ua Huka Airport is an airport on Ua Huka in French Polynesia (IATA: UAH, ICAO: NTMU). The airport is 2.2 km southwest of the village of Hane. The airport was opened on November 4, 1970, with the first landings made by an Air Tahiti Piper Aztec and an RAI Twin Otter. Commercial flights began in 1971. As of 2021 it received 1600 passengers a year.
Airlines and destinations
Statistics
References
External links
NTMU – UA HUKA. AIP from French Service d'information aéronautique, effective 18 May 2023. | located in/on physical feature | {
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Ua Huka Airport is an airport on Ua Huka in French Polynesia (IATA: UAH, ICAO: NTMU). The airport is 2.2 km southwest of the village of Hane. The airport was opened on November 4, 1970, with the first landings made by an Air Tahiti Piper Aztec and an RAI Twin Otter. Commercial flights began in 1971. As of 2021 it received 1600 passengers a year.
Airlines and destinations
Statistics
References
External links
NTMU – UA HUKA. AIP from French Service d'information aéronautique, effective 18 May 2023. | place served by transport hub | {
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Ua Huka Airport is an airport on Ua Huka in French Polynesia (IATA: UAH, ICAO: NTMU). The airport is 2.2 km southwest of the village of Hane. The airport was opened on November 4, 1970, with the first landings made by an Air Tahiti Piper Aztec and an RAI Twin Otter. Commercial flights began in 1971. As of 2021 it received 1600 passengers a year.
Airlines and destinations
Statistics
References
External links
NTMU – UA HUKA. AIP from French Service d'information aéronautique, effective 18 May 2023. | short name | {
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0
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Ua Huka Airport is an airport on Ua Huka in French Polynesia (IATA: UAH, ICAO: NTMU). The airport is 2.2 km southwest of the village of Hane. The airport was opened on November 4, 1970, with the first landings made by an Air Tahiti Piper Aztec and an RAI Twin Otter. Commercial flights began in 1971. As of 2021 it received 1600 passengers a year.
Airlines and destinations
Statistics
References
External links
NTMU – UA HUKA. AIP from French Service d'information aéronautique, effective 18 May 2023. | elevation above sea level | {
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Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature (for instance, Irish or France).
Events
January 1 – Two poems written in 1965 by Mao Zedong just before the Cultural Revolution, including "Two Birds: A Dialogue", are published
April 5 – 1976 Tiananmen Incident in Beijing, China: the display of poems against the Gang of Four are among events provoking a police crackdown.
Lille Stesichorus, the largest fragments of work attributed to Ancient Greek poet Stesichorus, are first published
Works published in English
Listed by nation where the work was first published and again by the poet's native land, if different; substantially revised works listed separately:
Australia
R. Berndt (ed.), Love Songs of Arnhem Land (anthology)
Anne Elder, posthumous, Crazy Woman
John Forbes, Tropical Skiing (Poets of the Month Series), Sydney: Angus & Robertson.
Les Murray, The Vernacular Republic Selected Poems
John Tranter, The Alphabet Murders (notes from a work in progress), Angus & Robertson
Chris Wallace-Crabbe, The Foundations of Joy (Poets of the Month Series), Sydney: Angus & Robertson.
Canada
Earle Birney:
Alphabeings and Other Seasyours. London, Ont.: Pikadilly Press.
The Rugging and the Moving Times: poems new and uncollected 1976. Coatsworth, ON: Black Moss Press.
Gary Geddes, War & Other Measures
Roland Giguere, Miron translated from French
Archibald Lampman, Lampman's Sonnets: The Complete Sonnets of Archibald Lampman, Margaret Coulby Whitridge ed. (Ottawa: Borealis). ISBN 978-0-919594-50-0
Irving Layton, For My Brother Jesus. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart.
Irving Layton, The Uncollected Poems of Irving Layton: 1936-59. Ed. W. David John. Ottawa, ON: Mosaic Press.
Dennis Lee. The Death of Harold Ladoo. Vancouver: Kanchenjunga Press.
Al Purdy, Sundance at Dusk
James Reaney, Selected Longer Poems.
Joe Rosenblatt, Top Soil, Selected Poems (1962-1975). Press Porcepic.
Charles Sangster, Norland echoes and other strains and lyrics, ed. Frank M. Tierney (Tecumseh)
Raymond Souster, To Hell with Poetry. Burton, Ohio.AnthologiesNew Provinces reprinted—first anthology of modernist poetry in Canada (originally published 1936), including work by F. R. Scott, E. J. Pratt, Robert Finch, A. J. M. Smith, Leo Kennedy, A. M. Klein.
India in English
Arun Kolatkar, Jejuri, Bombay: Clearing House, India.
Nissim Ezekiel:
Hymns in Darkness, Delhi, Oxford University Press
Poster Prayers,
Gieve Patel, How Do You Withstand, Body, Bombay, Clearing House, Indian, Indian poetry in English-language
Keki Daruwalla, Crossing of Rivers, an experimental work published by the author's own publishing house; Bombay: Ezra-Fakir Press
Adil Jussawalla, Missing Person,
Jayanta Mahapatra:
A Father's Hours, Calcutta: United Writers
A Rain of Rites, Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, Nine Enclosures,
Meena Alexander, The Bird's Bright Ring, Calcutta: Writers Workshop, India.
Arundhathi Subramaniam, Nine Enclosures (poetry in English), Mumbai: Clearing House
Gauri Deshpande, An Anthology of Indo English Poetry, Delhi: Hind Pocket Books
Nolini Kanta Gupta, Collected Works, five vols, published from 1971 to this year; Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Book Distribution Agency
Rohini K. Gupta, Karna and Other Poems, Calcutta: Writers Workshop
Om Prakash Bhatnagar, Thought Poems, Aligarh: Skylark Pub.
Deb Kumar Das, Winterbird Walks, Calcutta: Writers Workshop
Jagannath Prasad Das, First Person, Delhi: Arnold Heinemann
Mukand R. Dave, Some Sheets of Paper, Aligarh: Skylark Pub.
R. Parthasarathy (ed.), Ten Twentieth Century Indian Poets, Delhi: Oxford University Press
Ireland
Ciarán Carson: The New Estate, Blackstaff Press, Wake Forest University Press
John Ennis (poet), Night on Hibernia Oldcastle: The New Gallery Press, ISBN 978-0-902996-46-5
Michael Longley, Man Lying on a Wall - Northern Ireland poet published in the United Kingdom
George McWhirter, Queen of the Sea, Northern Ireland poet published in Canada
New Zealand
James K. Baxter, posthumous
The Bone Chanter: Unpublished Poems 1945–72, edited by J. E. Weir
The Holy Life and Death of Concrete Grady: Various Uncollected and Unpublished Poems, edited by J. E. Weir
Alan Brunton, Black & White Anthology, a 33-part sequence with an Asian setting, Hawk Press
Vincent O'Sullivan, James K. Baxter, biography, New Zealand
United Kingdom
Kenneth Allott, Collected Poems
W. H. Auden, Collected Poems of W. H. Auden, edited by Edward Mendelson
Pam Ayres, Some of Me Poetry and Some More of Me Poetry
Frances Bellerby, The First Known (posthumous)
Zoë Brooks, Owl Shadows and Whispering Stone "parallel booklets"
George Mackay Brown, Winterfold
Ciarán Carson: The New Estate, Blackstaff Press, Wake Forest University Press
Elizabeth Daryush, Collected Poems
David Day, Brass Rubbings
Patric Dickinson, The Bearing Beast
Gavin Ewart, No Fool Like an Old Fool
Ruth Fainlight, Another Full Moon
Tony Flynn, Separations
Alistair Fowler, Catagomb Suburb
Thom Gunn, Jack Straw's Castle, and Other Poems
Adrian Henri, One Year, Todmorden, Lancashire: Arc Publications, ISBN 978-0-902771-47-5
Ted Hughes, Season Songs
Clive James, Peregrine Prykke's Pilgrimage Through the London Literary World and Britannia Bright's Bewilderment in the Wilderness of Westminster, Australian poet resident in the United Kingdom
Glyn Jones, Selected Poems
Peter Levi, Collected Poems
Michael Longley, Man Lying on a Wall Northern Ireland poet published in the United Kingdom
Hugh MacDiarmid, Collected Poems
Hugh Maxton, The Noise of the Fields
Humphrey John Moore, Collected Poems
Eleanor Murray, Black and Sepia
Luke Parsons, Last Poems
Brian Patten, Vanishing Trick
Rodney Pybus, Bridging Loans
Peter Reading, The Prison Cell and Barrel Mystery
Jon Silkin, The Little Time-Keeper
Derek Walcott, Sea Grapes
David Wright, A View of the North
Edmund Leo Wright, The Horwich Hennets (the poet invented the "hennet", a 12-line hendecasyllabic verse with the rhymes "abacbcde deff")
Paul Yates, Sky Made of Stone
Anthologies in the United Kingdom
Elaine Feinstein, editor and translator, Three Russian Poets: Margarite Aliger, Yunna Morits, Bella Akhmadulina, Manchester, Carcanet Press
F. E. S. Finn, Here and Human
Antonia Fraser, Scottish Love Poems
Dannie Abse, Poetry Dimension Annual 4
Howard Sergeant, New Poems 1976/1977, P.E.N. anthology
United States
Diane Ackerman, The Planets
Paul Auster, translator, The Uninhabited, poetry translated from the original French of André du Bouchet
Ted Berrigan, Red Wagon
Elizabeth Bishop, One Act
Peter Blue Cloud, Turtle, Bear, and Wolf
Raymond Carver, At Night The Salmon Move
Maxine Chernoff, Vegetable Emergency, prose poems (Beyond Baroque Foundation)
Robert Creeley, Selected Poems
James Dickey, The Zodiac
Ed Dorn, translator, Selected Poems of Cesar Vallejo, Penguin
Charles Doyle, James K. Baxter, Boston: Twayne (Twayne's World Authors Series); study of the New Zealand poet
Irving Feldman, Leaping Clear
Marya Fiamengo, In Praise of Older Women
Stratis Haviaras, Crossing the River Twice (Greek poet writing in English)
John Hollander, Reflections on Espionage
Robert Lowell, Selected Poems
James Merrill: Divine Comedies, including "Lost in Translation" and "The Book of Ephraim", a long narrative poem
N. Scott Momaday, The Gourd Dancer
Lorine Niedecker, Blue Chicory (published posthumously)
Simon Ortiz, Going for the Rain
Kenneth Rexroth, 100 More Poems from the Japanese
Charles Reznikoff, Poems 1918-1936
Muriel Rukeyser, The Gates
Anne Sexton, 45 Mercy Street (posthumous)
James Tate, Viper Jazz
Criticism, scholarship and biography in the United States
Harold Bloom, Poetry and Repression, the final volume of a tetralogy that began with The Anxiety of Influence in 1973
Cleanth Brooks and Robert Penn Warren, Understanding Poetry (college textbook), originally published in 1938, goes into its fourth edition (after revised editions in 1950 and 1960); this would be the final edition before the deaths of the authors
Other in English
Shana Yardan, The Listening of Eyes (Guyana)
Works published in other languages
Listed by language and often by nation where the work was first published and again by the poet's native land, if different; substantially revised works listed separately:
Denmark
Jørgen Gustava Brandt:
Jothárram
Mit hjerte i København
Regnansigt
Klaus Høeck, Pentagram, publisher: Gyldendal
Jørgen Nash, Her er jeg
Henrik Nordbrandt, Glas ("Glass") Copenhagen: Gylendal, 53 pp.
Klaus Rifbjerg, Stranden
Jørgen Sonne, Huset ("The House")
Finland
Paavo Haavikko, Viiniä, kirjoitusta
Hannu Mäkelä, Synkkyys pohjaton, ninn myös iloni, onneni
Jarkko Laine, Viidenpennin Hamlet
Matti Rossi, Laulu tummana tulevi
Matti Kuusi, Kansanruno Kalevala, a reconstruction of the folk poems that formed the basis of the Finnish national epic, Kaalevala, compiled in 1849 by Elias Lönnrot.
French language
France
Anne-Marie Albiach, Objet
Roland Bacri, Roland Bacri (the name of the author and book are the same)
Hervé Bazin, Traits
Jean Berthet, L'éternel instant
Philippe Chabaneix, Dix nouvelles romances
René Char, Aromates chasseurs ("Hunter's Aromatic Herbs")
Jean Daive, Le jeu des séries scéniques
Christian Dedeyan, Chant du Houlme
Roger Giroux, Théatre, published posthumously (died 1973)
Robert Houdelot, Les Treize
Edmond Jabès, Le Livre des Ressemblances
Jacques Marlet, Toi qui pâlis au nom de Vancouver
Robert Marteau, Atlante
Jacques Prévert, Grand Bal du printemps
Raymond Queneau, Morale élémentaire
J. P. Seguin, LAnnée poétique 1975
Criticism, scholarship and biography
John Edwin Jackson, a study of Yves Bonnefoy
Canada
Georges Cartier, Chanteaux
Paul Chanel Malenfant, Poèmes de la mères pays
Marie Uguay, Signe et rumeur
A Quebec collective of women, La Nef des sorcières
German language
West Germany
Horst Bienek, Gleiwitzer Kindheit
H. M. Enzensberger, Mausoleum: 37 Ballads From the History of Progress
Michael Kruger, Reginapoly
Ernst Meister, Im Zeitspalt
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Prussian Nights, translated into German from the original Russian by Nikolaus Ehlert; first written in 1951; first published in 1974
Jurgen Theobaldy and Gustav Zürcher, Veränderung der Lyrik: Über westdeutsche Gedichte seit 1965
East Germany
Erich Arendt, Memento und Bild
India
Listed in alphabetical order by first name:
Amritdhari Singha, Avatar rahasya, India, Maithili-language
Heeraben Pathak, Paraloke Patra, a poem addressing her deceased husband, poet Ramnarayan Pathak; Indian poet writing in Gujarati-language
Joy Goswami Christmas o Sheeter Sonnetguchcho ("Sonnets of Christmas and Winter"), the author's first book of poetry; Bangladeshi-language
K. Siva Reddy, Aasupatrigeetam, Hyderabad: Jhari Poetry Circle, Telugu-language
Namdeo Dhasal, Priyadarshini; Marathi-language
Nirendranath Chakravarti, Kobitar Bodoley Kobita, Kolkata: Bishhobani Prokashoni; Bengali-language
Rajendra Kishore Panda, Anavatar O Anya Anya, Cuttack: Grantha Mandir, Oraya-language
Italy
Dario Bellezza, Morta segreta
Alberto Bevilacqua, La crudeltà
Amelia Rosselli, Documento 1966-73
Angelo M. Ripellino, La splendido violino verde
Maria Luisa Spaziani, Ultrasuoni
Norway
Göran Sonnevi, Det omöjliga
Sten Hagliden, Kvällsordat
Barbro Lindgren, Rapporter från marken
Poland
M. Jastrum (ed.), Poezja Mtodej Polski, anthology
A. Lam (ed.), Kolumbowie i wspótcześni, second edition, anthology
Z. Liberia (ed.), Poezja polska XVIII wieku ("Polish Poetry of the Eighteenth Century"), second edition, anthology
Wisława Szymborska: Wielka liczba ("A Large Number")
Portuguese language
Portugal
Ruy de Moura Belo, Toda a terra ("All of the Land")
Carlos de Oliveira, Trabalho Poético
Egito Gonçalves, Luz Vegital
Eugénio de Andrade, Limar dos Pássaros
António Ramos Rosa, Ciclo do Cavalo
Pedro Tamen, Agora, Estar
Brazil
Marcus Accioly, Sisifo, a long poem containing multiple forms of poetry, including the classical sonnet, concrete and popular Brazilian forms
Yolanda Jordão, Biografia do Edificio e Anexos
Adélia Prado, Bagagem
Spanish language
Spain
Matilde Camus, Siempre amor ("Forever Love")
Antonio Colinas, Sepulcro en Taruinia
Justo Jorge Padrón, Los círculos del infierno
Claudio Rodriguez, El vuelo de la celebración
Latin America
Guadalupe Amor, El zoológico de Pita Amor
Jomi García Ascot, Un modo de decir
Arturo Corcuera, Las sirenas y las estaciones (Peru)
José Emilio Pacheco, Islas à la deriva (Mexico)
A workshop in "synthetic poetry" came out with Doce modos
Other languages
Gerrit Kouwenaar, Verzamelde Gedichten (Netherlands)
Alexander Mezhirov, Под старым небом ("Under the Old Sky"), Russia, Soviet Union
Awards and honors
Canada
See 1976 Governor General's Awards for a complete list of winners and finalists for those awards.
United Kingdom
Cholmondeley Award: Peter Porter, Fleur Adcock
Eric Gregory Award: Stewart Brown, Valerie Gillies, Paul Groves, Paul Hyland, Nigel Jenkins, Andrew Motion, Tom Paulin, William Peskett
United States
Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (later the post would be called "Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress"): Robert Hayden appointed this year.
Frost Medal: A.M. Sullivan
National Book Award for Poetry: John Ashbery, Self-portrait in a Convex Mirror
Pulitzer Prize for Poetry: John Ashbery: Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror
Walt Whitman Award: Laura Gilpin, The Hocus-Pocus of the Universe
Fellowship of the Academy of American Poets: J. V. Cunningham
Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize: Denise Levertov, The Freeing of the Dust (Judge: Hayden Carruth)
Births
September 2 – Tim Key, English comic performer and performance poet
Jen Hadfield, British poet and visual artist
Meghan O'Rourke, American writer, editor and poet; writer for Slate; a poetry editor for The Paris Review
Yolanda Wisher, African American poet and spoken word artist
Deaths
Birth years link to the corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:
January 22 – Charles Reznikoff, 81 (born 1894), American Objectivist poet
March 7 – Tove Ditlevsen, 58 (born 1917), Danish poet and fiction writer, suicide by overdose
March 10 – L. E. Sissman, 48 (born 1928), American poet, advertising executive and Quiz Kid, of Hodgkin's disease
March 12 – Lloyd Frankenberg, 67 (born 1907), American poet, anthologist and critic, husband of painter Loren Maclver
April 9 – Saneatsu Mushanokōji 武者小路 実篤 實篤, sometimes known as "Mushakōji Saneatsu"; other pen-names included "Musha" and "Futo-o", 90 (born 1885), Japanese, late Taishō period and Shōwa period novelist, playwright, poet, artist and philosopher
April 28 – Richard Hughes, 76 (born 1900), English poet, fiction writer and screenwriter
May 11 – Ogiwara Seisensui 荻原井泉水, pen name of Ogiwara Tōkichi, 91 (born 1884), Japanese haiku poet in the Taishō and Shōwa periods
July 11 – León de Greiff, 88 (born 1895), Colombian poet
August 19 – Jan Nisar Akhtar, 62 (born 1914), Indian poet of Urdu ghazals and nazms, a lyricist for Bollywood and father of psychiatrist and poet Salman Akhtar
August 29 – Kazi Nazrul Islam (also spelled "Kazi Nozrul Islam"), 77 (born 1899), Bengali poet, musician, revolutionary and philosopher best known as the Bidrohi Kobi ("Rebel Poet"), popular among Bengalis and considered the national poet of Bangladesh
September 30 – Paul Dehn, 63 (born 1912), English screenwriter and poet
October 15 – James McAuley, 59 (born 1917), Australian poet, academic, journalist and literary critic
October 18 – Viswanatha Satyanarayana, 81 (born 1895), Indian poet writing in Telugu; popularly known as the Kavi Samraat ("Emperor of Poetry")
October 23 – Anne Elder, 58 (born 1918), Australian ballet dancer and poet, of cardiopulmonary disease
December 8 – Henryk Jasiczek, 57 (born 1919), Polish journalist, poet, writer and dissident
Full date unknown – Henriette Sauret (born 1890), French poet, political writer, journalist
See also
Poetry
List of poetry awards
List of years in poetry
Notes
Britannica Book of the Year 1977 ("for events of 1976"), published by Encyclopædia Britannica 1977 (source of many items in "Works published" section and rarely in other sections) | facet of | {
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Lerryn (Cornish: Leryon, archaically Lerrin) is a village in Cornwall, United Kingdom. It is situated on the River Lerryn (a tributary of the River Fowey) approximately three miles (5 km) southeast of Lostwithiel.Lerryn straddles two parishes: north of the river it is in St Winnow parish and south of the river in St Veep parish. The river is tidal up to the village and there are stepping-stones across the river which are crossable at low water.
Geography
The village has a village school of about 46 pupils, a post office and village shop, "Lerryn River Stores", which also provides fresh tea coffee and cakes seven days a week for walkers doing the many beautiful walks in the area. There is also a pub, The Ship Inn, which dates from at least 1762. Much of the surrounding countryside is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. An Elizabethan bridge crosses the river to the eastern edge of the village or you can cross via the famous stepping stones, a must for all visitors to the village.
The bridge over the Lerryn was mentioned in Leland's Itinerary, in 1535 and in 1573 Queen Elizabeth issued order for a levy to be charged for the restoration on the bridge. The bridge is a scheduled monument and a Grade II* listed building.
History
The Ethy Hoard consisting of 1,095 base silver radiates in a coarseware jar was found near Ethy. It has been dated to the late 3rd century and is held at the Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro. A further 103 Roman coins were found in the river foreshore.The first known reference to the Lerryn is a 1284 Assize Roll. The bridge is mentioned in a 1289 Roll and the mill in 1346.A German silver smelter and adventurer Burchard Kranich ran a silver smelting house between 1556 and 1583. The house cost £300 to build and to fund the house he borrowed money from Mary Tudor, William Godolphin and several others. The mill, used for crushing ore, had a leat of 2000 paces, and the melting house, for refining the silver, was sited at what is now Fen Cottage and Fen Field which used to be known as Fining. At least 2,000 ounces of silver were smelted with ore coming from mines in Tregadoke, Padstow, St Delion, Portysyke, Peran and St Columb. In 1573 Queen Elizabeth ordered that a rate be levied for rebuilding the bridge in to aid the production of silver.Smuggling was a part of village life in Lerryn, indeed one of the village lanes is called 'Brandy Lane' and it is said that a small cave which can still be found by an observant walker in Ethy woods, hides the entrance to a tunnel from the wood to Ethy House cellar; where contraband was hidden from the Excise Men. In reality, the cave is, in fact, a charcoal burners' cave and no tunnel has been discovered however, it makes for a romantic smuggling story. An alternative explanation is that it was an exploratory mine adit. Ethy House is a Georgian house of two storeys and seven bays.Philip Melvill, an officer of the East India Company retired to live at Ethy in 1857. Paul King from Mungo Jerry, a 1970s pop band, lived in Lerryn.The village and surrounding parishes have been known for their apple orchards, and in 1839 there were 131 Orchards in St Veep parish. Haye Farm has been producing cider since the 13th Century and the cider press there is over 150 years old. Penpol farm is also known for its cider.
Notable buildings and earthworks
A large earthwork known as the Giant's Hedge runs from Lerryn to Looe, which is captured in the rhyme One day when the devil had nothing better to do, / He built a hedge from Lerryn to Looe. The hedge is believed to be a defensive dyke built during the Dark Ages.There were four lime kilns in the village which were serviced by large sailing barges that carried their cargo up river from the deep port of Fowey, but the river has become silted over the years and unfortunately, only small craft can now navigate the shallow waters. The lime kilns are still visible, even though one has been converted into a dwelling.
There is no church in the village, the nearest being St Veep. However, there was a Wesleyan Methodist chapel and Sunday school.
The village hall was built in 1926 as a village institute and extended in the 1950s. It had a major rebuild at the turn of the millennium and was reopened in June 2000 by the Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall. It is dedicated to those who gave their lives in the First and Second World Wars and is called the Memorial Hall.
Ethy
For the Ethy Hoard, see above: History
Ethy House is set in a landscaped park sloping down to the River Lerryn. The estate is of medieval origin and was developed in the 16th century by the Courtneys of Devon. The present house is a mid-19th-century remodelling of an 18th-century house which may have been by John Eveleigh of Lostwithiel. The southeast front is plain and of two storeys and seven bays. Ethy House, including the garden walls to north and east, is a Grade II* listed building.
Ethy Wood
During the late 1990s Ethy Wood was found to be an interesting site for lichens, and in 2013 a species new to England was found by lichenologist Neil Sanderson during a survey of the wood. Arthonia ilicinella was found on a small, slow-growing holly by the river, and is known from Ireland and western Scotland. Also found was Bacidia incompta, a species which has declined along with elms affected by Dutch elm disease.
Literary associations
Kenneth Grahame may have based the book The Wind in the Willows or Tales of the Riverbank on Lerryn, or at least the Woods around Lerryn Toad Hall could be Ethy Manor on the hillside above the village, and the Wild Woods might be Ethy Woods and The Great Wood now managed by the National Trust. The woods do have a magical quality and near a small wooden bridge by Ethy Rock there are some willows by the banks of the river, where Grahame may have sat and penned his story. It is possible that Fowey the large port on the River Fowey of which the River Lerryn is a tributary could be 'Troy Town'.
The Regatta and Tivoli Park
The Lerryn Regatta was a popular annual event and at one time it was called The Henley of the West. It was mentioned in the Royal Cornwall Gazette of 1870. There was a break for the first World War and the regatta restarted with a Peace Regatta in 1919. There was a second break for the second World War and the regatta restarted in 1953 and ran until 1968 when four thousand people
attended.Frank Parkyn, one of the members of the regatta committee and a successful miner, bought some woodland on the south of the river from the Rashleigh Estate in 1911. In about 1920 most of the trees were cut and started construction of a pleasure ground named Tivoli Park after the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen which Parkyn had visited. The park featured fountains, a pond, a cascade, obelisks plunge pool and bandstand. The park played a central role in subsequent regattas housing a fun fair, field sports and a pavilion. The park has now become overgrown but remains of the plunge pool can still be seen.
Village Traditions
The village has a number of unique local traditional and has lost others.
Maypole raids: for many years there was a competition between neighbouring villages to capture and remove each others maypoles. An article from 1949 documents the successful capture of Lanreath's maypole. The tradition continued until 2006, after which erection of the Maypole were banned from St Winnow Parish Council land.
Seagull race: an annual fancy-dress river race, in which competitors can race any type of watercraft as long as it is propelled by a British Seagull two-stroke outboard engine. The race, organized by the River Lerryn Yacht Squadron, has been run since 1987, A second race for normal crafts, to Lostwithiel and back, is held in the summer.
Ecology
During the late 1990s Ethy Wood was found to be an interesting site for lichens, and in 2013 a species new to England was found by lichenologist Neil Sanderson during a survey of the wood. Arthonia ilicinella was found on a small, slow-growing holly by the river, and is known from Ireland and western Scotland. Also found was Bacidia incompta, a species which has declined along with elms affected by Dutch elm disease.
Notable people
Burchard Kranich (c. 1515–1578) a mining engineer and physician converted the flour mill to a smelting house for silver-bearing ore.
Philip Melvill (1795 – 1882) a British Bengal Army officer who went on to be Military Secretary to the East India Company, retired to Ethy house in Lerryn.
Victor Doney (1881 – 1961) an Australian politician, in the Country Party, was born in Lerryn.
Brice Mutton (1890 – 1949) an Australian politician, in the Liberal Party, was born in Lerryn.
References
External links
Lerryn community website | country | {
"answer_start": [
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} |
Lerryn (Cornish: Leryon, archaically Lerrin) is a village in Cornwall, United Kingdom. It is situated on the River Lerryn (a tributary of the River Fowey) approximately three miles (5 km) southeast of Lostwithiel.Lerryn straddles two parishes: north of the river it is in St Winnow parish and south of the river in St Veep parish. The river is tidal up to the village and there are stepping-stones across the river which are crossable at low water.
Geography
The village has a village school of about 46 pupils, a post office and village shop, "Lerryn River Stores", which also provides fresh tea coffee and cakes seven days a week for walkers doing the many beautiful walks in the area. There is also a pub, The Ship Inn, which dates from at least 1762. Much of the surrounding countryside is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. An Elizabethan bridge crosses the river to the eastern edge of the village or you can cross via the famous stepping stones, a must for all visitors to the village.
The bridge over the Lerryn was mentioned in Leland's Itinerary, in 1535 and in 1573 Queen Elizabeth issued order for a levy to be charged for the restoration on the bridge. The bridge is a scheduled monument and a Grade II* listed building.
History
The Ethy Hoard consisting of 1,095 base silver radiates in a coarseware jar was found near Ethy. It has been dated to the late 3rd century and is held at the Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro. A further 103 Roman coins were found in the river foreshore.The first known reference to the Lerryn is a 1284 Assize Roll. The bridge is mentioned in a 1289 Roll and the mill in 1346.A German silver smelter and adventurer Burchard Kranich ran a silver smelting house between 1556 and 1583. The house cost £300 to build and to fund the house he borrowed money from Mary Tudor, William Godolphin and several others. The mill, used for crushing ore, had a leat of 2000 paces, and the melting house, for refining the silver, was sited at what is now Fen Cottage and Fen Field which used to be known as Fining. At least 2,000 ounces of silver were smelted with ore coming from mines in Tregadoke, Padstow, St Delion, Portysyke, Peran and St Columb. In 1573 Queen Elizabeth ordered that a rate be levied for rebuilding the bridge in to aid the production of silver.Smuggling was a part of village life in Lerryn, indeed one of the village lanes is called 'Brandy Lane' and it is said that a small cave which can still be found by an observant walker in Ethy woods, hides the entrance to a tunnel from the wood to Ethy House cellar; where contraband was hidden from the Excise Men. In reality, the cave is, in fact, a charcoal burners' cave and no tunnel has been discovered however, it makes for a romantic smuggling story. An alternative explanation is that it was an exploratory mine adit. Ethy House is a Georgian house of two storeys and seven bays.Philip Melvill, an officer of the East India Company retired to live at Ethy in 1857. Paul King from Mungo Jerry, a 1970s pop band, lived in Lerryn.The village and surrounding parishes have been known for their apple orchards, and in 1839 there were 131 Orchards in St Veep parish. Haye Farm has been producing cider since the 13th Century and the cider press there is over 150 years old. Penpol farm is also known for its cider.
Notable buildings and earthworks
A large earthwork known as the Giant's Hedge runs from Lerryn to Looe, which is captured in the rhyme One day when the devil had nothing better to do, / He built a hedge from Lerryn to Looe. The hedge is believed to be a defensive dyke built during the Dark Ages.There were four lime kilns in the village which were serviced by large sailing barges that carried their cargo up river from the deep port of Fowey, but the river has become silted over the years and unfortunately, only small craft can now navigate the shallow waters. The lime kilns are still visible, even though one has been converted into a dwelling.
There is no church in the village, the nearest being St Veep. However, there was a Wesleyan Methodist chapel and Sunday school.
The village hall was built in 1926 as a village institute and extended in the 1950s. It had a major rebuild at the turn of the millennium and was reopened in June 2000 by the Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall. It is dedicated to those who gave their lives in the First and Second World Wars and is called the Memorial Hall.
Ethy
For the Ethy Hoard, see above: History
Ethy House is set in a landscaped park sloping down to the River Lerryn. The estate is of medieval origin and was developed in the 16th century by the Courtneys of Devon. The present house is a mid-19th-century remodelling of an 18th-century house which may have been by John Eveleigh of Lostwithiel. The southeast front is plain and of two storeys and seven bays. Ethy House, including the garden walls to north and east, is a Grade II* listed building.
Ethy Wood
During the late 1990s Ethy Wood was found to be an interesting site for lichens, and in 2013 a species new to England was found by lichenologist Neil Sanderson during a survey of the wood. Arthonia ilicinella was found on a small, slow-growing holly by the river, and is known from Ireland and western Scotland. Also found was Bacidia incompta, a species which has declined along with elms affected by Dutch elm disease.
Literary associations
Kenneth Grahame may have based the book The Wind in the Willows or Tales of the Riverbank on Lerryn, or at least the Woods around Lerryn Toad Hall could be Ethy Manor on the hillside above the village, and the Wild Woods might be Ethy Woods and The Great Wood now managed by the National Trust. The woods do have a magical quality and near a small wooden bridge by Ethy Rock there are some willows by the banks of the river, where Grahame may have sat and penned his story. It is possible that Fowey the large port on the River Fowey of which the River Lerryn is a tributary could be 'Troy Town'.
The Regatta and Tivoli Park
The Lerryn Regatta was a popular annual event and at one time it was called The Henley of the West. It was mentioned in the Royal Cornwall Gazette of 1870. There was a break for the first World War and the regatta restarted with a Peace Regatta in 1919. There was a second break for the second World War and the regatta restarted in 1953 and ran until 1968 when four thousand people
attended.Frank Parkyn, one of the members of the regatta committee and a successful miner, bought some woodland on the south of the river from the Rashleigh Estate in 1911. In about 1920 most of the trees were cut and started construction of a pleasure ground named Tivoli Park after the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen which Parkyn had visited. The park featured fountains, a pond, a cascade, obelisks plunge pool and bandstand. The park played a central role in subsequent regattas housing a fun fair, field sports and a pavilion. The park has now become overgrown but remains of the plunge pool can still be seen.
Village Traditions
The village has a number of unique local traditional and has lost others.
Maypole raids: for many years there was a competition between neighbouring villages to capture and remove each others maypoles. An article from 1949 documents the successful capture of Lanreath's maypole. The tradition continued until 2006, after which erection of the Maypole were banned from St Winnow Parish Council land.
Seagull race: an annual fancy-dress river race, in which competitors can race any type of watercraft as long as it is propelled by a British Seagull two-stroke outboard engine. The race, organized by the River Lerryn Yacht Squadron, has been run since 1987, A second race for normal crafts, to Lostwithiel and back, is held in the summer.
Ecology
During the late 1990s Ethy Wood was found to be an interesting site for lichens, and in 2013 a species new to England was found by lichenologist Neil Sanderson during a survey of the wood. Arthonia ilicinella was found on a small, slow-growing holly by the river, and is known from Ireland and western Scotland. Also found was Bacidia incompta, a species which has declined along with elms affected by Dutch elm disease.
Notable people
Burchard Kranich (c. 1515–1578) a mining engineer and physician converted the flour mill to a smelting house for silver-bearing ore.
Philip Melvill (1795 – 1882) a British Bengal Army officer who went on to be Military Secretary to the East India Company, retired to Ethy house in Lerryn.
Victor Doney (1881 – 1961) an Australian politician, in the Country Party, was born in Lerryn.
Brice Mutton (1890 – 1949) an Australian politician, in the Liberal Party, was born in Lerryn.
References
External links
Lerryn community website | instance of | {
"answer_start": [
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"text": [
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} |
Lerryn (Cornish: Leryon, archaically Lerrin) is a village in Cornwall, United Kingdom. It is situated on the River Lerryn (a tributary of the River Fowey) approximately three miles (5 km) southeast of Lostwithiel.Lerryn straddles two parishes: north of the river it is in St Winnow parish and south of the river in St Veep parish. The river is tidal up to the village and there are stepping-stones across the river which are crossable at low water.
Geography
The village has a village school of about 46 pupils, a post office and village shop, "Lerryn River Stores", which also provides fresh tea coffee and cakes seven days a week for walkers doing the many beautiful walks in the area. There is also a pub, The Ship Inn, which dates from at least 1762. Much of the surrounding countryside is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. An Elizabethan bridge crosses the river to the eastern edge of the village or you can cross via the famous stepping stones, a must for all visitors to the village.
The bridge over the Lerryn was mentioned in Leland's Itinerary, in 1535 and in 1573 Queen Elizabeth issued order for a levy to be charged for the restoration on the bridge. The bridge is a scheduled monument and a Grade II* listed building.
History
The Ethy Hoard consisting of 1,095 base silver radiates in a coarseware jar was found near Ethy. It has been dated to the late 3rd century and is held at the Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro. A further 103 Roman coins were found in the river foreshore.The first known reference to the Lerryn is a 1284 Assize Roll. The bridge is mentioned in a 1289 Roll and the mill in 1346.A German silver smelter and adventurer Burchard Kranich ran a silver smelting house between 1556 and 1583. The house cost £300 to build and to fund the house he borrowed money from Mary Tudor, William Godolphin and several others. The mill, used for crushing ore, had a leat of 2000 paces, and the melting house, for refining the silver, was sited at what is now Fen Cottage and Fen Field which used to be known as Fining. At least 2,000 ounces of silver were smelted with ore coming from mines in Tregadoke, Padstow, St Delion, Portysyke, Peran and St Columb. In 1573 Queen Elizabeth ordered that a rate be levied for rebuilding the bridge in to aid the production of silver.Smuggling was a part of village life in Lerryn, indeed one of the village lanes is called 'Brandy Lane' and it is said that a small cave which can still be found by an observant walker in Ethy woods, hides the entrance to a tunnel from the wood to Ethy House cellar; where contraband was hidden from the Excise Men. In reality, the cave is, in fact, a charcoal burners' cave and no tunnel has been discovered however, it makes for a romantic smuggling story. An alternative explanation is that it was an exploratory mine adit. Ethy House is a Georgian house of two storeys and seven bays.Philip Melvill, an officer of the East India Company retired to live at Ethy in 1857. Paul King from Mungo Jerry, a 1970s pop band, lived in Lerryn.The village and surrounding parishes have been known for their apple orchards, and in 1839 there were 131 Orchards in St Veep parish. Haye Farm has been producing cider since the 13th Century and the cider press there is over 150 years old. Penpol farm is also known for its cider.
Notable buildings and earthworks
A large earthwork known as the Giant's Hedge runs from Lerryn to Looe, which is captured in the rhyme One day when the devil had nothing better to do, / He built a hedge from Lerryn to Looe. The hedge is believed to be a defensive dyke built during the Dark Ages.There were four lime kilns in the village which were serviced by large sailing barges that carried their cargo up river from the deep port of Fowey, but the river has become silted over the years and unfortunately, only small craft can now navigate the shallow waters. The lime kilns are still visible, even though one has been converted into a dwelling.
There is no church in the village, the nearest being St Veep. However, there was a Wesleyan Methodist chapel and Sunday school.
The village hall was built in 1926 as a village institute and extended in the 1950s. It had a major rebuild at the turn of the millennium and was reopened in June 2000 by the Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall. It is dedicated to those who gave their lives in the First and Second World Wars and is called the Memorial Hall.
Ethy
For the Ethy Hoard, see above: History
Ethy House is set in a landscaped park sloping down to the River Lerryn. The estate is of medieval origin and was developed in the 16th century by the Courtneys of Devon. The present house is a mid-19th-century remodelling of an 18th-century house which may have been by John Eveleigh of Lostwithiel. The southeast front is plain and of two storeys and seven bays. Ethy House, including the garden walls to north and east, is a Grade II* listed building.
Ethy Wood
During the late 1990s Ethy Wood was found to be an interesting site for lichens, and in 2013 a species new to England was found by lichenologist Neil Sanderson during a survey of the wood. Arthonia ilicinella was found on a small, slow-growing holly by the river, and is known from Ireland and western Scotland. Also found was Bacidia incompta, a species which has declined along with elms affected by Dutch elm disease.
Literary associations
Kenneth Grahame may have based the book The Wind in the Willows or Tales of the Riverbank on Lerryn, or at least the Woods around Lerryn Toad Hall could be Ethy Manor on the hillside above the village, and the Wild Woods might be Ethy Woods and The Great Wood now managed by the National Trust. The woods do have a magical quality and near a small wooden bridge by Ethy Rock there are some willows by the banks of the river, where Grahame may have sat and penned his story. It is possible that Fowey the large port on the River Fowey of which the River Lerryn is a tributary could be 'Troy Town'.
The Regatta and Tivoli Park
The Lerryn Regatta was a popular annual event and at one time it was called The Henley of the West. It was mentioned in the Royal Cornwall Gazette of 1870. There was a break for the first World War and the regatta restarted with a Peace Regatta in 1919. There was a second break for the second World War and the regatta restarted in 1953 and ran until 1968 when four thousand people
attended.Frank Parkyn, one of the members of the regatta committee and a successful miner, bought some woodland on the south of the river from the Rashleigh Estate in 1911. In about 1920 most of the trees were cut and started construction of a pleasure ground named Tivoli Park after the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen which Parkyn had visited. The park featured fountains, a pond, a cascade, obelisks plunge pool and bandstand. The park played a central role in subsequent regattas housing a fun fair, field sports and a pavilion. The park has now become overgrown but remains of the plunge pool can still be seen.
Village Traditions
The village has a number of unique local traditional and has lost others.
Maypole raids: for many years there was a competition between neighbouring villages to capture and remove each others maypoles. An article from 1949 documents the successful capture of Lanreath's maypole. The tradition continued until 2006, after which erection of the Maypole were banned from St Winnow Parish Council land.
Seagull race: an annual fancy-dress river race, in which competitors can race any type of watercraft as long as it is propelled by a British Seagull two-stroke outboard engine. The race, organized by the River Lerryn Yacht Squadron, has been run since 1987, A second race for normal crafts, to Lostwithiel and back, is held in the summer.
Ecology
During the late 1990s Ethy Wood was found to be an interesting site for lichens, and in 2013 a species new to England was found by lichenologist Neil Sanderson during a survey of the wood. Arthonia ilicinella was found on a small, slow-growing holly by the river, and is known from Ireland and western Scotland. Also found was Bacidia incompta, a species which has declined along with elms affected by Dutch elm disease.
Notable people
Burchard Kranich (c. 1515–1578) a mining engineer and physician converted the flour mill to a smelting house for silver-bearing ore.
Philip Melvill (1795 – 1882) a British Bengal Army officer who went on to be Military Secretary to the East India Company, retired to Ethy house in Lerryn.
Victor Doney (1881 – 1961) an Australian politician, in the Country Party, was born in Lerryn.
Brice Mutton (1890 – 1949) an Australian politician, in the Liberal Party, was born in Lerryn.
References
External links
Lerryn community website | located in the administrative territorial entity | {
"answer_start": [
315
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"text": [
"St Veep"
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} |
Lerryn (Cornish: Leryon, archaically Lerrin) is a village in Cornwall, United Kingdom. It is situated on the River Lerryn (a tributary of the River Fowey) approximately three miles (5 km) southeast of Lostwithiel.Lerryn straddles two parishes: north of the river it is in St Winnow parish and south of the river in St Veep parish. The river is tidal up to the village and there are stepping-stones across the river which are crossable at low water.
Geography
The village has a village school of about 46 pupils, a post office and village shop, "Lerryn River Stores", which also provides fresh tea coffee and cakes seven days a week for walkers doing the many beautiful walks in the area. There is also a pub, The Ship Inn, which dates from at least 1762. Much of the surrounding countryside is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. An Elizabethan bridge crosses the river to the eastern edge of the village or you can cross via the famous stepping stones, a must for all visitors to the village.
The bridge over the Lerryn was mentioned in Leland's Itinerary, in 1535 and in 1573 Queen Elizabeth issued order for a levy to be charged for the restoration on the bridge. The bridge is a scheduled monument and a Grade II* listed building.
History
The Ethy Hoard consisting of 1,095 base silver radiates in a coarseware jar was found near Ethy. It has been dated to the late 3rd century and is held at the Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro. A further 103 Roman coins were found in the river foreshore.The first known reference to the Lerryn is a 1284 Assize Roll. The bridge is mentioned in a 1289 Roll and the mill in 1346.A German silver smelter and adventurer Burchard Kranich ran a silver smelting house between 1556 and 1583. The house cost £300 to build and to fund the house he borrowed money from Mary Tudor, William Godolphin and several others. The mill, used for crushing ore, had a leat of 2000 paces, and the melting house, for refining the silver, was sited at what is now Fen Cottage and Fen Field which used to be known as Fining. At least 2,000 ounces of silver were smelted with ore coming from mines in Tregadoke, Padstow, St Delion, Portysyke, Peran and St Columb. In 1573 Queen Elizabeth ordered that a rate be levied for rebuilding the bridge in to aid the production of silver.Smuggling was a part of village life in Lerryn, indeed one of the village lanes is called 'Brandy Lane' and it is said that a small cave which can still be found by an observant walker in Ethy woods, hides the entrance to a tunnel from the wood to Ethy House cellar; where contraband was hidden from the Excise Men. In reality, the cave is, in fact, a charcoal burners' cave and no tunnel has been discovered however, it makes for a romantic smuggling story. An alternative explanation is that it was an exploratory mine adit. Ethy House is a Georgian house of two storeys and seven bays.Philip Melvill, an officer of the East India Company retired to live at Ethy in 1857. Paul King from Mungo Jerry, a 1970s pop band, lived in Lerryn.The village and surrounding parishes have been known for their apple orchards, and in 1839 there were 131 Orchards in St Veep parish. Haye Farm has been producing cider since the 13th Century and the cider press there is over 150 years old. Penpol farm is also known for its cider.
Notable buildings and earthworks
A large earthwork known as the Giant's Hedge runs from Lerryn to Looe, which is captured in the rhyme One day when the devil had nothing better to do, / He built a hedge from Lerryn to Looe. The hedge is believed to be a defensive dyke built during the Dark Ages.There were four lime kilns in the village which were serviced by large sailing barges that carried their cargo up river from the deep port of Fowey, but the river has become silted over the years and unfortunately, only small craft can now navigate the shallow waters. The lime kilns are still visible, even though one has been converted into a dwelling.
There is no church in the village, the nearest being St Veep. However, there was a Wesleyan Methodist chapel and Sunday school.
The village hall was built in 1926 as a village institute and extended in the 1950s. It had a major rebuild at the turn of the millennium and was reopened in June 2000 by the Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall. It is dedicated to those who gave their lives in the First and Second World Wars and is called the Memorial Hall.
Ethy
For the Ethy Hoard, see above: History
Ethy House is set in a landscaped park sloping down to the River Lerryn. The estate is of medieval origin and was developed in the 16th century by the Courtneys of Devon. The present house is a mid-19th-century remodelling of an 18th-century house which may have been by John Eveleigh of Lostwithiel. The southeast front is plain and of two storeys and seven bays. Ethy House, including the garden walls to north and east, is a Grade II* listed building.
Ethy Wood
During the late 1990s Ethy Wood was found to be an interesting site for lichens, and in 2013 a species new to England was found by lichenologist Neil Sanderson during a survey of the wood. Arthonia ilicinella was found on a small, slow-growing holly by the river, and is known from Ireland and western Scotland. Also found was Bacidia incompta, a species which has declined along with elms affected by Dutch elm disease.
Literary associations
Kenneth Grahame may have based the book The Wind in the Willows or Tales of the Riverbank on Lerryn, or at least the Woods around Lerryn Toad Hall could be Ethy Manor on the hillside above the village, and the Wild Woods might be Ethy Woods and The Great Wood now managed by the National Trust. The woods do have a magical quality and near a small wooden bridge by Ethy Rock there are some willows by the banks of the river, where Grahame may have sat and penned his story. It is possible that Fowey the large port on the River Fowey of which the River Lerryn is a tributary could be 'Troy Town'.
The Regatta and Tivoli Park
The Lerryn Regatta was a popular annual event and at one time it was called The Henley of the West. It was mentioned in the Royal Cornwall Gazette of 1870. There was a break for the first World War and the regatta restarted with a Peace Regatta in 1919. There was a second break for the second World War and the regatta restarted in 1953 and ran until 1968 when four thousand people
attended.Frank Parkyn, one of the members of the regatta committee and a successful miner, bought some woodland on the south of the river from the Rashleigh Estate in 1911. In about 1920 most of the trees were cut and started construction of a pleasure ground named Tivoli Park after the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen which Parkyn had visited. The park featured fountains, a pond, a cascade, obelisks plunge pool and bandstand. The park played a central role in subsequent regattas housing a fun fair, field sports and a pavilion. The park has now become overgrown but remains of the plunge pool can still be seen.
Village Traditions
The village has a number of unique local traditional and has lost others.
Maypole raids: for many years there was a competition between neighbouring villages to capture and remove each others maypoles. An article from 1949 documents the successful capture of Lanreath's maypole. The tradition continued until 2006, after which erection of the Maypole were banned from St Winnow Parish Council land.
Seagull race: an annual fancy-dress river race, in which competitors can race any type of watercraft as long as it is propelled by a British Seagull two-stroke outboard engine. The race, organized by the River Lerryn Yacht Squadron, has been run since 1987, A second race for normal crafts, to Lostwithiel and back, is held in the summer.
Ecology
During the late 1990s Ethy Wood was found to be an interesting site for lichens, and in 2013 a species new to England was found by lichenologist Neil Sanderson during a survey of the wood. Arthonia ilicinella was found on a small, slow-growing holly by the river, and is known from Ireland and western Scotland. Also found was Bacidia incompta, a species which has declined along with elms affected by Dutch elm disease.
Notable people
Burchard Kranich (c. 1515–1578) a mining engineer and physician converted the flour mill to a smelting house for silver-bearing ore.
Philip Melvill (1795 – 1882) a British Bengal Army officer who went on to be Military Secretary to the East India Company, retired to Ethy house in Lerryn.
Victor Doney (1881 – 1961) an Australian politician, in the Country Party, was born in Lerryn.
Brice Mutton (1890 – 1949) an Australian politician, in the Liberal Party, was born in Lerryn.
References
External links
Lerryn community website | Commons category | {
"answer_start": [
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Lerryn (Cornish: Leryon, archaically Lerrin) is a village in Cornwall, United Kingdom. It is situated on the River Lerryn (a tributary of the River Fowey) approximately three miles (5 km) southeast of Lostwithiel.Lerryn straddles two parishes: north of the river it is in St Winnow parish and south of the river in St Veep parish. The river is tidal up to the village and there are stepping-stones across the river which are crossable at low water.
Geography
The village has a village school of about 46 pupils, a post office and village shop, "Lerryn River Stores", which also provides fresh tea coffee and cakes seven days a week for walkers doing the many beautiful walks in the area. There is also a pub, The Ship Inn, which dates from at least 1762. Much of the surrounding countryside is an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. An Elizabethan bridge crosses the river to the eastern edge of the village or you can cross via the famous stepping stones, a must for all visitors to the village.
The bridge over the Lerryn was mentioned in Leland's Itinerary, in 1535 and in 1573 Queen Elizabeth issued order for a levy to be charged for the restoration on the bridge. The bridge is a scheduled monument and a Grade II* listed building.
History
The Ethy Hoard consisting of 1,095 base silver radiates in a coarseware jar was found near Ethy. It has been dated to the late 3rd century and is held at the Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro. A further 103 Roman coins were found in the river foreshore.The first known reference to the Lerryn is a 1284 Assize Roll. The bridge is mentioned in a 1289 Roll and the mill in 1346.A German silver smelter and adventurer Burchard Kranich ran a silver smelting house between 1556 and 1583. The house cost £300 to build and to fund the house he borrowed money from Mary Tudor, William Godolphin and several others. The mill, used for crushing ore, had a leat of 2000 paces, and the melting house, for refining the silver, was sited at what is now Fen Cottage and Fen Field which used to be known as Fining. At least 2,000 ounces of silver were smelted with ore coming from mines in Tregadoke, Padstow, St Delion, Portysyke, Peran and St Columb. In 1573 Queen Elizabeth ordered that a rate be levied for rebuilding the bridge in to aid the production of silver.Smuggling was a part of village life in Lerryn, indeed one of the village lanes is called 'Brandy Lane' and it is said that a small cave which can still be found by an observant walker in Ethy woods, hides the entrance to a tunnel from the wood to Ethy House cellar; where contraband was hidden from the Excise Men. In reality, the cave is, in fact, a charcoal burners' cave and no tunnel has been discovered however, it makes for a romantic smuggling story. An alternative explanation is that it was an exploratory mine adit. Ethy House is a Georgian house of two storeys and seven bays.Philip Melvill, an officer of the East India Company retired to live at Ethy in 1857. Paul King from Mungo Jerry, a 1970s pop band, lived in Lerryn.The village and surrounding parishes have been known for their apple orchards, and in 1839 there were 131 Orchards in St Veep parish. Haye Farm has been producing cider since the 13th Century and the cider press there is over 150 years old. Penpol farm is also known for its cider.
Notable buildings and earthworks
A large earthwork known as the Giant's Hedge runs from Lerryn to Looe, which is captured in the rhyme One day when the devil had nothing better to do, / He built a hedge from Lerryn to Looe. The hedge is believed to be a defensive dyke built during the Dark Ages.There were four lime kilns in the village which were serviced by large sailing barges that carried their cargo up river from the deep port of Fowey, but the river has become silted over the years and unfortunately, only small craft can now navigate the shallow waters. The lime kilns are still visible, even though one has been converted into a dwelling.
There is no church in the village, the nearest being St Veep. However, there was a Wesleyan Methodist chapel and Sunday school.
The village hall was built in 1926 as a village institute and extended in the 1950s. It had a major rebuild at the turn of the millennium and was reopened in June 2000 by the Lord Lieutenant of Cornwall. It is dedicated to those who gave their lives in the First and Second World Wars and is called the Memorial Hall.
Ethy
For the Ethy Hoard, see above: History
Ethy House is set in a landscaped park sloping down to the River Lerryn. The estate is of medieval origin and was developed in the 16th century by the Courtneys of Devon. The present house is a mid-19th-century remodelling of an 18th-century house which may have been by John Eveleigh of Lostwithiel. The southeast front is plain and of two storeys and seven bays. Ethy House, including the garden walls to north and east, is a Grade II* listed building.
Ethy Wood
During the late 1990s Ethy Wood was found to be an interesting site for lichens, and in 2013 a species new to England was found by lichenologist Neil Sanderson during a survey of the wood. Arthonia ilicinella was found on a small, slow-growing holly by the river, and is known from Ireland and western Scotland. Also found was Bacidia incompta, a species which has declined along with elms affected by Dutch elm disease.
Literary associations
Kenneth Grahame may have based the book The Wind in the Willows or Tales of the Riverbank on Lerryn, or at least the Woods around Lerryn Toad Hall could be Ethy Manor on the hillside above the village, and the Wild Woods might be Ethy Woods and The Great Wood now managed by the National Trust. The woods do have a magical quality and near a small wooden bridge by Ethy Rock there are some willows by the banks of the river, where Grahame may have sat and penned his story. It is possible that Fowey the large port on the River Fowey of which the River Lerryn is a tributary could be 'Troy Town'.
The Regatta and Tivoli Park
The Lerryn Regatta was a popular annual event and at one time it was called The Henley of the West. It was mentioned in the Royal Cornwall Gazette of 1870. There was a break for the first World War and the regatta restarted with a Peace Regatta in 1919. There was a second break for the second World War and the regatta restarted in 1953 and ran until 1968 when four thousand people
attended.Frank Parkyn, one of the members of the regatta committee and a successful miner, bought some woodland on the south of the river from the Rashleigh Estate in 1911. In about 1920 most of the trees were cut and started construction of a pleasure ground named Tivoli Park after the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen which Parkyn had visited. The park featured fountains, a pond, a cascade, obelisks plunge pool and bandstand. The park played a central role in subsequent regattas housing a fun fair, field sports and a pavilion. The park has now become overgrown but remains of the plunge pool can still be seen.
Village Traditions
The village has a number of unique local traditional and has lost others.
Maypole raids: for many years there was a competition between neighbouring villages to capture and remove each others maypoles. An article from 1949 documents the successful capture of Lanreath's maypole. The tradition continued until 2006, after which erection of the Maypole were banned from St Winnow Parish Council land.
Seagull race: an annual fancy-dress river race, in which competitors can race any type of watercraft as long as it is propelled by a British Seagull two-stroke outboard engine. The race, organized by the River Lerryn Yacht Squadron, has been run since 1987, A second race for normal crafts, to Lostwithiel and back, is held in the summer.
Ecology
During the late 1990s Ethy Wood was found to be an interesting site for lichens, and in 2013 a species new to England was found by lichenologist Neil Sanderson during a survey of the wood. Arthonia ilicinella was found on a small, slow-growing holly by the river, and is known from Ireland and western Scotland. Also found was Bacidia incompta, a species which has declined along with elms affected by Dutch elm disease.
Notable people
Burchard Kranich (c. 1515–1578) a mining engineer and physician converted the flour mill to a smelting house for silver-bearing ore.
Philip Melvill (1795 – 1882) a British Bengal Army officer who went on to be Military Secretary to the East India Company, retired to Ethy house in Lerryn.
Victor Doney (1881 – 1961) an Australian politician, in the Country Party, was born in Lerryn.
Brice Mutton (1890 – 1949) an Australian politician, in the Liberal Party, was born in Lerryn.
References
External links
Lerryn community website | historic county | {
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Chapman Bay is a small inlet of Henderson Inlet, which drains into Puget Sound in Washington. It is located in Thurston County and the nearest city is Olympia, the state capital.
== References == | located in the administrative territorial entity | {
"answer_start": [
82
],
"text": [
"Washington"
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} |
Chapman Bay is a small inlet of Henderson Inlet, which drains into Puget Sound in Washington. It is located in Thurston County and the nearest city is Olympia, the state capital.
== References == | part of | {
"answer_start": [
32
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Ikayukta Tunnillie (also known as Tunnillie Tunnillie, Ikajukta Tunnillie, Ekayutaq Tunnillie, 1911–1980) was an Inuit artist in the fields of printmaking and drawing. Tunnillie was born in Nunavut and traveled for much of her life. Tunnillie's work in drawing and printmaking focused on animals and life in the North. She was one of the oldest printmakers to work with the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative.
Early life
Tunnillie's exact birth date is unknown, which is typical of that time in Nunavut. She was born somewhere near Frobisher Bay, Nunavut in 1911.
Family life and traveling
As a teen, Tunnillie was taken in by an older man named Iyola Tunili. Tunili already had a wife named Samalinga, but also wished to marry Ikayukta. The family lived in harmony together. The family included Tunili, his first wife Samalinga, their child, and Ikayukta. They spent many years on the move, traveling from Resolute Bay, to Clyde River, Pangnirtung, Netiling Lake and finally to Cape Dorset. They lived in skin tents which they made and traveled by dogsled. As a young woman, Tunnillie traveled on the Nascopie ship from the south Baffin area to the Arctic Bay and the north Baffin coast. Tunnillie's first child was born aboard the Nascopie. After Iyola died from a respiratory infection, Tunnillie continued to travel with her second husband, Nungusweetuk. Tunnillie only settled in Cape Dorset in 1970, at the age of 59.
Career
Tunnillie began printmaking with the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative, which was a craft center and co-op store that formed in 1959. The co-op was instrumental in bringing stonecut image art to the area. The practice was brought to the co-op by James Houston, who spent four months in Japan studying the art form. The Hudson's Bay company and the Canadian Guild of Crafts provided supplies for the co-op. Tunnillie's daughter Kakulu, who became a successful artist herself, began drawing before Ikayukta. Kakulu encouraged her mother to start drawing while Tunnillie was living in Aqiatalaulavik with her son. Her work was first exhibited in the 1971 Cape Dorset Annual Collection, and she was one of only 14 artists featured in the collection. Tunnillie also found financial empowerment through her artwork. In an interview with the Cape Dorset Collection, she recalled carrying her art to the co-op to sell it. Tunnillie remarked, "I get pleasure out of drawing when I feel like it. And also when there is not enough money to buy food I know that I can help [my family] by selling some drawings. When I notice that there is something missing or that my family doesn't have enough food for the weekend or the week, that's when I draw – and also, when I feel like drawing, that's when I draw". Selling drawings to the co-op was Tunnillie's only source of income. Tunnillie was very humble about her work, stating in the Dorset Annual Collection of 1980, "Even though I can't really draw well, it's fortunate that they put my prints in a book like this – even through I can't draw like the others do.Tunnillie's work was featured in exhibits at:
Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and the National Museum of Man, Ottawa, Ontario
Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Inuit Gallery of Vancouver, Vancouver, British Columbia
Rideau Hall presented by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Ottawa, Ontario
Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and Canadian Arctic Producers, Ottawa, Ontario
Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
Scarsdale, New York, U.S.A.
Hartsdale, New York, U.S.A.
Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, U.S.A.
McMichael Canadian Collection, Kleinberg, Ontario
Muscarelle Museum of Art College of William and Mary Williamsburg, Virginia, U.S.A.Solo Collections:
Ikayukta Retrospect: Stonecuts, lithographs and drawings from 1972 to 1980, Inuit Gallery of Vancouver, Vancouver, British ColumbiaFeatured artist:
1978 Cape Dorset Annual Collection
Later life
Tunnillie became a mother to two children, Qavaroak in 1928 and Kakulu in 1940. She also became a grandmother and was widowed sometime before 1975. In 1980, the Cape Dorset Collection reported that she was house ridden because of painful joints. At that time she was living with her grandson and his family. Her last contribution to an exhibit was as part of the 21st annual Cape Dorset collection in 1980. She died that year in Cape Dorset as one of the oldest printmakers in the community.
== References == | country of citizenship | {
"answer_start": [
3328
],
"text": [
"Canada"
]
} |
Ikayukta Tunnillie (also known as Tunnillie Tunnillie, Ikajukta Tunnillie, Ekayutaq Tunnillie, 1911–1980) was an Inuit artist in the fields of printmaking and drawing. Tunnillie was born in Nunavut and traveled for much of her life. Tunnillie's work in drawing and printmaking focused on animals and life in the North. She was one of the oldest printmakers to work with the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative.
Early life
Tunnillie's exact birth date is unknown, which is typical of that time in Nunavut. She was born somewhere near Frobisher Bay, Nunavut in 1911.
Family life and traveling
As a teen, Tunnillie was taken in by an older man named Iyola Tunili. Tunili already had a wife named Samalinga, but also wished to marry Ikayukta. The family lived in harmony together. The family included Tunili, his first wife Samalinga, their child, and Ikayukta. They spent many years on the move, traveling from Resolute Bay, to Clyde River, Pangnirtung, Netiling Lake and finally to Cape Dorset. They lived in skin tents which they made and traveled by dogsled. As a young woman, Tunnillie traveled on the Nascopie ship from the south Baffin area to the Arctic Bay and the north Baffin coast. Tunnillie's first child was born aboard the Nascopie. After Iyola died from a respiratory infection, Tunnillie continued to travel with her second husband, Nungusweetuk. Tunnillie only settled in Cape Dorset in 1970, at the age of 59.
Career
Tunnillie began printmaking with the West Baffin Eskimo Co-operative, which was a craft center and co-op store that formed in 1959. The co-op was instrumental in bringing stonecut image art to the area. The practice was brought to the co-op by James Houston, who spent four months in Japan studying the art form. The Hudson's Bay company and the Canadian Guild of Crafts provided supplies for the co-op. Tunnillie's daughter Kakulu, who became a successful artist herself, began drawing before Ikayukta. Kakulu encouraged her mother to start drawing while Tunnillie was living in Aqiatalaulavik with her son. Her work was first exhibited in the 1971 Cape Dorset Annual Collection, and she was one of only 14 artists featured in the collection. Tunnillie also found financial empowerment through her artwork. In an interview with the Cape Dorset Collection, she recalled carrying her art to the co-op to sell it. Tunnillie remarked, "I get pleasure out of drawing when I feel like it. And also when there is not enough money to buy food I know that I can help [my family] by selling some drawings. When I notice that there is something missing or that my family doesn't have enough food for the weekend or the week, that's when I draw – and also, when I feel like drawing, that's when I draw". Selling drawings to the co-op was Tunnillie's only source of income. Tunnillie was very humble about her work, stating in the Dorset Annual Collection of 1980, "Even though I can't really draw well, it's fortunate that they put my prints in a book like this – even through I can't draw like the others do.Tunnillie's work was featured in exhibits at:
Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and the National Museum of Man, Ottawa, Ontario
Winnipeg Art Gallery, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Inuit Gallery of Vancouver, Vancouver, British Columbia
Rideau Hall presented by Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Ottawa, Ontario
Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and Canadian Arctic Producers, Ottawa, Ontario
Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
Scarsdale, New York, U.S.A.
Hartsdale, New York, U.S.A.
Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, U.S.A.
McMichael Canadian Collection, Kleinberg, Ontario
Muscarelle Museum of Art College of William and Mary Williamsburg, Virginia, U.S.A.Solo Collections:
Ikayukta Retrospect: Stonecuts, lithographs and drawings from 1972 to 1980, Inuit Gallery of Vancouver, Vancouver, British ColumbiaFeatured artist:
1978 Cape Dorset Annual Collection
Later life
Tunnillie became a mother to two children, Qavaroak in 1928 and Kakulu in 1940. She also became a grandmother and was widowed sometime before 1975. In 1980, the Cape Dorset Collection reported that she was house ridden because of painful joints. At that time she was living with her grandson and his family. Her last contribution to an exhibit was as part of the 21st annual Cape Dorset collection in 1980. She died that year in Cape Dorset as one of the oldest printmakers in the community.
== References == | occupation | {
"answer_start": [
119
],
"text": [
"artist"
]
} |
James Noël Mackenzie Maclean (1928–1978) was a Scottish historian.
Biography
He was born on Christmas Day in 1928, the eldest son of Elsie May Maclean (nee Davis) and James Walter Maclean. He attended the Stationers' Company's School and then Lincoln College, Oxford where he obtained a B.Litt. degree. He then studied for a PhD at the University of Edinburgh, which he gained in 1967. He served in the RAF from 1947 to 1950. He was a founder member of the Clan Maclean London Branch and served as the Secretary from 1953 to 1955. He died on 20 January 1978.
Publications
Clan Gillean (the Macleans) (1954)
Memoirs of a Barra boy (1959)
Reward is secondary: the life of a political adventurer and an inquiry (1963)
The Macleans of Sweden (1971)
The royal visit of 1822 (1972) with Basil C. Skinner
French-Canadian emigrants to New England (1973)
== References == | country of citizenship | {
"answer_start": [
833
],
"text": [
"England"
]
} |
James Noël Mackenzie Maclean (1928–1978) was a Scottish historian.
Biography
He was born on Christmas Day in 1928, the eldest son of Elsie May Maclean (nee Davis) and James Walter Maclean. He attended the Stationers' Company's School and then Lincoln College, Oxford where he obtained a B.Litt. degree. He then studied for a PhD at the University of Edinburgh, which he gained in 1967. He served in the RAF from 1947 to 1950. He was a founder member of the Clan Maclean London Branch and served as the Secretary from 1953 to 1955. He died on 20 January 1978.
Publications
Clan Gillean (the Macleans) (1954)
Memoirs of a Barra boy (1959)
Reward is secondary: the life of a political adventurer and an inquiry (1963)
The Macleans of Sweden (1971)
The royal visit of 1822 (1972) with Basil C. Skinner
French-Canadian emigrants to New England (1973)
== References == | educated at | {
"answer_start": [
244
],
"text": [
"Lincoln College"
]
} |
James Noël Mackenzie Maclean (1928–1978) was a Scottish historian.
Biography
He was born on Christmas Day in 1928, the eldest son of Elsie May Maclean (nee Davis) and James Walter Maclean. He attended the Stationers' Company's School and then Lincoln College, Oxford where he obtained a B.Litt. degree. He then studied for a PhD at the University of Edinburgh, which he gained in 1967. He served in the RAF from 1947 to 1950. He was a founder member of the Clan Maclean London Branch and served as the Secretary from 1953 to 1955. He died on 20 January 1978.
Publications
Clan Gillean (the Macleans) (1954)
Memoirs of a Barra boy (1959)
Reward is secondary: the life of a political adventurer and an inquiry (1963)
The Macleans of Sweden (1971)
The royal visit of 1822 (1972) with Basil C. Skinner
French-Canadian emigrants to New England (1973)
== References == | occupation | {
"answer_start": [
56
],
"text": [
"historian"
]
} |
James Noël Mackenzie Maclean (1928–1978) was a Scottish historian.
Biography
He was born on Christmas Day in 1928, the eldest son of Elsie May Maclean (nee Davis) and James Walter Maclean. He attended the Stationers' Company's School and then Lincoln College, Oxford where he obtained a B.Litt. degree. He then studied for a PhD at the University of Edinburgh, which he gained in 1967. He served in the RAF from 1947 to 1950. He was a founder member of the Clan Maclean London Branch and served as the Secretary from 1953 to 1955. He died on 20 January 1978.
Publications
Clan Gillean (the Macleans) (1954)
Memoirs of a Barra boy (1959)
Reward is secondary: the life of a political adventurer and an inquiry (1963)
The Macleans of Sweden (1971)
The royal visit of 1822 (1972) with Basil C. Skinner
French-Canadian emigrants to New England (1973)
== References == | given name | {
"answer_start": [
0
],
"text": [
"James"
]
} |
James Noël Mackenzie Maclean (1928–1978) was a Scottish historian.
Biography
He was born on Christmas Day in 1928, the eldest son of Elsie May Maclean (nee Davis) and James Walter Maclean. He attended the Stationers' Company's School and then Lincoln College, Oxford where he obtained a B.Litt. degree. He then studied for a PhD at the University of Edinburgh, which he gained in 1967. He served in the RAF from 1947 to 1950. He was a founder member of the Clan Maclean London Branch and served as the Secretary from 1953 to 1955. He died on 20 January 1978.
Publications
Clan Gillean (the Macleans) (1954)
Memoirs of a Barra boy (1959)
Reward is secondary: the life of a political adventurer and an inquiry (1963)
The Macleans of Sweden (1971)
The royal visit of 1822 (1972) with Basil C. Skinner
French-Canadian emigrants to New England (1973)
== References == | notable work | {
"answer_start": [
717
],
"text": [
"The Macleans of Sweden"
]
} |
American Samoa competed at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece from 13 to 29 August 2004.
Athletics
American Samoan athletes have so far achieved qualifying standards in the following athletics events (up to a maximum of 3 athletes in each event at the 'A' Standard, and 1 at the 'B' Standard).
Men
Track & road eventsWomen
Field eventsKeyNote–Ranks given for track events are within the athlete's heat only
Q = Qualified for the next round
q = Qualified for the next round as a fastest loser or, in field events, by position without achieving the qualifying target
NR = National record
N/A = Round not applicable for the event
Bye = Athlete not required to compete in round
Weightlifting
References
External links
Official Report of the XXVIII Olympiad | country | {
"answer_start": [
0
],
"text": [
"American Samoa"
]
} |
American Samoa competed at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece from 13 to 29 August 2004.
Athletics
American Samoan athletes have so far achieved qualifying standards in the following athletics events (up to a maximum of 3 athletes in each event at the 'A' Standard, and 1 at the 'B' Standard).
Men
Track & road eventsWomen
Field eventsKeyNote–Ranks given for track events are within the athlete's heat only
Q = Qualified for the next round
q = Qualified for the next round as a fastest loser or, in field events, by position without achieving the qualifying target
NR = National record
N/A = Round not applicable for the event
Bye = Athlete not required to compete in round
Weightlifting
References
External links
Official Report of the XXVIII Olympiad | participant in | {
"answer_start": [
31
],
"text": [
"2004 Summer Olympics"
]
} |
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