Artist: Atoms For Peace
Label: XL Recordings
Release: 2013
Length: 44:35
Rating: 4/5
There are few experimenters in alternative waters bold enough to not give a damn about general acceptance as they dive blindly into uncharted musical seas. One such adventurer is the frontman of Oxford’s Radiohead, Thom Yorke, whose every record I approach with precision, awe and, first and foremost, a hefty dose of caution, so I don’t end up too disappointed by the sonic discourse of a musical touch of epic beauty that’s not always direct and not always entirely clear. Similar feelings blew through me when the news broke that he’d put heads together with Flea, until now a very prolific but more »straightforward« kind of guy, and this year the total experiment that is Atoms For Peace hatched the much-hyped record Amok, which, hand on heart, splits the critics and fans, while with its Moses-like divinity it stamps a very special mark on this year. Hand on heart – these very same feelings have rattled me with all of Yorke’s musical excesses since Kid A, and Atoms For Peace is a story I find easiest and most gallant to link to the solo record The Eraser. Why? Because the full meaning of Amok lies somewhere in between – among all these shards of the universe, which make it hard to pass a verdict of genius in one go without real justification.
Thom cunningly joined forces with the gifted programmer and producer Nigel Godrich, and beyond the rhythm-loving Flea, the full-on hammering beat is handled by Joey Waronker, drummer-for-hire for R.E.M and Ultraista, and Mauro Refosco, a percussionist from Forro In The Dark. The processing core of all the ideas is undoubtedly Yorke, which radiates from every one of the nine tracks on the meditative, melancholic album Amok. Instead of classic song structure, it’s the fullness of sound that takes center stage, and in his mantra of rhythm and crackling electronics Yorke weaves in enough organic feel that the recording sounds alive and convincing. Something like that also marked Radiohead’s excesses in the recent millennial past, though I can’t say that Amnesiac, Kid A or In Rainbows are direct associations with liveliness when it comes to organic saturation. What I hear here is more the presence of modern musical cyborgism, the human bonded to the machine, which can give music a bit more escapist breadth, an illusion of freedom, a metaphysical bodilessness, but the lack of sweat, tears and blood at the same time takes plenty away from it. Thom Yorke deliberately broke all of these commandments, and with his trademark melancholic bitterness and stubbornness he wove a veil that nobody else could have put on so confidently and convincingly without coming off as an imitator, spineless and banal.
Amok is anything but. It’s an excellent blend of U2-style bass in a sea of precise rhythmic metrics, and despite the stasis of eclectic art, the crackling samples don’t come off naked, cold and meant only for plugging holes. Amok has no holes in its texture, because the texture rests purely on schematic foundations, while the studio jam session drives the concept from soft intros to a climax and an organic outpouring. Mad doctor Yorke is a genius at ramping up the intimate trip of repeating patterns, and with all the repetitiveness of tracks flowing into one another, what’ll stay in your ears is not so much any single verse or song as the overall picture of the record. And that picture is lyrically unmistakably Yorke’s, and with its pessimistic strings of post-juvenile unresolved juvenile conflicts, a constant accusing echo of powerlessness remains. It seeps out from the opening track Before Your Very Eyes, where aging and becoming, at some point X, is the heart of the whole song. And the scenery rolls on along the same track on Default, which does recall Gorillaz, but with considerably more bitterness, acridness and wrist-slashing sharpness.
Don’t get me wrong – I’ve got my own favorites on the record. Among them is the outstanding Ingenue, which is basically an extension of the story of the rainbow-colored In Rainbows in an Amnesiac kind of way. This is just my personal perception and preference, but the fact is that Atoms For Peace stir up a string of associations and dormant memories. The chain reaction continues with Yorke’s trademark cynicism, meditative danceability and intergalactic sprawl in Dropped, or with the unfinished-feeling Unless. »I couldn’t care less« Yorke sings, and yes, you can even believe him that pleasing the audience is a secondary matter here. Amok unfolds phenomenally between the left and right ear, and you only get the full effect of the brilliant production when you put the record on a player hooked up to quality headphones, close your eyes and let vividly colored fractals appear before them, shamans dancing their dance of alienation, and calibrate your heart for a moment or two into a state of deep meditative fusion with the pain of the world and the universe that Yorke carries on his scrawny shoulders. And that’s because he can be judge, jury and executioner all in one, as the meaningful title of one of the tracks hints…
And in that stance he’s gallant and convincing, even if the whole leaves behind few complete bits you could hum or sing to yourself during the day. Atoms For Peace is a band that offers total discharge with total sound, and the music here is more a chasing of the butterflies of the moment than a concrete, poured-in-concrete construction that would rigidly defy the expectations of the masses and prop up the soullessness of general mass taste. Precisely because there’s so much more esoteric fullness in the whole, which doesn’t suit your average Joes and Janes, I can say that Atoms For Peace managed to make a record that is, in some incomprehensible way, fascinating and likable, and the answer to why you’ll have to build yourself, through many effort-filled repeat listens. I fell in love with Amok because it so gorgeously escapes all limits and frameworks in a poppy, eclectic way, and for all its breadth and vagueness it doesn’t compromise the soul one bit, yet it’s not a record that’ll comfort you every single day, because it demands a damn lot of concentration and thick skin, so you won’t give in to any urge for a suicidal showdown with yourself and with all the heaped-up dark creatures and demons…
Lineup
Thom Yorke – vocals, guitar, keyboards and programming
Flea – bass
Nigel Godrich – programming, samples
Joey Waronker – drums
Mauro Refosco – percussion
Production
Nigel Godrich
Tracklist
- Before Your Very Eyes
- Default
- Ingenue
- Dropped
- Unless
- Stuck Together Pieces
- Judge, Jury And Executioner
- Reverse Running
- Amok
