The Radiohead frontman’s latest side project is a collaborative album borne of lockdown with the veteran English electronic musician soundtracked by a 65-minute film of videos created by Jonathan Zawada, with various modern-life and historical social dystopian themes, including AI, twisted through a carnival of Bruegel- and Bosch-type game figures and monsters in strange technicolor landscapes. The musically alternative area for Yorke on this project a variety of synths, particularly Pritchard’s extensive range of analogue machines, while Yorke’s voice, ghostly and distinctive, is also sometimes unfamiliar, sometimes sung straight to mic with reverb, but also sometimes through guitar pedals or modular synthesizers. Benjamin Myers’ book about about the Yorkshire poor in the 18th century, The Gallows Pole, is among the many oblique reference points across the album. It’s an eclectic, patience-requiring, late-night listen. Opener A Fake in a Faker’s World has a noir, sci-fi flavour, with analogue synth beats, Ice Shelf is awash with distantly stormy, wild ambience, Bugging Out Again is a distorted slow-build. But the the more immediate tracks are the minimalist ghostly playfulness of Gangsters and especially This Conversation Is Missing Your Voice, one that could also belong in a Radiohead corner. The title track folds into a dream sequence of oddball voices and sounds, but Happy Days is a catchy ironic treatise on death and taxes, and closer Wandering Genie is a floating journey of woodwind and subtle, textured layering. What it all means is difficult to fathom, but it does make for a fascinating, if strange, audio and visual journey. Out on Warp Records.
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