OK COMPUTER

I can understand why many 70's symphonic prog-fans don't like this album, since all the musicians are quite average, the album does not include any weird time signatures and the longest track on the album is only 6.23 (it uses mellotron rather nicely though). Knowing those facts many people don't consider Ok Computer even a prog album, but if we think progressive music any music anything that has pushed boundaries and does'nt follow the rules of traditional pop-music Ok Computer is definitely progressive and if you don't consider it progressive it still contains some damn good pop-songs.

Besides some pretty interesting musical ideas (Paranoid Android's dissonant riffing or Fitter Happier's computer voice) the album offers some greatly touching and beautiful melodies supported by fairly tragic lyrics about the desperation of modern society. In that area it's kind of similar to Dark Side of the Moon, but not that much musically. Especially the song Exit music (for a film) has very profound and in some level rather mysterious lyrics and the song itself is simply breathtaking, growing from a simple beginning to a multilayered climax

Propably the only bad thing about this record is that the songs are so different. This might sound a little stupid, but it's at the end just more like a collection of songs than an entire album. The songs differ from the post-rock-ish atmosphere of Subterranean Homesick Alien and The Tourist to pop-songs like No Surprises or Karma Police and then there is Fitter Happier, which can almost be described as ambient. But ignoring the diversity, i recommend this to all prog-fans who have even a slight interest of music made after 70's.

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