KID A

Be warned: people who discover KID A-AMNESIAC find it very hard to listen to relatively contemporary guitar-based rock again. KID A is, in other words, the future of music. Bands who ignore it and refuse to come to terms with it are simply making irrelevant and nostalgic music that can never hope to equal its influences. Bands that *have* reckoned with it, such as the Flaming Lips (see YOSHIMI) and Animal Collective, for example, are showing ways forward.

"Everything In Its Right Place" opens the album and sets the tone. Musically, everything is in the wrong place: a plaintive synth opens the album, vocals deconstruct, electronic blips dip in and out, and guitars are no where to be found. "Kid A," with its computerized robot-like vocals, continues to set the mood. "The National Anthem" picks up the pace, using actual guitars and drums, but with its electronically-treated vocals, postmodern mishmash of (seeming) free jazz horns and theremin-sounding Ondes Martenot, this is not something that could have appeared on past Radiohead albums. "How to Disappear Completely" is perhaps the most OK COMPUTER-like track on the album (and provides a nice link and bridge to the two albums), but its lyrical theme is pure KID A. The next track is an instrumental Eno-like composition called "Treefingers." A perfect beginning to an important and culturally significant album that places it beyond mere criticism.

Of course, this music didn't come out of nowhere; others such as Richard James' Aphex Twin, Bjork, the Warp label, Boards of Canada and Autechre pointed towards KID A (as did Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, and The Orb). And as I wrote in my review of OK COMPUTER, people who were shocked at KID A really shouldn't have been - OK COMPUTER represents the off- balance tottering at the fin-de-siecle edge before the fall into KID A-AMNESIAC's 21st century virtual reality. People who clamor for "OK COMPUTER PART 2" should realize that KID A-AMNESIAC *IS* the sequel, and as such, is a necessary addition to their collection after OK COMPUTER.

This is the musical equivalent of (post)cyberpunk films and books. This is music for a postmodern world which knows virtual reality is just around the corner; a post-Cold War world where capitalism and police-state apparatuses and surveillance are penetrating every corner of the global marketplace; a world where living standards are decreasing for workers and in the so-called 'third' world; a world where the trajectory of "democracy" has degenerated into a bloating corpse of hypocricy beholden to big money. This is music that anticipated George Bush's theft of the presidency, the 9/11 attacks, the Iraq War, and what's to come.

It is music for today, and as relevant as Dylan's music or Floyd's DARK SIDE were for their time.