THOM YORKE

1. Burial was fresh off of his twin masterpieces Burial (2006) and Untrue (2007) when he remixed Thom Yorke's track. What a coup for Yorke! I may be biased (after all, my avatar currently features Untrue's album cover), but I think every single track Burial has released is crucial - like Robert Johnson's was. (I'm not exaggerating.) Furthermore, Burial's only remixed six tracks by my count. Still, I rank this behind his towering remixes of Bloc Party's Where Is Home? and Massive Attack's Paradise Circus, as well as his remix of Jamie Woon's Wayfaring Stranger. By the way, in 2011, Yorke, Burial, and Four Tet collaborated on the Ego/Mirror EP.

2. Surgeon is the DJ I know the very least about on this collection. I prefer the original version, which had more tonal colors, but this version doesn't differ all that much.

3. Before Burial's identity was apparently outed, many speculated that he was in fact The Bug. The Bug's brand of dancehall dubstep channeled a similar dark, paranoid, urban dystopia as Burial's music. Similarly, both released tracks for Kode9's Hyperdub label. (Both Burial and The Bug are featured prominently on the great compilation entitled Five Years of Hyperdub.) There are only a handful of truly great dubstep albums, and The Bug has released two of them: London Zoo (2008), and Waiting For You (2009), released under his King Midas moniker. The Bug's remix of Yorke's Harrowdown Hill is a fine track, and wouldn't be out of place on his London Zoo album.

4. Modeselektor is an electronic duo from Berlin. Yorke is a big fan, and has sung on two Modeselektor albums (including the highly-recommended track The White Flash, also from 2007). I prefer this version to the original version on The Eraser, which was never my favorite track. Modeselektor additonally contributed a remix to The King of Limbs remix album.

5. This remix album apparently helped establish a deep friendship between Yorke and other performers on this album, including Four Tet, who has since collaborated with Yorke on a few occasions, and also contributed a track to Radiohead's King of Limbs remix album. Again, a nice remix here.

6. The Field is a German-based Swedish DJ, and a major act on the Köln/Cologne-based Kompakt label, which is one of the truly, truly great electronic music labels. Furthermore, The Field were fresh off releasing arguably their greatest album, 2007's From Here We Go Sublime. While all the other remixes thus far have been respectful to the original versions and didn't tamper too much with the structure of the tracks, The Field have utterly deconstructed it. I love this remix - it's unrecognizable from the original version, and it's done in The Field's inimitable, minimalist style that makes Kompakt such a compelling label in German techno.

7. Christian Vogel is another EDM artist I'm not terribly familiar with, although his name pops up alot. He's released tracks on the Warp and Tresor labels, which is a pretty good indication of his stature. Furthermore, he's featured *twice* on this remix! Both are excellent remixes, one of my favorites on this album.

8. Various Productions is another EDM artist I'm unfamiliar with. This is the one remix I could do without, it's a bit over the top, and too brash for my liking.

What we get in the interim is this. Released under the moniker "Atoms for Peace" (no one is fooled, this is a Yorke album through and through, with, as usual, Godrich's considerable imput), Amok's recording history is rather interesting, and can be thought of as experimental: At some point a year or two a go, the "band" went into the studio and simply jammed for a few days. Yorke took the tapes home, and with his computer basically went to town on the recordings. So far, so good. Sounds like a great way to make an album. Miles Davis and his producer Teo Macero did something similar, and they came up with "Bitches Brew."

Unfortunately, unlike The Eraser, Amok simply doesn't have the tunes. I've been listening for a week now, and still there's nothing for me to grab on to, no melody I can hum, nothing I can sing along with, no lyrics that jump out, no melodies burning their way in. Sure it has its moments, - for example, the beginning of "Ingenue" and the end of "Reverse Running" are rather gorgeous-sounding - but overall the album isn't compelling, the songs don't seem to go anywhere, and lack the kind of urgency Yorke usually brings. I don't want to give the wrong impression: the album is amazing sonically. Often here though I get the feeling Yorke's voice is more a hindrance to the sound, and some of these tracks would sound better as instrumentals. (Perhaps I need to accept the album for what it is, rather than what it isn't, and when I stop resisting, I'll come to terms with it and appreciate it.)

After the rather disappointing King of Limbs from 2011, I had high hopes for this album. But that album is looking pretty good now, when set alongside this. Who knows, after time I might revise my opinion and look upon it more favorably. For now, however, it's highly underwhelming, and one of my biggest disappointments in recent memory from any band I can think of. I'll keep trying, because I'm convinced of Thom's genius, I *want* to love this album, and I know he has a lot of great work left in him.

Rating: 7/10

THE ERASER picks up where KID A, AMNESIAC, and HAIL TO THE THIEF left off (although it's more cohesive than HTTT). The opening track "The Eraser" is nearly as compelling a beginning as KID A's "Everything In Its Right Place." The second track, "Analyse," is a grower. (Thom did a stunning solo keyboard version for XFM Radio, which can be found on Youtube, and which sounds remarkably like Cliff Martinez's marvelous score for the 2002 film version of 'Solaris'.) Next track "The Clock" is sonically beautiful, and reminds me a lot of Icelandic electronic band Mum's classic "Smell Memory." (Surely this was an influence on Yorke.) The best song might be "Harrowdown Hill," about David Kelly, a British UN weapons inspector in Iraq who mysteriously died days after testifying to Parliament that the Bush-Blair governments were fabricating evidence about weapons in Iraq. In fact, this album is obviously a passionate and angry album, which lends an immediacy to Thom's voice.

I know most won't agree, but to me these songs are better than anything than on IN RAINBOWS, besides the aforementioned "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi." While IN RAINBOWS found the band retreating from the electronica experiments the band had earlier pioneered, THE ERASER delves further into this realm.

BTW, fans of this album should check out German electronic band Modeselektor's album HAPPY BIRTHDAY, released around the same time, which contains the song "The White Flash" featuring Yorke on vocals. It's another Yorke masterpiece in the same vein as THE ERASER.

The too-slim 41-minute running time (barely album length in a digital age) includes at least one potential classic: "Analyse", easily the most overtly Radiohead-like song of the entire set. It could have been an outtake from the "Kid A" or "Amnesiac" sessions, and thus from my not unbiased perspective is the best thing here.

Elsewhere the album presents a brace of post-modern ballads for our wired new millennium, showing what a single motivated artist with a laptop is capable of. Bandmate Jonny Greenwood is on hand for support, but only on piano; Yorke himself is otherwise given credit for 'all instruments and programming'. But of course these days the programs 'are' the instruments.

The results aren't entirely as antiseptic as you might expect, however. The singer's quavering voice provides a welcome human touchstone in what can sometimes seem like a sterile technological experience. Listen for example to the song "Atoms For Peace", and tell me he doesn't remind you of Joni Mitchell: an odd comparison maybe, but not an unflattering one (I hope).

Bottom line: it's a valuable windfall to latter-day Radiohead fans starved for new material, and a worthwhile diversion for students of electronic music who might have been wondering about the legacy of Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider.