Thursday, June 12, 2014

"Weird Fishes/Arpeggi" (Radiohead)

Like a number of tracks on the exceptional album In Rainbows (2007), "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi" was birthed at Radiohead's live shows years before the album's release.  Originally named just "Arpeggi" (i.e. the plural of "arpeggio": notes in a chord played in sequence, one after the other, rather than simultaneously), Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood debuted the song at London's Ether Arts/Tech Festival in 2005, backed by the Nazareth Orchestra.  In many ways, the track that appears on In Rainbows is the same as the original, only with the addition of Philip Selway's funky drumming and a few extra electronic/atmospheric touches.
In any case, "arpeggi" aptly describes the waves of notes that bubble and flow around Yorke's vocals, as he sings about drowning in love/passion to the point of being consumed, leaving him with only a nagging urge to escape.  The music has the same hypnotic effect as the experimental, minimalist work of Philip Glass and Steve Reich—who, incidentally, composed the minimalist classical piece Radio Rewrite based on two of Radiohead's other songs: "Everything in Its Right Place" from Kid A and "Jigsaw Falling Into Place," also from In Rainbows.




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