Radiohead тобының «Amnesiac» альбомы

2001 studio album by Radiohead

Amnesiac is the fifth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released on 30 May 2001 by EMI. It was recorded with the producer Nigel Godrich in the same sessions as Radiohead's previous album Kid A (2000). Radiohead split the work in two as they felt it was too dense for a double album. As with Kid A, Amnesiac incorporates influences from electronic music, 20th century classical music, jazz and krautrock. The final track, "Life in a Glasshouse", is a collaboration with the jazz trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton and his band. After having released no singles for Kid A, Radiohead promoted Amnesiac with the singles "Pyramid Song" and "Knives Out", accompanied by music videos. Videos were also made for "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" and "Like Spinning Plates", and "I Might Be Wrong", which was released as a promotional single. In June 2001, Radiohead began the Amnesiac tour, incorporating their first North American tour in three years. Amnesiac debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and number two on the US Billboard 200. By October 2008, it had sold over 900,000 copies worldwide. It is certified platinum in the UK, the US and Canada, and gold in Japan. Though some critics felt it was too experimental or less cohesive than Kid A, or saw it as a collection of outtakes, it received positive reviews. It was named one of the year's best albums by numerous publications. Amnesiac was nominated for the Mercury Prize and several Grammy Awards, winning for Best Recording Package for the special edition. "Pyramid Song" was named one of the best tracks of the decade by Rolling Stone, NME and Pitchfork, and Rolling Stone ranked Amnesiac number 320 in their 2012 "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list. Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A, Amnesiac and previously unreleased material, was released in 2021.

Radiohead and the producer Nigel Godrich recorded Amnesiac during the same sessions as their previous album, Kid A, released in October 2000. The sessions took place from January 1999 to mid 2000 in Guillaume Studios in Paris, Medley Studios in Copenhagen, and Radiohead's studio in Oxfordshire. The drummer, Philip Selway, said the sessions had "two frames of mind  a tension between our old approach of all being in a room playing together and the other extreme of manufacturing music in the studio. I think Amnesiac comes out stronger in the band arrangement way." The sessions drew influence from electronic music, 20th century classical music, jazz and krautrock, using synthesisers, ondes Martenot, drum machines, strings and brass. The singer, Thom Yorke, said Radiohead split it into two albums because "they cancel each other out as overall finished things" and came from "two different places". He felt Amnesiac offered a "different take" on Kid A and "a form of explanation". The band members stressed that they saw Amnesiac not as a collection of Kid A B sides or outtakes but an album in its own right. Yorke said the title was inspired by a Gnostic belief that the trauma of birth erases memories of past lives, an idea he found fascinating. Radiohead disabled the erase heads on the tape recorders so that the tape repeatedly recorded over itself, creating a "ghostly" tape loop, and manipulated the results in Pro Tools. Deciding that the arrangement did not fit "True Love Waits", Radiohead used it to create a new track. Radiohead also used Auto Tune on "Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box" to process Yorke's vocals and create a "nasal, depersonalised" sound. Yorke said "Knives Out" did not depart from Radiohead's earlier style, and "survived because it was too good to miss". "Dollars and Cents" was edited down from an eleven minute jam, inspired by the krautrock band Can, who would record extensively and then edit their recordings. Dismissing this recording as "dodgy Kraftwerk", Radiohead reversed it and created a new song. Yorke said: "I was in another room, heard the vocal melody coming backwards, and thought, 'That's miles better than the right way round', then spent the rest of the night trying to learn the melody." For the final track, "Life in a Glasshouse", Jonny Greenwood wrote to the jazz trumpeter Humphrey Lyttelton, explaining that Radiohead were "a bit stuck". Lyttelton agreed to perform on the song with his band after his daughter showed him Radiohead's 1997 album OK Computer. electronica and alternative rock, with elements of jazz. Colin Greenwood said it contained "traditional Radiohead type songs" alongside more experimental work. The Atlantic contrasted it with "the surgical glint" of Kid A, with "swampy and foggy" arrangements and "uneasy" chords and rhythms. Its lyrics were inspired by an exhibition of ancient Egyptian underworld art Yorke attended while the band was recording in Copenhagen features "drifting" guitar lines, "driving" percussion, a "wandering" bassline, "haunting" vocals and "eerie" lyrics. "Morning Bell/Amnesiac" is an alternative version of "Morning Bell" from Kid A; The Atlantic described it as a blend of "cosiness and nausea". Yorke wrote that it was included "because it came from such a different place Because we only found it again by accident after having forgotten about it. Because it sounds like a recurring dream." He said the lyrics for "Dollars and Cents" were "gibberish", but were inspired by the notion that "people are basically just pixels on a screen, unknowingly serving this higher power which is manipulative and destructive". "Life in a Glasshouse" features the Humphrey Lyttelton Band playing in the style of a New Orleans jazz funeral. According to Lyttelton, the song starts with "ad libbed, bluesy, minor key meandering, then it gradually gets so that we're sort of playing real wild, primitive, New Orleans blues stuff". For inspiration, Donwood explored London taking notes, likening the city to the labyrinth of Greek mythology. He scanned blank pages of old books and superimposed onto them photos of fireworks and Tokyo tower blocks, copies of Piranesi's Imaginary Prisons drawings, and lyrics and phrases printed by Yorke on a broken typewriter. The cover depicts a book cover with a weeping minotaur. Figures included in the album booklet include faceless terrorists, self serving politicians and corporate executives. Yorke said they represented "the abstracted, semi comical, stupidly dark, false voices that battled us as we tried to work". For the special edition, Donwood designed a package with a hardback CD case in the style of a mislaid library book. He imagined that "someone made these pages in a book and it went into drawer in a desk and was forgotten about in the attic And visually and musically the album is about finding the book and opening the pages."

Radiohead announced Amnesiac on their website in January 2001, three months after the release of Kid A. It was released in Japan on 30 May by EMI, in the UK on 4 June by Parlophone and in the US on 5 June by Capitol, both subsidiaries of EMI. Amnesiac debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart. It was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of Japan for shipments of 100,000 copies across Japan. By October 2008, Amnesiac had sold more than 900,000 copies worldwide. In July 2013, it was certified platinum in the UK for sales of more than 300,000. For Amnesiac, Yorke said Radiohead would have "singles, videos, glossy magazine celebrity photoshoots, children's television appearances, film premiere appearances, dance routines, and many interesting interviews about my tortured existence". followed by "Knives Out" in July, backed by music videos. Radiohead reworked "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" and "Like Spinning Plates" for a computer animated video directed by Johnny Hardstaff. The video premiered on November 29, 2001, at an animation festival at the Centre For Contemporary Arts, Glasgow. It features imagery of killer whales swimming under UV light, a machine taking shape and conjoined babies spinning in a centrifuge. The video received little airplay from MTV, who felt it was "of a sensitive nature" and would only broadcast it with a warning. Hardstaff said: "The irony is that you can't move on MTV for bland R&B and the empty boasts of 'artists' effectively fixated with their own flaccid showbiz cocks, but any piece of film with an ounce of real emotion isn't going to get seen."

Radiohead left EMI after their contract ended in 2003. In 2007, EMI released Radiohead Box Set, a compilation of albums recorded while Radiohead were signed to EMI, including Amnesiac. After a period of being out of print on vinyl, Amnesiac was reissued as a double LP on 19 August 2008 as part of the "From the Capitol Vaults" series, along with other Radiohead albums. On 25 August, EMI reissued Amnesiac in a two CD "Collector's Edition" and a "Special Collector's Edition" containing an additional DVD. The first CD contains the original studio album; the second CD collects B sides from Amnesiac singles and live performances; the DVD contains music videos and a live television performance. Radiohead had no input into the reissues and the music was not remastered. The EMI reissues were discontinued after Radiohead's back catalogue was transferred to XL Recordings in 2016. In May 2016, XL reissued Radiohead's back catalogue on vinyl, including Amnesiac. An early demo of "Life in a Glasshouse", performed by Yorke on acoustic guitar, was released on the 2019 compilation MiniDiscs [Hacked]. On November 5, 2021, Radiohead released Kid A Mnesia, an anniversary reissue compiling Kid A and Amnesiac. It includes a third album, Kid Amnesiae, comprising previously unreleased material from the sessions. Radiohead promoted the reissue with two digital singles, the previously unreleased tracks "If You Say the Word" and "Follow Me Around". Kid A Mnesia Exhibition, an interactive experience with music and artwork from the albums, was released on 18 November for PlayStation 5, macOS and Windows.

Adapted from the Amnesiac liner notes.