Album review: THOM YORKE - Tomorrow's Modern Boxes

Highlights: Interference

5/10

We’ve made an album and this is what we are going to do. Listen up, it’s exciting.   

Now that the overdubs are done and everyone’s cautiously optimistic about the final result, we will print a million copies of the album (10 songs in the genre of softcore techno-funk; I will not bore you with the details). Well, not quite a million, but we haven’t rejected anyone’s help with copying, printing, multiplying. 

It all started with Kevin. I mean, it was my idea – but Kevin is the one providing the backbeat. Kevin is the name of our drummer, and his dad is in aviation. First time I mentioned my idea to Kevin, he told me to drop it. We had just struck a deal with a respectable indie label, so why do something as screwed-up as that. Besides, his dad would say no anyway. It’s only when we listened back to the demos of the new album that Kevin changed his mind. Maybe it was not such a bad idea. For once, even Stuart (bassist) and Richie (synths) seemed intrigued. Yes, we were going to do it.

And so we did. We went to Kevin’s dad and told him about our plan. As expected, he said no. However, we sold Kevin’s expensive hi-hats and paid for his dad’s dental surgery. Grudgingly, his dad agreed. I don’t think it was just the money. I think in the end he saw the scope of our idea. That even if the world went wrong the very next morning and vanished for good, the idea would still stand. And in the face of a disaster – I’m sure many people wouldn’t mind swapping places.

Through Richie’s girlfriend we got in touch with a few newspapers. One local TV channel said they were interested. We wrote about it on Twitter, on Facebook, on YouTube, we told our fans to spread the word. We would broadcast it online so that the whole world could see it. In the middle of our live set at a local festival I screamed into the audience: “Let’s fucking do it!” They screamed back.

And what a glorious day it was when the planes flew in the sky and dropped our album on roofs, fields, roads and heads of disbelieving passers-by. It was magnificent. In fact, if there was one downside to all that – it was the brevity of it. 30 minutes seemed barely enough.

P.S. Thom Yorke’s new album was released through BitTorrent. It is just like his previous one, but maybe a little different.