Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood have revealed that they once dissected Kraftwerk‘s 1981 album ‘Computer World’ in front of the band.
The duo, who recently formed side project The Smile with Sons Of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner, admitted they were big fans of the electro pioneers on Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, and Sean Hayes’ comedy podcast SmartLess.
The pair admitted studying the album in detail and once sitting Kraftwerk down during a Radiohead tour in South America and dissecting the record over dinner.
“We literally study ‘Computer World’ in terms of playing it to each other and discussing what is going on and why, it’s so good,” Greenwood said of the record.
“We can pretty much list what every instrument was and how they did it [on that record],” said Yorke before he added: “They came on tour with us once to South America and we had a very long prolonged dinner with them where we basically dissected the whole record and asked which instrument and what was used on every single piece of that [record]. It was the ultimate geek out.”
During the podcast, Yorke also discussed how Stanley Kubrick and Ennio Morricone influenced Radiohead’s landmark album ‘OK Computer’.
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“The Shining was a really massive one [influence],” Yorke said. “I remember seeing The Shining for the first time and making a connection on a deeper emotional level through that and it just seemed to fit where we were at with ‘OK Computer’ at the time as did [Ennio] Morricone.”
Meanwhile, The Smile recently shared new track called ‘Skrting On The Surface’.
The song was first performed by the band during Glastonbury’s Live At Worthy Farm livestream event in 2021, and more recently during a series of back-to-back gigs in London. The track began its life as a Radiohead song, but was never released.