Rocktrospectiva: The Beautiful And Calm "The King Of Limbs" Turns 15

Released on 18 February 2011 "The King Of Limbs" was the 8th., studio album by the English rock band Radiohead. It was self-released on 18 February 2011 as a download, followed by a physical release on 28 March through XL Recordings internationally and TBD Records in North America.

Following In Rainbows (2007), Radiohead sought to explore less conventional song structures and recording methods. They developed The King of Limbs with their producer, Nigel Godrich, through sampling and looping their playing. The singer, Thom Yorke, described it as "an expression of wildness and mutation". The artwork, by Yorke and his longtime collaborator Stanley Donwood, depicts nature and spirits inspired by fairy tales.

Radiohead released no singles from The King of Limbs, but released a music video for "Lotus Flower" featuring Yorke's dancing, which inspired an internet meme. In 2012, they began an international tour, with several festival appearances. To perform the complex rhythms live, they enlisted a second drummer, Clive Deamer. 

Radiohead worked on The King of Limbs intermittently from May 2009 to January 2011 with their longtime producer, Nigel Godrich. The sessions included three weeks at the home of the actress Drew Barrymore in Los Angeles in early 2010.

Radiohead wanted to avoid repeating the protracted recording process of their previous album, In Rainbows (2007). According to the singer, Thom Yorke, they felt they needed "a new set of reasons" to continue. The cover artist, Stanley Donwood, said that whereas In Rainbows was "very much a definitive statement", Radiohead wanted to make an album that was more "transitory ... to have something that was almost not existing".

Whereas Radiohead had developed In Rainbows from live performances, The King of Limbs developed from studio experimentation. Yorke sought to move further from conventional recording methods. The multi-instrumentalist Jonny Greenwood said: "We didn't want to pick up guitars and write chord sequences. We didn't want to sit in front of a computer either. We wanted a third thing, which involved playing and programming."

After Yorke and Godrich became interested in DJing during their time in Los Angeles, Godrich proposed a two-week experiment whereby the band used turntables and vinyl emulation software instead of conventional instruments. According to Godrich, "That two-week experiment ended up being fucking six months. And that's that record, the whole story of all of it."

 

Radiohead assembled much of the album by looping and editing samples of their playing using software written by Greenwood. Yorke wrote melodies and lyrics over the sequences, which he likened to the process of editing a film. The guitarist Ed O'Brien said: "The brick walls we tended to hit were when we knew something was great, like 'Bloom', but not finished then Colin Greenwood had that bassline, and Thom started singing. Those things suddenly made it a hundred times better."  According to Godrich, the result of the recording sessions was a "gigantic mess that took me about a year and a half to unravel".

 

Yorke said The King of Limbs was a "visual" album, with lyrics and artwork about "wildness" and "mutating" inspired by his environmental concerns. The title derives from the King of Limbs, an ancient oak tree in Savernake Forest in Wiltshire, near Tottenham House, where Radiohead recorded In Rainbows. The King of Limbs saw Radiohead move further from conventional rock music and song structures in favour of "moody, rhythm-heavy electronica, glacially paced ballads and ambient psychedelia".

 

The first track, "Bloom", was inspired by the BBC nature documentary series The Blue Planet. It featured a piano loop, horns and complex rhythms. "Morning Mr Magpie" has "restless guitars". "Little by Little" features "crumbling guitar shapes" and "clattering" percussion. "Feral" featured scattered vocal samples and "mulched-up" drums. "Lotus Flower" featured a driving synth bassline and Yorke's falsetto."Codex" is a piano ballad with "spectral" horns and strings and a Roland TR-808 drum machine. "Give Up the Ghost" is an acoustic guitar ballad with layered vocal harmonies. The final track, "Separator", has guitar, piano, a "brittle" drum loop and echoing vocals. At eight tracks and 37 minutes in length, The King of Limbs was Radiohead's shortest album.

 

Critics were favorable praising the calm eight songs that maintained a composure all the time despite it felt they were ready to crack anytime, a collection of eerie and insidious creeping songs, that considered the album as their most elusive but a record to respect due its craft. 

The King Of Limbs Track List: 

 

1. Bloom

2. Morning Mr Magpie

3. Little By Little

4. Feral  

5. Lotus Flower

6. Codex

7. Give Up The Ghost 

8. Separator