About ten years ago, I saw a terrific show at the Whitechapel Gallery in London by an artist called Janet Cardiff. The centrepiece of the exhibition, as I remember it, was a room in which were placed a large ring of speakers, playing Thomas Tallis’ choral piece, “Spem In Alium”, in such a way that each singer’s voice emanated from a separate point. It’s a wonderful piece of music, but experienced in this way it really emphasised the spacial possibilities of music. Here, it was possible to move about in the soundfield and hear the piece from radically different angles. I’ve seen bands try something similar with quadrophonic performances – I seem to remember a phase of Super Furry Animals doing this – but nothing quite so flexible and at times disorienting (maybe playing the Flaming Lips' “Zaireeka” on four stereos is the best analogue). Anyhow, I was playing “The Magic Place” by Julianna Barwick last night, and something in there reminded me of Cardiff’s installation. Barwick’s album is released on Asthmatic Kitty and recorded in Sufjan Stevens’ place, and it almost entirely consists of her wordless harmonies, looped and layered until she completes something dense and rapturous. There are plenty of interesting comparisons to be made here, but it’s track two, “Keep Up The Good Work”, that seems to me most connected with medieval polyphony. And the way the loops loom in and out, there’s an illusion of depth which keeps fluctuating: as if Barwick’s vocal tracks have been separated out into different channels and different speakers, and it’s possible to move among them. Rarely, I guess, has a record so deserved to be labelled ethereal. Maybe a more realistic precedent would be the Cocteau Twins: “Vow”, in particular, has the air of something from perhaps “Victorialand” or “The Moon And The Melodies”, though I haven’t played them in years and can’t be sure. An even better example from 4AD’s eldritch phase might be Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares, though “The Magic Place” itself and “Cloak” make me think of that choir remixed by a lunar hand like, say, Wolfgang Voigt. A working knowledge of minimalist techno becomes more apparent on the penultimate “Prizewinning”, where the one and only beat on the album appears, muffled, deep in the mix. Gradually, though, it builds into a battery of martial drumming, an artful and unexpected climax to an album where only the odd piano, synth and a bass (on “Bob In Your Gait”) seem to supplement Barwick’s vocal science. More references for this lovely record: spectral passages of the Bon Iver album; portions of Panda Bear’s solo work, especially “Young Prayer” (I must write about “Tomboy”, incidentally); a less gothic Fursaxa; and, I’m afraid, Sigur Ros – “Bob In Your Gait” strays perilously close to their textures for my liking. You could, too, indict Barwick as a kind of Brooklyn Enya. But mostly it works beautifully. Let me know what you think.

A few years ago, Cornershop’s somewhat capricious practices threw up a single called “Topknot”, fronted by a singer, Bubbley Kaur, who Tjinder Singh claimed that he’d discovered singing in a laundrette. A sort of hugely enjoyable bubblegum Punjabi folk song, it was trailed as the first track from a whole album of Cornershop/Bubbley Kaur collaborations. Not atypically of Cornershop, the trail went dead almost immediately, and when “Judy Sucks A Lemon For Breakfast” came out a couple of years ago, Kaur was nowhere to be heard on it. It’s a mistake, though, to underestimate the doggedness of Singh and Ben Ayres; so here, finally - and after Lord knows how many setbacks, hiatuses, business conundrums and so on – is “Cornershop & Double ‘O’ Groove Of…”, a full set of new Cornershop jams, fronted by the honeyed Bubbley Kaur. If you’ve been in any way deterred by the glammish riffing that’s taken prime place on the last couple of Cornershop albums, “Double ‘O’ Groove” will be especially welcome. Essentially, it’s another episode in the career of one of Britain’s most idiosyncratic and cherishable bands – one who haven’t been particularly well served by the one-hit wonder daftness that’s stuck to them since “Brimful Of Asha”. There’s actually precious little guitar anywhere to be found on “Double ‘O’ Groove”, save a ravishing acoustic cycle that runs through the closing “Don’t Shake It”. Mostly, Singh and Ayres craft together unsteady fusions involving sitars, looped samples (a curious vibe of ‘70s Open University idents, possibly?), analogue gloop and some very serious breaks. Over this Kaur sings in a joyous, unperturbed way, seemingly oblivious to what’s going on beneath her. These are far from seamless fusions – it feels more like it’s been Gaffataped together. But that’s part of the charm – and, I suspect, part of the point. I’m not sure whether it’s Ben playing the bass here, but that seems to be the most powerful force on the record besides Kaur’s voice. Rarely, I think, has Cornershop’s love of funk come across in such a warm and effective way. Which means that my current favourite on the album, “The Biro Pen”, especially, sounds like one of the best things the band have done in a career that must have been rolling haphazardly on for the best part of 20 years now. I keep thinking of an Indian folk recasting of “Grooving With Mr Bloe”…

A weekend after Radiohead's “The King Of Limbs” came out, it occurs to me that there’s an interesting experiment to be done sometime about how our responses change to a record over time. Maybe we should do a real-time live blog run-through of the album every Friday for the next six months and see how opinions evolve? My suspicion is that I’d just keep writing “very Flying Lotus” and “liking this a lot”, ad nauseam, and also that a forensic obsession with one record might be somewhat against the spirit of this blog. The ongoing story of how “The King Of Limbs” – or any record, really - will be heard is potentially fascinating, though, assuming that at least a few people will continue to engage with it after Friday’s frenzy. I can say for sure that Uncut, at least, will be mapping that to some degree: our review for the magazine won’t be written for another couple of weeks at least, which should open up some radically different perspectives. All that said, a good weekend of listening hasn’t made me rethink much the ideas I bashed out on Friday, apart from wishing that some of them were expressed more coherently. It still sounds brilliant, I think, and increasingly accessible and memorable. As suspected, “King Of Limbs” is packed with hooks, nowhere near as discreet as they initially appeared: “Lotus Flower” of course, but also “Codex” (in the same way that “Pyramid Song” gradually seemed to shift from a gaseous to solid state), “Separator”, “Little By Little” and especially “Give Up The Ghost”. There’s an intriguing suggestion from Nigel on the last blog that the latter is related in some way to Neil Young’s “Through My Sails”. I haven’t had a chance to check this on “Zuma”, but the fact that I’ve been loosely associating “Give Up The Ghost” with Thunderclap Newman’s “Something In The Air” points up that, at heart, there remains a certain classicism to these songs, however much they might at first seem to have been deconstructed. Even after it’s been removed, you can still detect where the scaffolding stood. I’ve been thinking, too, about some of the issues raised in the posts from Sam and Kris, about developing relationships with Radiohead’s music and about how a band and a listener can follow very different paths to reach the same place: in other words, there’s no hypocrisy or embarrassment in getting into Radiohead at a relatively late stage, even if what they’re doing now is evidence of a very gradual, but logical, evolution. But then I would say that. I do wonder, though, whether I should start again working backwards: whether I can follow the things I like now through the records I didn’t like at the time. The obvious one to work on, I think, is “Kid A”, which a decade or whatever ago I dismissed rather sniffily as a bunch of old Warp and post-rock ideas repackaged for a bigger audience. I usually claim that they sounded too self-conscious back then, too much in thrall to those influences. But as “Feral” plays right now, I have a grave – possibly pleasurable - suspicion I might, to coin a phrase, be wrong. Talking of old Warp records anyhow, the other record I played this weekend a lot reminded me plenty of Boards Of Canada. “Earth Grid” is the second album by Zomes – I wrote about their/his self-titled one here – this time on Thrill Jockey, who seem to be signing up no end of artists I regularly write about. Anyhow, Zomes is basically Asa Osbourne, once of Lungfish, who now makes heavily-distorted little loops and drones, stunned miniature instrumentals that seem imbued with some obscure incantatory properties. The Boards Of Canada reference isn’t immediately apparent, but the tight focus of each track has definite affinities with “Music Has The Right To Children”, but even more there’s a kind of decayed filtering going on that, again like BOC, seems to give Zomes’ tracks the audio equivalent of a sepiatinting. Hauntology for hippies, perhaps, which sounds OK by me.

OK we're downloading "King Of Limbs" now, and I think we're going to have a go at liveblogging it as we go. Join in,won't you? Bit of fiddling with wires going on here, but I think we're just about ready to rock. Bit of an accident with a banana slowed us down for a moment. Curses! NME are about a minute ahead of us. John Robinson says he's "agreed to something" and is importing now. We're off! tinkling piano loop and heavily chopped edits, sounds like someone's Warp subscription brought them a couple of Flying Lotus records last year. "Bloom", by the way. I was playing "In Rainbows" this morning, and I was reminded how much one of the highlights of that album is the drumming. Feeling it again here. As on "Lotus Flower", Yorke feels subtly processed. Liking this a lot. Wow, dense. A lot of layered orchestral passages now, pretty amazing. Just looked at the tracklisting - quite a short album. Eight tracks, as rumoured, but nothing longer than 5 minutes 20. Anyone else got this yet? "Morning Mr Magpie" has identifiable guitars, and this kind of ominous funk undertow. Lots of looming, ascending atmospherics kicking in now. I'm going to say the vibe thus far is a kind of beatific hyperactivity. Apologies if I'm getting carried away by the whole Eventness of this, but fucking hell it's good, and I write as someone who was pretty equivocal about Radiohead until "In Rainbows". Maybe I'm just a sucker for internet kerfuffle. "Little By Little". Some kind of eldritch jangle going on here, awkwardly tuning, very fragile-sounding, accentuated by the radical editing that seems to be going on. Again, I'm feeling Flying Lotus (who I've just recalled had Thom Yorke on "Cosmogramma"). Maybe Prefuse, too: those LA aesthetic beatmakers that I guess he may have been mixing with during the Atoms For Peace thing. A hint of older Radiohead in this one, as it evolves, like some ghostly, fidgety evocation of something from "OK Computer". Again, though, they seem to be obsessively - and fruitfully, I'd say - pulling back from any obvious anthemics. The power is insidious, cumulative, anything but blustery. "Feral" now. Back to the sliding breaks, super-neurotic rhythms. Yorke's voice is ultra-processed and disorienting. I feel somewhat obliged to mention dubstep at this point - Burial's dystopian soundscapes yada yada - but really they seem much more locked into that evolving Warp continuum, rooted back in their love for Autechre. I know this one, it's that old favourite, "Lotus Flower". Lotus, Flying Lotus - am I being a bit of a stuck record here? It's the hit. I think one of the things I liked about "In Rainbows" was how Yorke's voice seemed more relaxed, less self-conscious, less histrionic. He really sounds soulful here. Interesting how hooky the song sounds second time round. Is it closer to the vibe of "The Eraser", perhaps? "Codex" starting as the obligatory piano ballad, but there's all this subtle processing going on, which'll doubtless bed in on future listens. Apologies for not mentioning any of the lyrics, by the way; I'll try and keep updating this as the day goes on and we listen to the record some, maybe in a less superficial way. Again, ten years ago "Codex" would have been so pumped up, so fraught with a sense of its own importance. Now the way Radiohead seem to approach everything is to keep their music on such a discreet level, with microscopic tonal shifts providing a more mature and satisfying kind of drama. Greenwoodish orchestrations I think. "Give Up The Ghost" seems to start with a kind of blossoming, twittering microscape, then evolves into a miraculously understated acoustic guitar ballad. Again, it's the lovely subtlety that comes through. John Robinson has just mentioned Can, say "Sing Swan Song", which is rather wise. Just thinking about the whole subtlety thing some more; of course that can be a marketing tool, hence the whole 'no-fuss' announcement and release of "King Of Limbs" this week resulting in this whole fuss. It's like a way of shifting responsibility of portentousness from yourself to your fans and your commentators. Let others do the anthemic work for you. Wow, last track already. "Separator", very nimble drums and bass, very intuitive, Robinson has me stuck on Can and remembering how Jonny Greenwood has interspersed his "Norwegian Wood" soundtrack with Can tracks. Lovely delicate electric guitar threading through this now. Think this one's going to end up very memorable, again in such a powerfully understated way. The atmospheric reverberations now that loom in and out throughout the album are making me think of '80s Eno now, but "King Of Limbs" couldn't be more different from the way Eno has subsequently addressed rock music. And it's over already. Very, very good is first hunch; I managed to really enjoy that while typing like a lunatic - I hope I've made some kind of sense. One thing that occurs, right now, is that those who might have been looking for Radiohead as quote/unquote saviours of rock in a mainstream environment where rock bands can't get arrested right now, are probably looking in the wrong place. For a start, there aren't that many obvious guitars on "King Of Limbs". If you're a music business executive hoping that Radiohead will have made a record to inspire a new generation of guitar bands to take on the mainstream, usurp the dread hordes of X Factor or however you choose to demonise chart pop today - you won't be in luck. What Radiohead have done again, I think, is make a record that will open up a lot of minds to the possibilities of music, and especially way beyond the mainstream. They're an international phenomenon who have built a platform from which they can disseminate avant-garde ideas, in a deviously uncompromising way. Which is not to say that "King Of Limbs" is a particularly difficult or inaccessible record, it's just one that's heroically disdainful of what normative behaviour among major rock groups is perceived to be. A few years ago Peter Buck, I think, started called REM "the acceptable edge of the unacceptable". If ever a band deserved that label - as an adventurous positive, rather than a compromised pejorative - it feels like Radiohead today. Think I might play it again, anyhow. I daren't read back what I've written thus far; hopefully, it makes some kind of sense. - I'm not going to do all that again for the second listen, but thanks for your support on this, and thanks for the very perceptive comment from Cetin Cem about it being a Colin Greenwood record, with the bass being so prominent. I always imagine Radiohead as a kind of instrumental democracy, with people swapping instruments a lot, so I'd be wary of drawing such delineations, but I'm not really an expert. Also aware, though, that I'm not always 100 per cent sure what I'm hearing on these records; the treatment being so intense of every sound. A recurrent line on "Little By Little": "I'm such a tease and you're such a flirt". I wonder if we're going to get bandmembers dancing in videos for every track, as with "Lotus Flower"? If so, whoever drew "Feral" may have got their work cut out. Strikes me I should repost the "Lotus Flower" vid here, for the sake of completeness. [youtube]cfOa1a8hYP8[/youtube] "Give Up The Ghost" is just wonderful second time. Has the same kind of valedictory vibe as "House Of Cards", but, like so much here, an ethereal pull, too. While I think about it, I should also mention that we have an interview with Jonny Greenwood in the next issue of Uncut. Out sometime next week, I believe.

Really seems churlish not to join in with today's shenanigans. Judging by this, looking like justifiable use of hype. [youtube]cfOa1a8hYP8[/youtube] Liking it. Let me know what you think, especially if your album's turned up.