Revisit the breathtaking Radiohead NYE sessions of 2007
Though they found our ears in 1993 with the arrival of Pablo Honey and its hit single ‘Creep’, Radiohead first assembled in the mid-1980s in the music room of Oxfordshire’s Abingdon School. Over the 1990s, Radiohead developed their own style of rock music at odds with the UK’s soaring Britpop era and that of grunge across the Atlantic. Their early peak came with 1997’s OK Computer, an album that boasted adept musicianship and, crucially, Yorke’s sublime talent for lyricism as he mastered the art of social autopsy.
Following an extensive touring campaign in support of OK Computer, Yorke’s disillusionment with rock music was met head-on with a significant dose of writer’s block. At this point, he became exceedingly enamoured with experimental electronic music by the likes of Aphex Twin and Autechre and turned to Beat Generation literature to combat his writer’s block.
Kid A and Amnesiac arrived in 2000 and 2001, respectively, as the direct result of these newfound affections and appeared to light the way to Radiohead’s future evolution. While they returned to a more rock-focussed sound in 2003’s Hail to the Thief, Radiohead have remained on the cutting edge of post-rock innovation and appear set to return to the studio soon to work on a follow-up to 2016’s A Moon Shaped Pool.
In 2007, Radiohead released In Rainbows, a towering art-rock creation broadly deemed the band’s post-Kid A masterpiece. The perfect blend of pacey, atmospheric, electro and traditional struck a chord upon its arrival, as did the pioneering marketing scheme. On October 10th, the album was made available online as a “pay-what-you-want” download file out of generosity and, ostensibly, the band’s zeal for social experimentation.
The band performed two webcasts from their Oxfordshire studio to promote the album: Thumbs Down in November 2007 and Scotch Mist on New Year’s Eve. Today, we draw your attention to the brilliant Scotch Mist set, in which the group performed seamless live versions of the In Rainbows tracks in the order shown below.
Tracklist for Scotch Mist:
- ‘Weird Fishes’
- ‘Bodysnatchers’
- ‘Jigsaw Falling Into Place’
- ‘Faust Arp’
- ’15 Step’
- ‘Videotape’
- ‘Reckoner’
- ‘House of Cards’
- ‘All I Need’
- ‘Nude’
