RadioHead

Now, i've been promised by NME a "New" Radiohead song, and i couldn't help but feel a little short-changed upon hearing it's merely a remix. Oh but what a remix, it's certainly whetted my intrigue and i'm afraid to say opened a can of worms...

Now, I'm going to refresh your mind as to what the original Bloom sounds like (before the bells and tassles got sown onto it.)

Filled with delicious harmonies, textual melodies and some new-fangled, enigmatic lyricism, "Bloom" seemed to have somewhat reinvented the wheel, finding adjectives such as "artistic" and "deep" thrown at it. This in itself could be a topic. Initially a tad disorientating, this track grew on me, building on the foundations the band had already laid. By not being bound to a specific sound and style, the song shines on its own terms; It sounds free from self imposed constraints or orthodoxy in any form.
     Okay, so it doesn't reach the dizzying heights such their earlier anthoms did -what with "Bloom" being more of an instrumental than a conventional drum/guitar/vocal track- few records do. However, beneath the stuttering, jittering beats and electronic trickery, lurk some classic Radiohead-esque in that they constantly reinvent the face of their music. I think it's slightly exaggerated to say that it's a Brilliant record, but it's certainly interesting. It's one of those tunes you listen to when you're tired or contemplative, as it just kind of zones in and out and ends without you noticing, almost as though it had always been playing...then never had been... Trippy.

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THEN they give it to someone called JAMIExx... If the somewhat psychedelic format of Bloom is hard to swallow, then this will stick in your windpipe.
You can listen to it here:

http://hypetrak.com/2012/01/radiohead-bloom-jamie-xx-remix-3/

This where i become slightly unstuck. I don't really do dance remixes. 'm listening to this and yeah, it retaines it's chilled out stoner vibe, but there is an aftertaste of rhythm and an edgy beat mixed in with it... It's not the kind of thing i'd imagine myself to dance along to, and -despite the fact i've listened to it a hundred times(as you do when writing a blog)-my mind seems to erase itself of the track's melody when it ends, like a ghost just walking out of a room. Nevertheless, it's different, and i like anything that breaks rules, which this track does in abundance- no real lyrics, no memorable melody, no driving force of DnB, and yet Jamie and Radiohead have managed to blur the lines between Band and Synth machine to create this weird techo/rock love child.
But is it right to pervert genres in this way? I suppose, regardless as to whether Radiohead are typically a rock band or not, "Bloom" was an artistic experimentation, a new box of paint if you will, so by warping the borders between rock, techno and dance, the spirit of maverick investigation is kept alive.
    It depends what you want to get from your music, i doubt my words will influence you much: if you're into the heart-thumping dubstep (which i happen to adore lately) or catchy anthems offered by punk/pop, then you're probably not going to have much of an epiphany, but if you ache for something a little out of the ordinary, then both the origional and the remix offer welcome zest to an increasingly boring musical environment.