Musical Interlude

In my office is an HP Visualize PL-Class PC, running Redhat Linux 6.0 (soon to be upgraded to 7.0?). Attached to the CD audio port is a Benwin BW2000 speaker set. When in need of music, I fire up the Linux CD player and fill my office with sound. Last week's album, repeated numerous times, was Kid A by Radiohead.

I have eclectic musical tastes, ranging from opera, crossing over Rogers and Hammerstein, into typical Rock. But the world of music is huge, and I've been spending most of my allowance on computer geegaws and anime for the last several years. Thus it is that I am able to hear this album without having heard anything by this group before. This despite their being the critical darlings who have 'reinvented' themselves with each album, radically altering their style each time, as per the review of Kid A above.

All I can say is that I enjoyed Kid A, that it reminded me of a fusion of Brian Eno's Ambient Music, Bauhaus/Love And Rockets and the Moody Blues. When one reviewer made a reference to Joy Division:

Radiohead render creeping unease and desolation incandescent. I'm reminded of Joy Division, another band that alchemized gloomy, banal alienation into crepuscular beauty. "Kid A" is one of the loneliest records I've heard in ages. Perhaps because of that, it's also one of most comforting.
Michelle Goldberg

I shouted "Yes!". Interestingly enough, when I searched for links to Joy Division, the one above includes a quote by a reviewer in Melody Maker, stating that Joy Division inspired "U2, Depeche Mode, Nirvana, Radiohead and countless others." So I am not alone in my intuitions.