Is Kid A an innovative album?
 

I imagine that only timorous ears will feel like saying that it is.Poll on the way for this most overrated of semi-adventurous records.

I think it is.

At least I don't know what "timorous" means.

Meaning of timorous (adjective)
lacking courage; timid

Kid A is bogus

haha.I meant to vote no but i voted yes instead.Yorken has cast a spell on me.

i dont know about innovative, but i did enjoy the album

Its a good album, but not as innovative as many are lead to believe. The only reason it is considered innovative is that a mainstream artist like Radiohead made it, but other artists had been doing electronic experimentations a long time before. Check out: Paul Lansky, Parmigiani, Edgar Varese, among others.

Yes, that's how I meant it when I voted 'yes'. For sure there was a number of artists that were producing far more experimental electronic stuff long time before Kid A, but considering Radiohead as a mainstream band, releasing a record like that was quite a corageous step.

It wasn't even that 'expiremental'. It was good but not innovative at all really.

Innovative is the wrong word. It was remarkably brave. The experiment was in taking an album like that to a mass market and seeing if it sold. A valuable exercise in itself.

As i said in another thread : i really like Kid-a, but there's no way it's an "innovative" or "groundbreaking" album if you consider it from a wide perspective. It's surely "innovative" for radiohead because it marked a significant change in their sound and writing method, considering they were hailed like a "guitar band" or wathever they were labeled, you know what i mean, don't you?

It is a very innovative album. Definitely an innovation in sucking pseudo-intellectual mainstreamers cocks!

yep. I really enjoy it myself, probably my favorite radiohead album. But I know it wasn't exactly anything new as it was what everyone else said.

in radioheads history it is deff an innovative album. in general - i dont think so.
radiohead is waaaaaay too much overrated.

You took the words right out of my mouth.

But also a rather useless one for the time the record came out.Take,for example,the continuous drone that Yorke spat out about his love of Authecre and the Warp label artists(as if they were the only people making forward thinking music at the time):if such 'love' was so persistent and genuine,why does the album sound like a lame approximation of music that is 'other'?Such tactics weren't certainly a new thing in the british rock panorama at the time Kid A came out and had been cooked and re-heated many a time before by more talented and genuinely adventurous people(the most obvious example being Bowie's berlin trilogy volte-face).

it is an innovative album because you all are fucking sheep for believing it isnt. Everytime i hear it isnt innovative its just some faggot whos thinks that aphex twin is fucking god. I never heard as good as music as Kid A's. Apex twin can blow me, he never made any music sound as nearly as good. Yes its fucking innovative........


people get too wrapped up about if its innovative or that original. take it for what it is. great music. dont tell me the first time you listened to it you shot it down for not being innovative enough, thats fucking retarded

It's a good pop album. Within a certain context, it, and they, is/are quite innovative. A guitar band making a consistently good album? That's quite innovative. For anyone with a cursory awareness of... well, just about the entire history of rock/ 'other' music, it's not terribly innovative.
But promotional rhetoric is a different language to the one most people speak.

I saw an advert for Damien Rice's new album the other day. They said, "the most influential musician of his generation". Bullshit, obviously, but within the promo-speak lexicon that's a fair assessment.

Genuinely innovative albums though? I can think of a few, but they are incredibly few and far between. In the last ten years I would say the only genuinely innovative music I've heard has been from Taku Sugimoto, and I can't stand that.

For my money, the likes of Haino/ NNCK/ Otomo Yoshihide/ Philip Jeck aren't necessarily innovative, but they are incredibly good.

Fags embraced disco before Yorke did,just remember.

Greetings from a faggish future

i hope you know i dont use "faggot" or "gays" to refer to homosexuals, i could care less what sexuality someone is...

Yes yes yes yes.Don't worry,i wouldn't take offence either way.

I don't really think it is a pop album at all.Way too rock conscious in a kind of'I wanna make you think' (erm....) way for that.It most certainly hasn't been concieved as an album to particularly make you think that it is a pop one either.Melody is present in it but the pop tag is really stretching it out of its 'guitar band with a guilt' genetics.

the reason i think of it more than just as a "pop album with electronic beats" is because the music, meaning the harmony and time, are so well done. Most of the songs are done in odd time signatures not found in other rock band's music. That alone gave me a reason to listen to it.

Fair point... I'm sure I've told you before that I think of anything, absolutely anything, within the generic pop format as being pop. That is, if it has a chorus, or not, and hooks, then it's pop. This includes Einsteurzende or Diamanda or the majority of other things. It's a debatable point, but ultimately I am, as ever, entirely correct.

your last sentence makes you come off as sounding like the pompous egotistical type with a very broad definition of "pop".

Check sarcasm detector.

No, I agree entirely.

ha ha-- i like most of the answers here

I'm sorry,you are entirely right.I swear i heard the sound of suffering children coming from my Nike trainers when i took them off 3 minutes ago.....and my feet don't stink Tokolosh,so sit calmly on your chair and don't get too excited.

all I have to say about this board is "haterz"

on whatever scale you compare it too, Kid A/Amnesiac/Hail To The Thief is an innovative series of music, especially when compared to say, Pablo Honey. Just cuz a shit load of DIY and small time bands are doing similar shit, doesn't discredit the originality of Radiohead.

agree. and all you guys say is that they were not innovative, but you dont give any examples of this, i mean specific examples......

Look,i'm sure you are a good bloke and all that but sometimes i think you smoke too much pot or probably it's just the misleading avatar.

radiohead can go suck a lemon

Prog rock with samplers. (OK Computer, now that was a masterpiece of rock and roll depression and despair, in shades of grey, greyer and gloomiest.)

The main reason it is considered a landmark album is because its Radiohead, and up until that album, Radiohead had been progessively a electric guitar band. So they went the complete oppisite side of the spectrum for themsevles by making a low-key, quieter album. It certianly has its influnces from other bands that have come before them, so they weren't exactly using methods in recording that have never been done, but in terms of surprising thier fans, it was a big change for them, and it was risky, it was a big change in musical direction and it definately polorized thier fans when it first came out.

But, in terms of the rest of the world, it was a quirky electronica album by a serious-ish prog rock band. Not exactly very innovative; but then again the fact that it was released by a major label and marketed as a mainstream rock album says a lot about the shifting musical landscapes and the shifting trends in music and the music industry then. It popularized elecronica to some extent; and that may be the breadth of its innovativeness...

Strange, I was just listening to that album today. I'm sure there is more experimental works out there, but it's still one of my favourites.

kid a was most definitely a risk from the band that made the bends...and its quite experimental from a mainstream act...its also the best radiohead album and probably the best album of the century.*

*(tied with Animal Collective's Feels)

Sorry,can you rephrase that for me?Ta!