Radiohead
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Rock Band: Radiohead isn't real, is real funny
According to our precise calculations, roughly 10 gazillion versions of various Guitar Hero and Rock Band games now exist. And even though Radiohead has done its fair share of appearing in rhythm-music games over the years, Break.com does a great job of portraying an entire game based around an exaggerated version of the band. The music reminds us more of a mix between The Cure and Sigur Rós than Radiohead, but the statement made by the idling girl, who says, "Depressing songs about math and fish get me hot," pretty much sums up our feelings exactly. Warning: If you take Radiohead (or yourself) really seriously, you might not want to watch the video embedded after the break.
WoW Moviewatch: Bathing with ghosts
(Warning: This video contains some harsh language.)If you thought you were having a bad day, you haven't met this guy. Apparently every time he takes a bath, he sees dead people! We applaud him for repeat attempts to bathe ...Paus, from #machinima on Quakenet IRC, supposedly put secrets in each scene of this machinima. The story audio comes from the beginning of a Radiohead song, All I Need, from their In Rainbows album. How many hints can you find?[Via Warcraftmovies.com]If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.Previously on Moviewatch ...
Radiohead's 'House of Cards' video gets 3D, interactive, and extremely trippy
Leave it to Radiohead to do something twisted, innovative, and defiantly futuristic to the art of the music video. Instead of going with underwater singing, fully animated epic, or a mysterious series of "blips," the band decided to forgo the use of cameras altogether for their latest single, House of Cards. Using 3D video acquisition systems from Geometric Informatics, and 64-element, 360-degree LIDAR from Velodyne, the band was able to create a clip that eschews traditional video recording for haunting, complex data visualizations. You can watch the video after the break, or you can get your hands dirty with a real time, interactive version you'll find by following the read link. Either way, your mind should be thoroughly blown.
Antiquated hardware used to masterfully remix Radiohead's Nude
It takes some serious game to rise above the legions of mediocre DIYers out there and stand tall as a true legend. Judging by the video posted up after the cut, James Houston can now consider himself one of the elite. Somehow, this cat managed to tackle the nearly impossible task of remixing Radiohead's Nude without defacing it entirely (read: merging bits and pieces of the tune into a 4/4 arrangement and calling it a day). Instead, he utilized a host of aging hardware (Sinclar ZX Spectrum, Epson LX-81 dot matrix printer, HP Scanjet 3c, etc.) to create a rendition that even Yorke could admire. For fans of In Rainbows and mesmerizing music videos alike, there's a must-see waiting just below.[Via Hack-A-Day, thanks Eliot]
Live Musician: Norris Shepherd
When you log into Second Life next, be sure to check the date -- is it the 13th of June already? Time to wish Norris Shepherd a happy Rez-Day! Shepherd has only been in Second Life for one fun-filled year, and has spent even less time than that as a Second Life musician. He got his start in the Second Life music scene a couple of months in, watching the likes of Capos Calderwood, Skinny Shepherd and TallGuy Kidd, then venturing to a variety of open mics; he went from being awed to being awesome in Second Life in essentially a single gig, for which he rented the gear. Some 130 shows later, he's still out there, wowing the crowds and buying new gear.
Radiohead returns to iTunes
If you haven't been keeping track of the whole Radiohead/iTunes drama it went something like this TUAW summary: iTunes: "You must sell the tracks" RH: "We won't sell the tracks!" iTunes: "You must sell the tracks" RH: "We won't sell the tracks!" iTunes: "Then don't sell the tracks!" RH: "We are so out of here. Whole albums or nothing baby." iTunes: "Laters." Time passes iTunes: "You must sell the tracks" RHEvil Suit-Wearing EMI Folk: "Well...okay then."RH: Curses! Foiled again! Radiohead albums (including individual track sales) are now available for purchase at iTunes. Thanks, Clancy
Cinemassively: Bodysnatchers
Phil Rice, one of the original machinima oldbies, released a music video for the Aniboom Radiohead music video contest. In the video, he combines Second Life, Moviestorm, Paint Shop Pro, CamStudio, and Virtual Dub to make an impressive anymation piece. For those unaware of the term "anymation," it means using any and all tools you can get your hands on to create a digital expression.Phil involved dancers from SL, sets from Moviestorm, and drawings from Paint Shop Pro in Radiohead: Bodysnatchers. According to his blog, he had 55gb of source footage, a whopping 72 video tracks with an average of 16 compositing layers, spent 250 hours on the video, and rendering it out took 3 hours per minute of final film. Hopefully this will inspire others to break out of the box and combine more platforms.[Via Machinima for Dummies]If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.
Remix Radiohead in iTunes
A couple of years ago, Trent Reznor released fully editable GarageBand versions of a few Nine Inch Nails songs. Others have followed suit (like Burger King), and now Radiohead joins their number.They've made all five tracks (or "stems") of the song "Nude" available in iTunes for $0.99 each [iTunes link]. The tracks are in DRM-free iTunes Plus format, so you can pretty much manipulate them however you'd like.Purchase all five before the end of this week and receive an access code for the full GarageBand file. Once you've finished your remix, you can upload it here. It definitely sounds like fun, especially for Radiohead fans (like me).
Radiohead on iTunes? Yup
As many of you (judging by the number of e-mail tips we have received) know, the latest Radiohead album, "In Rainbows" is now available on iTunes. The album is $9.99 in the US and released via iTunes Plus, meaning the files are DRM free. This is the first Radiohead album to appear on iTunes (though fans will note that frontman, Thom Yorke's solo album, "The Eraser," has been on iTunes since its debut in 2006), where Radiohead has remained one of an ever-shrinking group of high profile artists not to list their catalog with the digital service.Previously, "In Rainbows" was available as a free or "pay what you want" download directly from the band. While the success of this promotion has been debated, it was always clearly devised as a promotion nonetheless. Shortly before launching the "In Rainbows" download promotion/experiment, Radiohead announced that the record, at that time, would not be released via iTunes. So what has changed? Well, the biggest change is that Radiohead is no longer with EMI. Digital sales have long been a point of contention between the band and their former label (and it is a primary reason the back catalog is not on iTunes and will probably not be on iTunes in the foreseeable future), now that the band has control over its own music and licensing terms (and is releasing the album via independent labels online and in retail stores), iTunes has become a viable distribution method.To make it even more clear: Radiohead decided to split from their large record label, in order to build-up hype for the album's official charting release, they did the free/pay-what-you-want online promotion. Now that the album has been officially released (so that it can be tracked by SoundScan and other technologies), it is being made available through both online and retail outlets. Edit: Clearly this is conjecture on my part, based on information released by the band and the music press. For instance, the album is also available at Amazon.com's DRM-free MP3 store for $7.99 US. Amazon also carries the majority of the EMI back-catalog (excluding "Kid A," for reasons unclear to me), which I assume is the result of differing contracts between the two digital services.Thanks to everyone who sent this in.
Fortune: Radiohead was dumb to ditch iTunes, make more money
As long as we're in 2007 review mode, let's review the saga of Radiohead's In Rainbows album (which is definitely one of my favorite albums of the year, by the way). First, they said no to iTunes to keep their album in one-piece, then they decided to "sell" it for free on their website (asking their fans to donate what they thought it was worth), and then they cleaned up.Then Fortune calls their decision the 58th dumbest of the year. Yes, the geniuses at Fortune believe that Radiohead screwed up, because they say that 68% of people who picked up the album paid nothing, and the rest of the listeners paid an average of six bucks. But of course, Fortune has got it backwards-- Radiohead, as we noted earlier in the year, would only have earned $1 per album going through the record companies, and so they were still able to rake in twice as much at their average of $2.26 per album download.Dumb? For the record companies, maybe-- they made exactly nothing off of Radiohead's new album. But when you consider what the band made, this distribution method makes even iTunes look dated.[Via Gruber]
Rock Band Weekly: Radiohead, Weezer and The Pretenders
Or: Radiohead and let the Pretenders know they're none the Weezer.Clearly, it's a worthless struggle to bring the bands providing this week's downloadable Rock Band content together in one place. Not even Harmonix dared to assemble a catch-all track pack, only offering the three new tunes individually on the Xbox Live Marketplace and -- beginning Thursday -- the PlayStation Network.Individual songs My Iron Lung -- Radiohead (160 MS Points / $2) Buddy Holly -- Weezer (160 MS points / $2) Brass in Pocket -- The Pretenders *Cover* (160 MS Points / $2) You'll find videos of the songs after the break, along with our lingering curiosity as to what content next week will bring, if any.
Eisner blames Jobs, and Radiohead cleans up
From the "whatever you say, Eisner" department, Engadget brings news that former Disney honcho Michael Eisner is blaming the guy who originally wore the black turtleneck and jeans for the Writers Guild of America strike, of all things. In an interview with a CNET blog, Eisner says that Steve Jobs is taking media companies "to the cleaners," and that Jobsy's the one to blame for the writers' low pay on digital media distribution. "If I was a union," he says, undoubtedly making union leaders' heads everywhere fold back in on themselves with the irony, "I'd be striking up wherever he is."Strange then, that this same day, we also get a story about how Radiohead is doing with their online distribution deal. You'll remember that they passed on iTunes to distribute their music themselves, and now we're hearing that, after all is said and done, Radiohead earned an average of $2.26 per album by asking listeners to download the album for free and pay them whatever they thought it was worth. "$2.26 per album?" you say. "They got screwed! iTunes charges $10!"Ah yes, but apparently Radiohead would have made about $1 per album if they'd gone through traditional channels. So actually, the creators doubled their income per sale. Eisner's crazy-- Jobs isn't to blame for this strike, it's content distributors who don't pay content creators enough for digital distribution. But given that Radiohead is cashing in (and gaining public goodwill to boot), maybe the Writers Guild have a lesson to learn here as well.
Radiohead ditches iTunes to keep album complete
Here's an interesting twist on the iTunes vs. record companies situation. Radiohead (disclaimer: I'm a Radiohead fan) is choosing not to sell their latest album on iTunes not because their record company is pressuring them out of the deal-- their record company is EMI, and they're more than willing to sell the record DRM free-- but because iTunes is forcing them to break up their album into songs that can be sold separately.Usually, I'm all for selling separate songs-- why should I pay for a whole album when I'm only going to listen to three or four songs? But when a request comes from the artist like this, it seems like a different ballgame. I'd like to buy Radiohead's album on iTunes, and if they want it complete, then that's the way I'd want to buy it. But because Apple has fought to keep songs separate, Radiohead isn't selling it with them at all. You might say that I wouldn't feel the same way about other artists, and you'd be right-- if Vanilla Ice required me to buy the entire To the Extreme just to listen to "Ice, Ice Baby," I'd decide it wasn't really worth it.But my personal tastes aside, the whole thing actually reminds me of Ed Burns talking about watching Godfather on the iPod-- the iTMS has fundamentally changed the way we purchase and consume media. The concept of "album" is losing meaning. For most iTunes purchasers, I'd imagine that's not a bad thing. But artists like Thom Yorke and Radiohead clearly aren't ready to see the album experience disappear, and they're willing to keep their music off of iTunes to fight it.[via MacBytes]
