Yorke felt that scepticism of emotion was characteristic of Generation X and that it had informed the band's approach to the album. After The Bends, Radiohead were briefly lumped in with the other bands in the “Britpop” scene, an association they never relished. Radiohead will include three previously unreleased songs –“I Promise,”“Lift” and “Man of War”– on OKNOTOK, a new release celebrating the 20th anniversary of their 1997 landmark LP, OK Computer.

OK Computer OKNOTOK 1997 2017 (2017, Vinyl) - Discogs

Many songs on the original OK Computer feel written for a desk-drone, earthbound version of England’s most famous fictional spy, the sort of soul who whistles “bring down the government, they don't speak for us” while dutifully hitting “Zoom” on government surveillance footage.The box also contains a notebook with 104 pages from Thom Yorke’s notes from the time of the original release, a sketchbook with artists Stanley Donwood and Tchock’s ‘preparatory work’ and a C90 cassette mix tape compiled by the band, taken from Ok Computer session archives and demo tapes. Rolling Stone gave the album five out of five in the 2004 edition of The Rolling Stone Album Guide, with Rob Sheffield writing: "Radiohead was claiming the high ground abandoned by Nirvana, Pearl Jam, U2, R. It’s a lovely, weightless strummer of a song, and watching them send it shimmering out over a field of blissed-out stadium concertgoers in 1996 is the clearest mental picture you can get of this alternate history come to life.

Radiohead - Ok Computer (vinyl) : Target Radiohead - Ok Computer (vinyl) : Target

The result was 1997’s OK Computer, which was designed as a deliberate reaction against the grunge movement of the 1990s. million in digital sales and 900,000 in album-equivalent units in 2016, bringing the US total to at least 3. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, had so many major critics agreed immediately, not only on an album's merits, but on its long-term significance, and its ability to encapsulate a particular point in history. It includes a remastered version of the album, plus eight B-sides and three previously unreleased tracks: " I Promise", " Man of War" and " Lift".He said: "I saw the Zeffirelli version when I was 13 and I cried my eyes out, because I couldn't understand why, the morning after they shagged, they didn't just run away. Having deemed it "self-regarding" and overrated, he later warmed to the record and found it indicative of Radiohead's cerebral sensibility and "rife with discrete pleasures and surprises". Worse, they blended these with the music you suspect Radiohead saw as OK Computer’s diametric opposite, the plodding, scarf-waving, Hey-Jude-aping balladry of Oasis’s Don’t Look Back in Anger – here was the cocktail that gave the world Coldplay, Keane, even James Blunt. huge corporations were impossible to fight against—this was the world OK Computer soundtracked, not the wave of British optimism.

reissue OK Computer on vinyl with three Radiohead to reissue OK Computer on vinyl with three

Nonetheless, many musical critics, journalists, and scholars consider the album to be a concept album or song cycle, or have analysed it as a concept album, noting its strong thematic cohesion, aesthetic unity, and the structural logic of the song sequencing. It's a thoroughly astonishing demonstration of musical virtuosity and becomes even more impressive with repeated listens, which reveal subtleties like electronica rhythms, eerie keyboards, odd time signatures, and complex syncopations.But in an era when their peers were striving for uncomplicated mass appeal, OK Computer was dense and clotted and experimental. They rejected links to progressive rock and art rock, despite comparisons to Pink Floyd's 1973 album The Dark Side of the Moon. According to the guitarist Ed O'Brien, "Everyone said, 'You'll sell six or seven million if you bring out The Bends Pt 2,' and we're like, 'We'll kick against that and do the opposite'. By February 1998, OK Computer had sold at least half a million copies in the UK and 2 million worldwide.