You don’t hear much about the Mutator now, but it’s the kind of thing that would sell like hotcakes in today’s gear-obsessed market. According to Radiohead gear site The King of Gear, Greenwood recorded the solos then put the audio through a Mutronics Mutator, a rack effect released in the early ‘90s that was also used by Daft Punk, Beck and Andrew Weatherall. It was also created with a fair amount of studio trickery. Jonny Greenwood’s solo at the end of ‘Paranoid Android’ is one of the greatest guitar moments of all time. If you want to make your own take on the ‘Airbag’ rhythm, there’s even a Live pack that contains the grooves from every Radiohead song. The band wouldn’t fully embrace an electronic sound until Kid A, but they took some important first steps with this simple drum loop.Īkai discontinued the S3000 over a decade ago, but anyone wanting to achieve a similar effect now can do so with Ableton Live’s Simpler instrument. The decision to use sampling techniques actually came from the band’s love of DJ Shadow, whose debut album Endtroducing was released in September 1996 – the month Radiohead began their six-month recording stint at St. “It’s all a bit sort of tatty its roughness is it’s strength,” Godrich told The Mix in 1997.
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According to an interview given to Guitar Magazine in 1997, Phil Selway’s drum track for ‘Airbag’ was sampled using an Akai S3000 – a rack-mounted sampler released in 1996 – and then edited on a Mac. If you’ve always thought there was something scrappy about the first drum beat you hear on OK Computer, that’s because it was completely intentional. There’s also a booming market in Shredmaster clones: if you’re handy with a soldering iron there’s even a DIY clone called the Shredder that will only set you back $90. The ShredMaster has been discontinued for several years, but second-hand models can be picked up for as little as $100, if you can find one. Some users have criticized its lack of gain, but together with pedals like the Digitech WH1 Whammy, it has created some of Greenwood’s most memorable moments.
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It was also used by Blur’s Alex James on ‘Song 2’ and My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields to help create the shoegaze band’s massive wall of sound. Released in the early ‘90s, the ShredMaster is a simple distortion pedal that packs a serious punch. “We wanted it to be like ‘Planet Telex’ off’ The Bends, a start that’s not really anything like the rest of the album”, Colin Greenwood told Melody Maker in 1997.” Key to this moment is the monstrous distortion of Jonny Greenwood’s Fender Telecaster Plus, boosted with a vast pedal board that includes a device used on many Radiohead tracks: the Marshall ShredMaster. The unforgettable first guitar line of OK Computer crashes through the speakers like a speeding car. Below is seven of the most important pieces of gear that went into the making of the record, from an Akai sampler to a vintage Roland reverb unit. We were like, hey, we can just do what we want,” Godrich said in a 1997 interview of the recording process, which took six months and even used the acoustics of a ballroom for ‘Let Down’.ĭespite costing a small fortune, much of the gear that gives OK Computer its character was relatively inexpensive, allowing them to create everything from Jonny Greenwood’s contorting guitar squeals on ‘Paranoid Android’ to the eerie choral section on ‘Exit Music (For A Film). Parlophone reportedly gave the band and producer Nigel Godrich £100,000 to buy gear with, which they set up in the library of a Somerset manor house owned by actress Jane Seymour. On a sonic level, it was so experimental that their label Parlophone feared it wouldn’t sell. While many of their UK peers in the Britpop scene were mining the music of the ‘60s for inspiration, the instrumentation of OK Computer took a brave leap into the unknown.Įven by the standards of today’s cash-strapped music industry, OK Computer was expensive to make. Thom Yorke’s lyrics broke from the introspection of The Bends with its depiction of larger themes: technological anxiety, consumerism, political apathy and globalization. The one thing you don’t want to say to us is what we should do, because we’ll kick against that and do exactly the opposite.” “Everyone said, ‘You’ll sell 6 or 7 million if you bring out The Bends, Part 2,’ ” Ed O’Brien told Rolling Stone in 1997.
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In 1996, Radiohead entered the studio to record their third album with a clear objective in mind: to distance themselves from what Phil Selway called the “soul-searching” of The Bends. But how did the band craft the album’s dense collage of sound? 20 years on from the release of OK Computer, Scott Wilson picks out seven pieces of gear used to make the landmark LP. OK Computer marked a noticeable shift from the guitar-led anthems of The Bends towards the more experimental sound that would define Radiohead’s later music.