The Kid Amnesiac Mild & Quiet of Paul Lansky

Experience the full 18 minutes of what Radiohead sampled on “Idioteque”

Electronic Music Winners by Various Artists including Paul Lansky (Cover Art)

Only 45 seconds into this computer tape music from Paul Lansky recorded in 1973 is when it hits me at the right spot. Before I know where “Who’s in the bunker, who’s in the bunker? Women and children first. Women and children first…” comes from, it helps to know these idiosyncratic frequencies are straight from an IBM 360/91 mainframe and it is written using Barry Vercoe’s Music360 computer language. And yes, we all heard it on Radiohead’s “Idioteque”. But bringing you an original sample should not be synonymous with any preference. Kid A is still what Kid A is. The same album no one has ever dared to put as #2. The uncriticizable omnipotent that changed the way we all listen to music. It is a bold statement to claim if one disapproves of what the men from Oxfordshire did at the turn of the century, then that person is actually disapproving of music and is better off, well, listening to whatever he was listening to. But it’s true!

I have memories from both sides of this 27-year-old spectrum (from when Lansky conceived it to the solitary disco of “Idioteque”). On Radiohead’s side, the first time I rotated Kid A, it was only when Thom Yorke started singing on the third song “National Anthem” that I figured this is actually the…