Kid A - Recording and Production

Recording and Production

When Radiohead began work on the album early in 1999, the members had differing ideas as to the musical direction they should take. Guitar player Ed O'Brien wanted to strip the band's style down to direct, three-minute guitar pop songs, while Yorke felt their past efforts with rock music had "missed the point". Yorke said he had "completely had it with melody. I just wanted rhythm". Yorke had been a DJ and part of a techno band at Exeter University, and began to listen almost exclusively to electronic music, saying, "I felt just as emotional about it as I'd ever felt about guitar music". He liked the idea of his voice being used as an instrument rather than having a leading role in the album.

Work began on Kid A with OK Computer producer Nigel Godrich, without a deadline from the label. Yorke, who had the greatest control within the band, was still facing writer's block. His new songs were incomplete, and some consisted of little more than a drum machine rhythm and lyric fragments he had drawn from a hat. The band rehearsed briefly and began recording at a studio in Paris, but rejected their work after a month and moved to Medley Studios in Copenhagen for two weeks. Some music from early 1999 was incorporated into the album, often unrecognisable from its original form ("In Limbo", originally known as "Lost at Sea", dates from this time). According to band members, the period was largely unproductive.

O'Brien began to keep an online studio diary of the band's progress. In 2003, he told the Chicago Tribune:

We had to come to grips with starting a song from scratch in the studio and making it into something, rather than playing it live, rehearsing it and then getting a good take of a live performance. None of us played that much guitar on these records. Suddenly we were presented with the opportunity and the freedom to approach the music the way Massive Attack does: as a collective, working on sounds, rather than with each person in the band playing a prescribed role. It was quite hard work for us to adjust to the fact that some of us might not necessarily be playing our usual instrument on a track, or even playing any instrument at all. Once you get over your insecurities, then it's great.

He later described Radiohead's change in style during this period: "If you're going to make a different-sounding record, you have to change the methodology. And it's scary — everyone feels insecure. I'm a guitarist and suddenly it's like, well, there are no guitars on this track, or no drums". Drummer Phil Selway also found it hard to adjust to the recording sessions.

In April 1999 recording resumed in a Gloucestershire mansion before moving to the band's long-planned studio in Oxford, which was completed in September 1999. In line with Yorke's new musical direction, the band members began to experiment with different instruments, and to learn "how to be a participant in a song without playing a note". The rest of the band gradually grew to share Yorke's passion for synthesised sounds. They also used digital tools like Pro Tools and Cubase to manipulate their recordings. O'Brien said, "everything is wide open with the technology now. The permutations are endless". By the end of the year, six songs were complete, including the title track.

Early in 2000 Jonny Greenwood, the only Radiohead member trained in music theory, composed a string arrangement for "How to Disappear Completely", which he recorded with the Orchestra of St. John's in Dorchester Abbey. He played ondes Martenot on the track,, as well as on "Optimistic" and "The National Anthem". Yorke played bass on "The National Anthem" (known during the sessions as "Everyone"), a track Radiohead had once attempted to record as a B-side for OK Computer. Trying it again for Kid A, Yorke wanted it to feature a Charles Mingus-inspired horn section, and he and Jonny Greenwood "conducted" the jazz musicians to sound like a "traffic jam". Jonny Greenwood and his brother Colin also began experimenting with sampling their own and other artists' music. One such sample yielded the basic track for "Idioteque", which Yorke sang over. Despite their change in direction, Colin Greenwood still described Radiohead as being a rock band. Jonny Greenwood summarised their recording sessions for Kid A:

I don't remember much time playing keyboards. It was more an obsession with sound, speakers, the whole artifice of recording. I see it like this: a voice into a microphone onto a tape, onto your CD, through your speakers is all as illusory and fake as any synthesizer—it doesn't put Thom in your front room—but one is perceived as 'real' the other, somehow 'unreal'... It was just freeing to discard the notion of acoustic sounds being truer.

Radiohead finished recording during the spring of 2000, having completed almost 30 new songs. Preferring to avoid a double album, the band saved many of the songs for their next release, the 2001 album Amnesiac. Yorke obsessed over potential running orders and the band argued over the track list, reportedly bringing them close to a break-up. It was eventually decided that Kid A would begin with "Everything in Its Right Place". Yorke felt the song, which was written on a piano and computer, was most representative of the new record, and initially wanted to release it as a single. Final mixing was completed by Godrich, and mastering of Kid A took place at London's Abbey Road Studios under Chris Blair.