Thom Yorke - Cymbal Rush

try to build a wall that is high enough: Unlike many Thom Yorke/Radiohead songs, where several meanings and emotions can be read into the song, I believe that is one of the most inherently depressive and angsty songs Thom Yorke has made. It is literally unthinkable for me that somebody might see room for any sort of optimism or relief in this. The hectic electronic beat creates a deeply unsettling background on top of which the billowing synthesizer chords with their disharmonious overlaps unfold a particular disturbing power; it is obvious that something utterly traumatic is being recounted. Personally, I think that the song has lost some of its power in the live version that Thom Yorke plays, for example in the Henry Rollins Show, giving place to something closer to resignation and melancholia; therefore I saw it as a special challenge to try to capture the relentless pulsing of the original version and adapt it to the possibilities of the piano.
The song’s lyrics leave room for a wide range of interpretations – in some forums I have read people attaching meanings from natural disasters such as tsunamis/hurricanes or floods/climate change to war. I particularly liked a comment stating that this was about the end of the world – the song takes on a truly global dimension then, as the end of the world would be something that concerns every single last human being on the planet. However, the line “you should a took me out when you had the chance” clearly signals that whatever the happening, it is to some degree the fault of human beings, at least insofar that they did not act to take out the pending danger that could have been avoided. From what I know about the Third Reich, the lyrics could incidentally be read as a take on the Holocaust (or any instance of genocide) particularly well, too: Many signs of what the Nazis were planning could be noted from early on during their reign, so people started emigrating, warning others to do the same; others who, however, would not “get off the rug”, who tried “to build a wall that is high enough”, ignored the hints of disaster and eventually perished. SA stormtroopers and the SS customarily destroyed Jewish shops and synagogues – especially during the “Kristallnacht”, while the owners would have tried “to save their house”. “Saving their songs” can be interpreted quite literally too, or with the songs representing cultural identity, as much of the Jewish folk song repertoire was lost during the time of the Nazi reign, and only some of it has been recovered by researchers in areas to where Jews had emigrated. The line “try to run, but it follows you up a hill” takes on a particularly gruesome dimension when we think of all the Jews who “tried to run” to Germany’s neighbouring countries, only to be “followed up a hill” when these countries where later invaded by the “Wehrmacht” and further deportations took place. “Ten in a bed” could then refer to either the inhuman conditions in the concentration camps or to accounts of Jews who were hiding in secret cellars and attics; as the line is taken from a children’s song the contrasting new context accounts for an especially shocking juxtaposition. There are many stories of Arians who would not help Jewish people who had been their friends before; these could be the “losers who turned away”. Clearly, the Holocaust as a nightmarish scenario of industrialized mass murder would explain how there can be no room for hope in this song. At the same time I believe that the song’s lyrics are intended to leave room for any kind of interpretation; anybody who has ever written a song before might know how the musician many times starts out with a mood that he seeks to express rather than a definite and clear picture. What is clear though, is that the song deals with some kind of traumatic experience; scientific research has shown that normal experiences are categorized and thereby quasi “filed/made sense of” when stored by our memory, whereas traumatic experience can never be processed in that way and return always with the same intensity and realness as when it was first experienced. Thus, traumatic memories can never belong to the past, but always belong to the present. And clearly, witnessing terrible things happening to “our loved ones” is the one thing in the world that exceeds the sum of all harm that can be inflicted on us ourselves.

At The Drive-In - Non Zero Possibility

this hex was delivered spent: When I first started listening to At The Drive-In five years ago, I liked them because I thought the vocal style was similar to the one of Rage Against The Machine’s Zack de la Rocha: This was like Rage Against The Machine with a melody! I bought Relationship Of Command and it was only after some time that I started to discover the many layers within the songs and the unique aesthetics of At The Drive-In’s songwriting; there was something always a bit “off” about the melodies and riffs, making them sound at the same time familiar, but with a certain edge to it that I had never heard in any other band. Only much later when I started playing some of their stuff on guitar, I discovered what I believe to be the reason for this; at first I thought of At The Drive-In as the “neoclassicists” of rock music, as we had recently learned in school about neoclassicism in classical music. One of the principles to be found for example in P. Hindemith’s music was the so-called “emancipation of the interval”, meaning that an interval could now be a characteristic feature that was elaborated on, largely unfettered by harmonic limitations. Thus you find a characteristic motive that seems familiar itself, but is contrasted and combined with other melodic lines in ways that appear unusual to our ears. A successful concept indeed that can be applied to many areas: recently I went to a rather successful modern-style Korean restaurant and I found the grilled meat to be just familiar enough to be easily enjoyable, yet some other ingredients gave it the certain edge that turned it into something special. At The Drive-In’s music is similar: In songs like Pattern Against User or One-Armed Scissor we hear guitar licks that are very close to what we are used to while contrasting them with chords that you will not find in any guitar book, using lots of open strings or handy fingerings. The result is what I like to call the “Gestalt effect” of music. I am not an expert on Gestalt psychology, but just to get an idea take a look at the picture.
You will probably see a white triangle, even though the visual information consists only of three incomplete circles: Due to its organizing qualities, our brain tends to structure information into patterns that make sense, deliberately completing the picture into something familiar. The phenomenon is sometimes referred to as “a whole being greater than the sum of its parts”. Again, very true concerning the music of At The Drive-In. When I first started playing it on guitar I was rather disappointed by the “parts”: What I played sounded disharmonious and not nearly as awesome as the riff that blasted from the speakers. Were the tabs wrong? No, this was definitely the way of playing it, I could tell that. So it turns out that many of At The Drive-In’s awesome melodies, riffs, licks etc. are a “great whole”. This is not unusual in every kind of music of course, as a combination of voices almost universally creates a richer texture. What is special about At The Drive-In then, is that much of their music sounds totally DIFFERENT when one part is played alone or just at a different speed than usual. So in the first place, the music creates a new “Gestalt effect” as soon as it reaches a certain tempo which is pretty amazing and not at all common in rock music; I can think of an example in classical music though – if you listen to G. Gould’s performance (very slow) of the first movement of Beethoven’s Appassionata Sonata and compare it to any other performance of that piece, you will know what I mean. Yet, this is not where At The Drive-In’s awesomeness ends. I have repeatedly noticed that my brain tricked my into believing I was hearing certain melodic shapes in At The Drive-In’s songs, only to find on a closer listening that they were absolutely NOT THERE. For example, I always perceived the melodic contour of the phrase “This hex was delivered spent” as being arched, until I transcribed the song and realized that the melody was rather moving back and forth between two notes. Now what is so awesome about all this is that while I may understand how a Gestalt effect can take place in music I find it hard to imagine how you can possibly put it there on purpose. And there are so many examples that it rules out a mere coincidence. So even though I mostly listen to music other than rock nowadays, this is why At The Drive-In will always be up there among my top five favorite rock bands.