radiohead 'morning mr magpie' & 'bloom' rmxs

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The Radiohead summer remix series continues with reworks of The King Of Limbs tracks "Morning Mr Magpie" and "Bloom." This is the second release in an ongoing series — the first included mixes of "Little By Little" and "Lotus Flower."

Nathan Fake's remix of "Morning Mr Magpie" is really quite wonderful and gives the previously guitar driven track a whole new life:




The first of two "Bloom" remixes by Mark Pritchard is entitled the "Harmonic 313 RMX." It's got one of the coolest extended fades I've ever heard:




Finally, the "Bloom (Mark Pritchard RMX)" gives Thom some killer vocal effects:




This 12" will be available in the UK on Monday, but delays will keep it out of the hands of US and Canadian fans until August 2nd. And Radiohead confirms that once this series is done, there will be an aggregated CD release. Get details here.

radiohead: the king of limbs comes early

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That Radiohead, always keeping us guessing. If you haven't already listened to the 8-song album The King Of Limbs about 5 times through, you should know it was digitally released this morning — a day ahead of the date announced earlier this week.

On the Radiohead continuum, album number eight seems to slide in somewhere between Kid A and Amnesiac. Those of us hoping for a companion piece to In Rainbows will be downloading disappointment.

The experimental vibe, brief run time and relative haste in which it was released suggest it's a stopgap — perhaps a glorified EP. But then Radiohead are no longer bound by record company convention, evidenced by the elaborate "Newspaper Album" package to come May 19th.

So what of The King Of Limbs? A video for the song "Lotus Flower" was also released today, featuring Thom alone in an industrial basement pantomiming and pop-n-locking his little heart out:



That tune kicks off the B-side of the album, as you can see below:

1. Bloom
2. Morning Mr. Magpie
3. Little By Little
4. Feral
5. Lotus Flower
6. Codex
7. Give Up The Ghost
8. Separator

"Bloom" is a train wreck of an opener, with chopped drum samples and incessant loops. The rest of side A is quite satisfying, however, beginning the with the herky jerky "Morning Mr. Magpie":




"Little By Little" is a classic Radiohead acoustic jam:




And "Feral" is an appropriately named return to weirdness:




The other track worth noting is the album closer, "Separator." Probably the closest Thom has ever come to writing a ballad:




So what do you think? Probably worth the 9 bucks for an MP3 download. It is Radiohead after all.

UPDATE — Stream the entire album here to fully try before you buy: