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2021-04-05
This is just a quick appreciation post for Radiohead's minidisc recordings from the OK Computer era which leaked in 2019.
Radiohead released a 20th anniversary edition of OK Computer in 2017. This release came with about an hour's worth of some previously unheard material like demos from the album's recording sessions. My guess is that somewhere along the process of them going through all their old archives and selecting recordings worthy of release, someone who had access to some of these archives pulled down copies for their own collection.
News of this finally broke in 2019 when someone on a music collecting forum claimed to have over 16 hours of unheard Radiohead OK Computer recordings in their possesion. They were hoping to sell these recordings or get offered a trade for other equally rare music, so to prove that they actually had these recordings they released very short snippets of some of their collection's highlights.
Fans went nuts as you can probably guess. Even from the short snippets, some early drafts of songs that wouldn't see studio releases until years or even decades later were identified. There also seemed to be plenty of live recordings and completely unheard material. The collection was legitimate.
It wasn't long before the owner of the recordings gave in to fans and made the entire collection available for download. Over 16 hours of early drafts, demos, live shows, rehearsals, and alternate mixes were now out in the open. Fans went to work right away trying to indentify and organize the songs they could, but others held back and expressed concern over how wrong listening to these stolen recordings felt.
It didn't take too long for music sites to start covering everything that was happening and the band to catch wind of it. Their reaction: officially release the leaked recordings themselves through a limited time Bandcamp release with the proceeds going to climate change activism.
I've been going through these recordings the past few days with the new rumors that the band is getting ready for another special 20th anniversary release. Admittedly most of the minidisc collection is pretty uninteresting for anyone less than a hardcore fan. But there's a lot of gems in here and I think it's pretty special to be able to hear early versions of songs. Because the collection is so massive, you can really get a feel for how the entire OK Computer album evolved and came to be. This collection feels like a piece of history, like browsing a museum.
There's even several unicorn recordings in here -- long sought after recordings that were only rumored to possibly exist somewhere before they eventually surfaced with this minidisc leak. One example is Lift, a song that was only ever heard live on rare occasions, which curiously can be found in the leak with a near final mix that was never released for some reason. Another one is a full band rehearsal of True Love Waits, which was first heard live in 1995 but didn't see a studio release as a solo piano piece until 2016. It's a bit more obvious why this one was scrapped for so long -- the full band version definitely didn't live up to the hype.
It would be neat to see Radiohead somehow acknowledge the interest in this type of material if they've been working on a special 20th anniversary edition of Kid A / Amnesiac. Who knows. There was a reference or two to material from the OK Computer minidisc leak in the teaser video they uploaded a few days ago.
- moddedBear