| by: | Nov 2, 2000 |
Rather than promoting their latest record, Kid A, increasingly experimental British rockers Radiohead opted to promote the album via UK TV spots and 'blipverts' on British television.
Perhaps it was the fact that no single was released along with Kid A, reflecting the somewhat anti-consumeristic stance adopted by the best-selling five man rock combo. The band consists of Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Colin Greenwood, Ed O'Brien and Phil Selway, and records for Parlophone Records.
The blips were created by two British animation/design teams, the Vapour Brothers and Shynola. The blips are sonic representations of the avant-garde electro-intensive soundscapes dominating Kid A,
"We hadn't seen any inspiring pop promo work," says Gent (who also creative directs videos for Mansun, Radiohead, Supergrass, Morgan, Turin Breaks, Playgroup, Kings of Convenience Simian and Leila.) "Well over a year ago, Colin Greenwood thought it would be good to do TV advertising, but not the standard record commercial."
The first idea was to parody big-budget automotive style commercials. Gent says art director Walter Campbell (of Guinness fame) was approached to do creative, but ultimately, the concept of a serious car-style ad with a Radiohead twist at the end proved too heavy handed for both she and the band.
"We sat down with the script and after three hours or so, we realized it would look like we were trying to be so ridiculously ironic," says Gent. The group then siezed upon the idea of using the visuals created for Radiohead Webcasts created by the Vapour Brothers (Chris and Tim Bran).
"The Webcasts captured where the boys were at, where their heads were and what the music was about," says Gent. "Then we said, why don't we make loads of lo-fi ads that are experimental. Chris Bran cut the webcast stuff down into 30-second blips and they worked brilliantly."
Shynola was then given the brief and based upon conversations with album art designer Stanley Dunwood, the North London animation house (Gideon Baws, Jason Groves, Chris Harding and Richard Kenworthy) and the Vapour Brothers created about 80 blips.
"We got a copy of the album and then Stanley Dunwood, who did the artwork on the last three albums gave us a talk about what he was hoping to get out of it," says Baws. "We started doing ones that were moving representations of the cover and as we got further into it we started doIng stuff suggested by weirder elements, like all the bear stuff."
Baws is referring to the simple bear image appearing on the album and promotional material for Kid A. Although the album has an anti-commercial edge, the Bear ended up being something of a tag or logo for the band.
"They just wanted to see what they liked. We just showed them finished stuff rather than working out storyboards. We finished ours about two months ago. Radiohead is a band that's been going for ten years and has a real strong visual identity. They didn't want to do anything they've done before," explains Baws. One experimental set of images was not used however: "The ones where we put ourselves naked into the background they didn't use."
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