"Idioteque" is a song by the English rock band Radiohead, released on their fourth album, Kid A (2000). Radiohead developed it while experimenting with modular synthesisers. It contains samples of two 1970s computer music compositions.
The Radiohead singer, Thom Yorke, described "Idioteque" as "an attempt to capture that exploding beat sound where you're at the club and the PA's so loud, you know it's doing damage".[6]
The song began with an electronic rhythm created by Jonny Greenwood.[7] Greenwood created a drum machine using synthesiser modules similar to those available in the 1970s, using components such as filters to create and shape sounds.[7] Feeling the rhythm "needed chaos", he experimented with found sounds and sampling.[7] He recorded 50 minutes of improvisation and gave it to Yorke, who took a short sequence and used it to write the song.[8] Yorke said: "Some of it was just 'what?', but then there was this section of about 40 seconds long in the middle of it that was absolute genius, and I just cut that up."[8]
As with other songs on Kid A, Yorke created lyrics by cutting up phrases and drawing them from a hat.[9] In the second chorus, his vocals are rearranged so that he seems to say "the first of the children" in 5/4, creating a grouping dissonance against the original 4/4 chorus.[10]
Samples
Radiohead sampled this portion of "Mild und leise", a 1973 computer music composition by Paul Lansky, for "Idioteque".
Greenwood could not remember where the four-chord synthesiser phrase had come from, and assumed he had played it himself. He later realised he had sampled it from "Mild und leise", a computer music piece by the American composer Paul Lansky. Lansky wrote "Mild und leise" during 1973–74 at Princeton University on an IBM mainframe computer using Music 360[11] and FM synthesis. It was released on the 1976 compilation Electronic Music Winners,[12] which Greenwood discovered in a second-hand record shop while Radiohead were touring the US.[13]
Lansky allowed Radiohead to use the sample after Greenwood wrote to him with a copy of "Idioteque".[7] In an essay about the experience, Lansky wrote that he found Radiohead's use of the sample "imaginative and inventive" and that he had himself "sampled" the chord progression by using the Tristan chord.[13] "Idioteque" also samples another composition from Electronic Music Winners, "Short Piece", by Arthur Kreiger,[12] who became a professor of music at Connecticut College.[14]
Reception
The critic Simon Reynolds wrote that "Idioteque" "does for the modern dance what PiL and Joy Division's 'She's Lost Control' did for disco. Call it bleak house or glum 'n' bass, but the track works through the contrast between Yorke's tremulous hyperemotionality and the rigid grid of rhythm."[15][6][16] Keith Cameron of NME wrote that despite its "naff" title and "gauche" attempt at creating "garage-noir", "Idioteque" was "a nonetheless brilliantly persuasive two-step litany of paranoia, fear and unease. Yorke sings it like he means it."[17]
Tom Ewing of Freaky Trigger dismissed "Idioteque" as a "plain awful, a piss-poor" imitation of the 1999 Aphex Twin track '"Windowlicker", with "Yorke yammering excruciatingly over the top".[18] However, the Rock's Backpages reviewer Barney Hoskyns wrote that while "Idioteque" was arguably too derivative of Aphex Twin, it contributed "something irresistibly powerful to the [Aphex Twin] template".[19] Brent DiCrescenzo of Pitchfork wrote that it "clicks and thuds like Aphex Twin and Bjork's Homogenic, revealing brilliant new frontiers for the 'band'."[20] The Q reviewer Stuart Maconie wrote that listeners expecting a "cheesy ATB-style trance anthem" would be disappointed by the "whiny, metallic attack" and anxious refrain, resulting in a song that is "about as uplifting as Mandrax".[21]
"Idioteque" was named the eighth-best song of the decade by Pitchfork[22] and the 56th-best by Rolling Stone.[23] In 2018, Rolling Stone ranked it the 33rd-greatest song of the century so far.[24] In 2021 and 2024, Rolling Stone ranked "Idioteque" number 48 on its lists of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time", describing it as "the foreboding, spellbinding centrepiece of Kid A".[25][26]
↑ DeVille, Chris (2 October 2020). "Kid A Turns 20". Stereogum. Retrieved 16 February 2025. they were forced to grapple with 'Idioteque,' a glitchy two-chord electronic pop song that often sent Yorke spiraling into fits of preposterous dancing.
↑ Hoard, Christian; Weingarten, Christopher R.; Dolan, Jon; Leight, Elias; Spanos, Brittany; Exposito, Suzy; Grow, Kory; Grant, Sarah; Vozick-Levinson, Simon; Greene, Andy; Hermes, Will (28 June 2018). "100 Greatest Songs of the Century – So Far". Rolling Stone.
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