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Jon Quijano

The website of St. Croix Valley photographer and storyteller Jon Quijano

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130. "How to Disappear Completely" by Radiohead

I love the sequence where the band drops out, leaving the orchestra and Thom Yorke's vocal swirling around each other into increasing disarray, until the cacophony gets spliced out and replaced with the band once again at a distinctly softer dynamic. It's a great jump cut at a dramatic moment.

So much of Radiohead's effectiveness rests not on their diverse instrumentation, soundscapes, song construction, or any of these other touted aspects, but simply on the creativity of bass lines played by Colin Greenwood. His bro Johnny gets more spotlight. But while Johnny is creating intermittent guitar whale song here, it is Colin's looping duplet bass line that acts as the song's compelling core. 

Many bassists are assigned supporting roles, holding root notes and asked to just provide a steady, nonintrusive low end. Colin Greenwood, by contrast, devises melodies in his bass lines that are independent of any other ideas in Radiohead songs and contribute as much as any other lead instrument. Without his parts, many songs would be left with chasms. There are notable examples of this I'll eventually point out in other Radiohead entries, but here is an underrated one.

This is the original music video, now with more than one million views, but it has been remastered and can be viewed at high resolution with all music videos by director David Herrera here: https://vimeo.com/channels/rebus101 It was named by Paste Magazine as one of the Best Music Videos Of The Decade: http://www.pastemagazine.com/blogs/lists/2009/11/apologies-to-kanye-but-while.html "Like" David Herrera on Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/rebus101 For music video project inquiries contact David Herrera's Production Company: http://www.rebus101.com *NO FREE MUSIC VIDEO REQUESTS!
Thursday 06.15.17
Posted by Jon Quijano
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