Old Composer REACTS to Radiohead Pyramid Song | Composer Reaction & Breakdown

👀A heavy and emotional response to Pyramid Song👀

#radiohead #pyramidsong #musicreactions

Radiohead Reaction & Breakdown - The Decomposer Lounge

[MikeTaffet]

The strings were arranged by Johnny Greenwood who's one of the guitarists in the band. He's actually done some composing for film scores, including three Paul Thomas Anderson films.

[PooptyPoptyPip]

Amnesiac is criminally underrated and deserves multiple listens.

[waloacme]

I'll never forget the first time I heard this song, still the same experience 4 billion times after.

[ClearTheRubble]

Radiohead has been like a fine wine for me. I had heard bits and pieces of their music years ago, but hadn't fully "gotten it" yet. Now, suddenly, everything I hear by them seems to grab me by the throat emotionally. Especially this song. I was already along for the ride at the very beginning, but by the time the drums and the strings came in, I was flat-out weeping. I also found myself wondering how I could have not understood Radiohead before.

[markwebb]

I've always loved the way Phil's drumming sounds like it trips up into the song. Almost as if Phil can't quite find the timing either!

[AaronRadioStudio]

Try “Reckoner, ” “Nude” or “Weird Fishes” from the In Rainbows album

[mikefearon]

You can't over-goober when a song reminds you of your late dad. 🖤

[jmpnr]

Watching this guy’s face as he listens to music is enchanting.

[edenwinter]

This particular song is made to cause a visceral emotional response... it's like magic. It is a masterpiece

[davehiscoke]

This song is utterly unique....I still can't absorb it fully. It's crazy.

[monkeyfarm]

You'll fully decompose before you cover every amazing Radiohead song. :P

[adamgoodfellow]

I’ve never seen Radiohead, but I knew Colin Greenwood, their bass player, and shared drummers with Colin’s band when I was at Cambridge in 1988-91.

When our bands both played at a college ball, I remember watching Colin’s band. The other members of Radiohead weren’t at Cambridge and he was in a 3 piece with our drummer Andy, and a fantastic blues guitarist who I knew pretty well. This was Will Mazzarella (sp?) who was awesome. I’m a lead guitarist and I spent the whole time looking at Will, who sang and played like a virtuoso. I was sure if anyone I knew was going to “make it”, it’d be him. He was gorgeous, tall, charismatic, and cool as fuck.

But there was a tune they did where Colin did this astonishing, really out-there bass line. Maybe a bit like the bass on the “dinosaurs roamed the earth” track. Super hook, but not what you were expecting either.

Dan, my bass player, and I were slack jawed watching this. What the fuck, that isn’t a scale and I’ve no idea what he was playing.

We approached him afterwards and I said, what… how do you … what was that… type of thing.

Colin kind of said something, like, “I don’t know, you just find the note that is right. Play that one and then find the next note that wants to go there.” (Like that was going to help much!)

Same with this pyramid song with lyrics about a dream and the piano chords from heaven and that strange paused rhythm, lilting emphasis that is so addictive and gently pulled back to the loop as you surface every few bars, but there aren’t even any bars as you drift through the pleasure of surrendering to death. And the drum beat that isn’t a beat, that restarts your own heart and brings you back to the surface of the river, with the black-eyed angel singing to me.

Left university, didn’t keep in touch with Colin or Andy. (Pre social media so it wasn’t easy). For a couple of years since I’d come across them, Radiohead were this band I loved and I had completely eaten up “the bends” and “ok pc” and had no idea Colin was in the band. Then I bumped into Andy at a Neil Young gig. “Isn’t Colin doing well”, he goes…

Only problem is, I am going to need about 20 of their songs to be on the playlist for my funeral. The next person’s going to have to wait a while before they get cremated.

[killswitchhabib]

My father passed away when I was fairly young and I discovered this song not long afterwards. My throat still closes up every time I hear it, Such a hauntingly beautiful track.

[thedefiant]

Radiohead lead singer Thom Yorke wrote this & he based Pyramid Song on a song by the Jazz player Charles Mingus called "Freedom." This track originally contained handclaps, but the group didn't like how they came out and erased them. Radiohead performed this at some of their shows before releasing it on the album. It was known as "Egyptian Song."
Their albums Kid A and Amnesiac were recorded at the same time, but Amnesiac was released a few weeks later. In 2003, this was used in a public service announcement for forest fire prevention in the US. Radiohead never allows their music to be used for commercial purposes, but Thom Yorke thought this was a good cause so he let them use it for $1. This was written by Thom Yorke after a visit to an exhibition of Egyptian art, during a two-week sojourn in Copenhagen in 1999. He told MTV: "That song literally took five minutes to write, but yet it came from all these mad places. [It's] something I never thought I could actually get across in a song and lyrically. [But I] managed it and that was really, really tough. [Physicist] Stephen Hawking talks about the theory that time is another force. It's [a] fourth dimension and [he talks about] the idea that time is completely cyclical, it's always doing this [spins finger]. It's a factor, like gravity. It's something that I found in Buddhism as well. That's what Pyramid Song' is about, the fact that everything is going in circles." According to Colin Greenwood, it was the image of "people being ferried across the river of death" that most affected York. This is reflected in the song's many references to Dante's imaginary journey through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, Divine Comedy. These include the black-eyed angels, a moon full of stars and jumping into the river. Yorke hammered out this track's chord progression on a baby grand piano that he had bought, in rejection of Radiohead's guitar-led past. The siren - like sonic undertow was produced by Jonny Greenwood's ondes Martenot, an unusual Theremin-like device invented in 1928.

[jacobrohde]

17 years ago I heard this album alone in a hot tub in the middle of the night by the ocean and it’s been my favorite of all time ever since.

[heighleybaily]

Please paranoid Android, it is a real journey of a track. Was never keen on pyramid song back in the day, but I have a new appreciation for it now

[sigzil]

Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief are the most underrated Radiohead albums. Two of my favourites.

[zuzubaloo]

it's great to see you becoming ONE OF US. Radiohead is endlessly interesting in their composition. 'Where I End and You Begin' is still my vote, Geebz!

[kath]

Radiohead has been my constant for the past 23 years. Glad you're enjoying! Pyramid Song always makes me emotional. When I finally saw them live a few years ago I cried like a baby when they played it.

[candacecoopermullis]

Radiohead is very good at creating an atmospheric vibe that instantly brings me back to very specific points in time. Like hitting a mark anywhere on a dartboard that’s attached to not just memories but feelings. Some random & fleeting and some much deeper & emotional. Glad to see it’s a shared experience.