There's been chatter amongst certain quarters for a few months now that Thom Yorke was secretly brewing something that might be being put out by the iconic and influential electronic label Warp Records. Today that speculation was proven bang on the money with the release of Back In The Game - a deliriously intoxicating new single released in collaboration with Mark Pritchard, one of Warp's most illustrious artists.
Long a fan of the Warp Records roster, the Radiohead and the Smile frontman's first release on the label marks a homecoming of sorts.
The strident, electronic menace of the track's spiky and tuba-like bass motif gives way to a captivating vocal from Thom. Its vibe recalls several key Radiohead cuts, and also underscores how much the influence of Warp's biggest acts have had on Yorke over the years.
But it's also a track that Yorke-heads might already be familiar with, as it was performed on the first night of the 'Everything' solo tour in Christchurch, New Zealand in October last year. It subsequently became a setlist regular as the tour continued.
This final studio version though, is nothing short of masterful. From the horror movie-like screeching strings and the tension-rising bubbling synth pulses of the intro, the track's arrangement unravels into a captivating synergy of electronic instruments and interweaving sounds that - in conjunction with Thom's vocal melody - bury themselves deep in your head.
The song marks the third time that Thom and former half of Global Communication, Mark have become creatively intertwined, following Pritchard's remix of Radiohead's Bloom in 2011, and their first fully-fledged collab on Pritchard's Beautiful People which appeared on his 2016 studio album, Under The Sun.
Much like their approach to that track, the new single finds Mark processing Thom's vocals via a H910 Harmonizer - one of the very first digital effect tools - to create a recognisable vocal flavour. It takes us back to Yorke's processed, re-amped vocals that permeated the Warp-inspired Kid A way back in 2000. It all adds to the feeling that this marks a strange kind of arriving at a destination he was always heading toward.
Perhaps that sense of homecoming informed the tracks' lyrics, which include the line, “Good to have you back sir where you been?”
Back In The Game is accompanied by, what can only be described as a nightmare-stoking video, in which several psychedelic characters march in unison wearing large paper-mache-like heads, fixed in odd expressions.
The video, directed by visual luminary Jonathan Zawada was directly inspired by the quirky arrangement.
As Zawada explains, "On first hearing the original demo of Back In The Game, I was immediately struck by the deranged bassline that made me think of the final scene of Staying Alive where John Travolta is cockily strutting through the New York streets but I saw it with a more sinister overlay."
Jonathan continues; "slowly a version of that visual arose around a character wearing a kind of giant parade head with a fixed expression of mania stuck on their face, such that you couldn't tell if their endless march was one of aggression or celebration. The more I paid attention to the lyrics the more details began to fill themselves out and the overall concept began to form of parade of many characters marching past a building from within which everything was being thrown out of a window and into a giant bonfire.
"Ultimately the film for Back In The Game ended up depicting a sort of blind celebration taking place as civilisation slowly deteriorates around it, a kind of progression through regression. Overlaid onto this is an exploration of how and where we choose to place value in our collective cultural expression and how we collectively confront major cultural shifts in the 21st century."
We can't get enough of it - It's the sound and vision of three truly great artists uniting to say something provocative about the state of our relationship with art. It's also a pretty infectious listen.
The single is available to stream here now, and we can't help but wonder what a future collaboration between Pritchard and Yorke (and Zawada) might yield.
Our fingers remain tightly crossed for more in this vein…
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