“Dear Father Christmas: It is years since i wrote to you. I hope this letter finds you well and that the snow is still continuing to fall up in lapland. Here it is mosly rain, not even jumper weather yet! But the christmas albums are already being played in the shops. That must be so embarrassing to you. I know this year will be exceptionally busy for you. We all expect a little too much of you now i think. And there are so many imposters on television. Even in the street. Since i wrote to you last when i was 9 i have tried to be good. But sometimes failed spectacularly. I have also tried to do what i’m told but often have delighted in doing the exact opposite but always i have tried to give love and try not to cause hurt. So
Dear father christmas
What i’m saying is .. Now that i’m 47. If i have any last remaining credit with you, i have just these small requests. That my kids have a beautiful christmas. With love and understanding and peace.
Perhaps some heavy snow? That would be really great.
And can you sent the precious things that will really mean something to them? And can you send them some hope for the future. That is very important. I won’t ask you to solve the problems of the human race. These are our problems alone. But perhaps this year you could consider not giving any presents to oil company executives and the politicans whose influence they buy? And for me? Just some reading glasses :/ the blue ones Yours completely sincerely Thom. P.S. Thanks for the zx81 computer when i was 11. That was really wicked.”
Music basically is like mathematics, you know. Um, you’re trying to form
patterns, patterns that make you understand what is around you and
patterns that, um, help you get through the next day. Like, when I
listen to the radio and stuff, when I hear a new piece of music that
I’ve, ya know, I’ve just got to get ahold of it because it’s helped. I
know it’s gonna help me through a particular thing until the next one,
it’s like life affirming. The whole point of music is it’s life
affirming.
(Thom Yorke)
Behind the scenes during the filming of the music video for Ingenue by Atoms For Peace, co-starring @fukistar and @thomyorke. The team also consisted of feature film director Garth Jennings and acclaimed choreographer @waynemcgregor. The video received a nomination at the Music Video Awards and the inaugural YouTube Music Awards.
Yorke explains how during
a Radiohead webcast a friend who was a film director got the idea for
a video of him dancing alone. ‘I began to laugh: no fucking way.’ The
drummer of the band kept insisting that it was a good idea and in the
end they ended up with Wayne McGregor because he had ‘experience with
people who can’t do anything, like me’. The two locked themselves in a
warehouse for a day. Yorke imitated the moves of the choreographer,
came up with his own variation that the choreographer then again
imitated. ‘It was like a conversation – I stopped thinking I was
dancing’.
Unfortunately, two days
later in the editing room the singer could only think one thing: this
can never see the light of day. 'I felt completely naked’. He was not
convinced easily. 'They kept saying that it was very powerful –
that I couldn’t see what they saw in it. In the end I trusted them
with it.’
Will Yorke’s new
electronic solo album at the start of next year be launched with
another dance video? No. 'I’ve seen a million of those videos’, he
laughs. 'I think the whole
dance-video-thing-with-singer-who-dances-badly has been milked
enough’. He is quiet for a moment. 'But now that I’ve said this I
will probably keep doing it my whole life.’
The Thom Yorke show was so damn fun. His
voice was on point and the visuals were beautiful. The crowd was really into it
and there was a good energy in the room. After the show, my friends and I hung
out outside the venue in the hopes of seeing or meeting him. We’d been waiting
for almost an hour and we were exhausted, cold, and hangry tbh. And just when I
was about to leave, he comes out. He took his time and signed things one by one
and when he got to me he talked started talking about his daughter taking a felting class (and my first thought was, “Wow, rich people on another level with it comes to leisure activities…) when she was a kid and how one of her pieces was his Twitter pic for
a while. I didn’t want to bombard him with compliments, mostly out of nerves, so I just said thank you
for everything and he smiled, nodded, said bye and moved on to the next person.
It was all super quick but when he was right in front of me, time slowed down.
I’m still in shock that it happened but I’m so grateful and so happy that I got
to meet essentially the most influential musician in my life <3
