Kid A was Radiohead’s fourth studio album, following the wildly successful OK Computer full-length, the wake of which found Thom Yorke and gang in a state that led them down a path culminating in a willingness to diverge from traditional rock music – not only musically but also as far as packaging and artwork is concerned, the latter of which saw Yorke join forces with Stanley Donwood.
Donwood’s paintings, collages and scrawls, drawn with sticks and knives, served as a foundation which were then photographed and manipulated via emerging technologies like Photoshop, conceptually informed by the statistics of a website zeroing in on climate change and its implications, ultimately resulting in the cover artworks, one of which was depicting a mountain range, along with a myriad of other subtle references.
As the portmanteau Kid A Mnesia alludes to, what we got here is an artbook that sheds light not only on the actual art of both the Kid A and Amnesia albums but explanations on the process behind what was recorded, framed and contextualised by illuminating exchanges between Tom Yorke and Stanley Donwood, the thoughts of which are further elaborated on via a collection of essays.
Given the meticulous attention to detail every facet of Radiohead’s cosmos is paid to, it should not come as a surprise that the book does not only look great but also is a texturally nice experience with quality source materials being used.
Comprised of more than three hundred artworks, Kid A Mnesia is a veritable artbook that chronicles Yorke’s and Donwood’s idiosyncratic look at the world at the dawn of a new millennium and one that adds three-dimensional depth to the written and drawn ideas that helped inform the creative process spawning two iconic albums.
