'Radiohead: The Best Of' DVD to be Released June 3 by Capitol/EMI
Companion To 'Radiohead: Best Of' CD, Special Edition 2-CD, Quadruple Vinyl
LP & Digital Releases Features 21 Videos, Including 9 Making DVD Release
Debuts
HOLLYWOOD, Calif., April 15 -- Parlophone Records and
Capitol Records have announced that the much anticipated CD, 2-CD,
quadruple vinyl LP and digital release, Radiohead: The Best Of will also be
available June 3 as a DVD video collection. The collection's details are
announced today. 21 videos are featured on the new Radiohead: The Best Of
DVD, including "Just," "Street Spirit," "Karma Police," "Paranoid Android,"
"No Surprises," "Knives Out," "Pyramid Song" and "There There." The DVD
also includes the more experimental visuals created for Radiohead songs not
released as singles, and nine videos make their DVD release debuts on the
new collection.
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080415/LATU106)
The story of Radiohead is not solely about the band's extraordinary
music. Radiohead has also made some of the greatest music videos of all
time. Working with music video's most innovative directors, including
Jonathan Glazer, Michel Gondry, Jamie Thraves, Shynola, Jake Scott, Sophie
Muller, Grant Gee, and others, the band's commitment to visual creativity
has resulted in some of the most memorable, groundbreaking and influential
music videos in the history of the medium.
Radiohead: The Best Of documents the band's huge contribution to music
video as an artform. The DVD features Radiohead's earliest videos,
including "Creep," which helped to propel the band's first single into a
massive hit in the U.S., as well as "Anyone Can Play Guitar" and "Pop Is
Dead."
Two different videos made for "High And Dry," the band's first single
from The Bends, are included, and the glossy production for "Fake Plastic
Trees," directed by Jake Scott (son of Ridley) when the band was still
arguably better-known in the States than in the U.K.
Also included is the run of great videos which began when Radiohead
chose to work with young English director Jamie Thraves, who had little to
his credit other than several acclaimed film school shorts. The result was
the band's first all-time classic video, for "Just." The genius of "Just"
lies in its unforgettable final twist, and the video broke new ground in
the way it subtly fused narrative with the band's performance. Thraves, who
has since directed more acclaimed videos, including Coldplay's "The
Scientist," and movies (The Lowdown and the forthcoming Cry Of The Owl),
also edited two other versions -- one all-narrative, another
all-performance -- in case it didn't work. "Just" has won awards and has
been named in numerous best ever videos polls -- and it was recently
parodied in the recent video for Mark Ronson's cover version.
Radiohead's next video would also win 'greatest ever' acclaim. For
"Street Spirit," the band teamed with top music video and commercials
director Jonathan Glazer. His work includes the video for Jamiroquai's
"Virtual Insanity," the Guinness "Surfer" commercial (voted the best ad of
all time) and he would then go on to direct movies like Sexy Beast.
Glazer's rigorous approach and intensity gelled with Thom Yorke, and the
result was a mesmerizing and groundbreaking video. Glazer captured the
hypnotic beauty of "Street Spirit" in his understated use of special
effects and, in particular, high-speed photography. The still-astonishing
trailer park-set video became a big award-winner, including Best Video of
1996 at British music video award show The CADS. Glazer later revealed that
Thom Yorke encouraged him to simplify his ideas for the video until the
slow motion footage became the backbone of the piece.
Radiohead and Glazer worked together again two years later on the video
for "Karma Police." With the director preparing to shoot his first movie,
the result was suitably cinematic: it's shot from the viewpoint of a
Cadillac driver bearing down on a man staggering down a road, with Thom
Yorke in the car's back seat. Something bad is going to happen, but there's
a scorching twist in the tale. As with "Street Spirit," the perfectionist
Glazer insisted on re-shoots before being satisfied with the results.
In between the two Glazer videos came an inspired departure for the
accompaniment to the hugely anticipated first single from third Radiohead
album OK Computer, "Paranoid Android." Instead of commissioning an
established video director, the band invited Swedish animator Magnus
Carlsson to make a surreal animated adventure featuring his cartoon slacker
character Robin.
The band became enthusiastic patrons of a new wave of groundbreaking
animation. Radiohead's experimental album Kid A produced no singles or
videos, but instead, 10-to 40-second animated 'blipverts' -- many created
by Shynola, a four-man group of computer animators not long out of film
school. When Radiohead released the more accessible Amnesiac, Shynola
directed the video for "Pyramid Song," a superb ultimately devastating
animation: a diver plunges into the sea from a concrete island to reveal a
city, his home, submerged below.
Radiohead subsequently collaborated with pioneering CGI artists Johnny
Hardstaff, who was given the freedom to make a single video for two tracks,
"Pull/Pulk Revolving Doors" and "Like Spinning Plates" (retitled "Push
Pulk/Spinning Plates"), and Alex Rutterford, who created a
computer-generated Thom Yorke for the promo for "Go To Sleep."
Radiohead has often given talented directors a crucial career
opportunity to prove themselves, with often stunning results. Some of the
work has challenged viewers' expectations of one of the world's biggest
bands, including Ed Holdsworth's hypnotic collection of urban landscapes
for "Sit Down Stand Up." But the band has also given established directors
the chance to express themselves in a different way.
Legendary video director Michel Gondry had just made his first movie
when he directed the video for "Knives Out," a characteristically
awe-inspiring, one-shot video tracking the breakdown of a relationship,
including a human version of the board game Operation. And the beautiful,
ghostly feel of "I Might Be Wrong" was created by Sophie Muller, more
generally found directing videos for the likes of Gwen Stefani and Beyonce,
shooting Thom and Jonny Greenwood on a no-lens pinhole camera.
While Radiohead's later videos may have tended toward the leftfield,
the video for "There There," the first single from Hail To The Thief,
directed by Bristol-based animation director Chris Hopewell, was arguably
the band's most popular and widely-seen video for years when it arrived in
2003. Part-Bagpuss, part-Brothers Grimm, it won the MTV Video Music Award
for Best Art Directed Video that year.
Radiohead has encouraged directors to interpret their music in a
singular fashion, and Thom Yorke in particular has been prepared to go to
great lengths to realise a great concept, as demonstrated with "No
Surprises," the final video from OK Computer. Director Grant Gee, who was
working with the band on their acclaimed documentary Meeting People Is
Easy, persuaded Thom into a helmet that fills up with water. It's an
unforgettable (and potentially very dangerous) one-shot video as the viewer
watches Thom hold his breath.
The new Radiohead: The Best Of DVD shows that Radiohead's music videos
have mirrored the band's inspired musical progression with rare and
extraordinary visual achievement.
Radiohead: The Best Of (DVD)
1. Creep (directed by Brett Turnbull)
2. Anyone Can Play Guitar (directed by Dwight Clarke)
3. Pop Is Dead (directed by Dwight Clarke)
4. Stop Whispering (directed by Jeff Plansker)
5. My Iron Lung (directed by Brett Turnbull)
6. High and Dry (UK version) (directed by David Mould)
7. High and Dry (US version) (directed by Paul Cunningham)
8. Fake Plastic Trees (directed by Jake Scott)
9. Just (directed by Jamie Thraves)
10. Street Spirit (Fade Out) (directed by Jonathan Glazer)
11. Paranoid Android (directed by Magnus Carlsson)
12. Karma Police (directed by Jonathan Glazer)
13. No Surprises (directed by Grant Gee)
14. Pyramid Song (directed by Shynola)
15. Knives Out (directed by Michel Gondry)
16. I Might Be Wrong (directed by Sophie Muller)
17. Push Pulk / Spinning Plates (directed by Johnny Hardstaff)
18. There There (directed by Chris Hopewell)
19. Go To Sleep (directed by Alex Rutterford)
20. Sit Down Stand Up (directed by Ed Holdsworth)
21. 2+2=5 (Live at Belfort Festival) (directed by Fabien Raymond)
Radiohead: The Best Of will be available in the following formats and
configurations:
-- a 1CD collection featuring 17 tracks
-- a Special Edition 2CD, adding 13 tracks
-- a 4-piece vinyl set with 29 tracks
-- 17-track & 30-track digital downloads
-- a DVD featuring 21 videos
All formats will be available for purchase from
http://www.radioheadstore.com.
40 Below Summer
