Thom Yorke Creates 18-Day Ambient Soundtrack for Art Exhibit

BY Alex HudsonPublished May 22, 2015

Eat your heart out, the Flaming Lips. While the Oklahoma band famously recorded a 24-hour song a few years ago, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has now one-upped them by putting together an ambient soundtrack for an art exhibit that lasts for 18 days.

The art exhibit, entitled The Panic Office, is by Stanley Donwood, who has served as Radiohead's primary visual collaborator since the '90s. (He's also done the art for Yorke's solo work and Atoms for Peace.)

The Panic Office opened yesterday (May 21) at Carriageworks in Sydney Australia, and it runs until June 6. There are thousands of pieces of art on display, including visuals from various Radiohead and Yorke-related projects. There's also previously unseen work.

Yorke's soundtrack for the exhibit is called Subterranea. It's made up of ambience sounds and field recordings and, according to a press release [via Triple J], "no minute is the same over the 18 days." The soundtrack is apparently broken up into three parts: "subs will boom from the floor, mids will echo through the walls, while the highs rain down from the ceiling."

There are reportedly no plans to release the score commercially, but close to four minutes of music can be previewed in this video tour of the exhibit.

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