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Strung Out On OK Computer: The String Quartet Tribute to Radiohead

BY Scott ReidPublished Mar 1, 2005

It’s no secret that OK Computer continues to be one of the most celebrated art-rock records of the ’90s, if not all-time, cementing Radiohead’s universal adoration by college students and indie-rock obsessors alike in a manner not seen since Nirvana. So it figures it would leave a wasteland of tributes and imitators in the decade following its release, and Strung out on OK Computer, though by far the best of its kind, suffers the same extremely limited shelf-life. The four-instrument team (a couple of violins, a viola and a cello) is talented enough to tackle the monumental task of re-arranging a record like OK Computer into its simplest parts, but that very task is the homage’s biggest problem. What made OK Computer so influential in the first place was the newness of its many sonic textures and immense emotional breadth. Here, each song blends uniformly into the next, and while it may still be a dream come true for clichéd college film-makers everywhere, even Radiohead’s biggest obsessors will find little reason to pull this out more than once.
(Vitamin)

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