Album Review: Atoms For Peace - Amok

Is anything Thom Yorke touches capable of being released without torrents of hype being associated with it? Probably not. At least not now. And it's with this that Amok, the sort of follow-up to 2006's The Eraser, drops, now with full band in tow. Though you wouldn't know it. Outside of the auspiciously funky opening tune, Before Your Very Eyes…, the album certainly sounds like the Yorke and (longtime Radiohead producer) Nigel Godrich Show, but this is hardly to the record's detriment.

The majority of the album presents minimal percussion and beat-driven verse-chorus techno, with ever-gorgeous keyboard or guitar appearing to highlight the tone conveyed in Yorke's mid-to-high range vocals, which are as often as not used as a musical tool as well. It's all typically great and remarkably straightforward compared to Yorke's recent electronica guest spots. Godrich's headphone-centric approach to sonics is present all over this release, with more subtle beats and rhythms revealing themselves on repeated listens, especially on powerful centrepiece tracks Dropped and Unless.

Amok is the logical extension of Yorke's solo material and electronic passions, in both ideals and musicality. The more electro-loving Radiohead fans will eat this up with good reason as it's a great record; it's the sound of a group with nothing to prove and no promises to fulfil, making music for the joy of it. It doesn't take anyone familiar with Radiohead, Four Tet or Burial to anywhere they haven't already been, but that hardly matters. This is a pleasant, occasionally excellent, danceable and quasi-experimental record, and is sure to satisfy those wanting more Thom Yorke – even if time is likely to see this as a stop-gap between more major releases.