On their debut album, Thom Yorke sang anyone can play guitar, but by the turn of the century, Radiohead had grown so disillusioned with that instrument they decided to relegate it to the background. The result of this six string banishment was the icy follow-up to the widely lauded Ok Computer, 2000s Kid A. Feeling that rock music had run its course, Thom Yorke started listening to other genres of music, and these would come to have a huge influence over Kid A: avant-garde jazz, Krautrock, and the artists of Warp Records The jazz influence is most clear on The National Anthem, the horns on which the band wanted to sound like Charles Mingus. The songs memorable bass line was played on record by Yorke himself rather than bassist Colin Greenwood, and its said he wrote the riff when he was just 16. Warp Records crept in most notably on Idioteque, pared down from a 50 minute long drum pattern (with added chaos) created by Jonny Greenwood. When the album arrived, it confounded fans who wanted more guitar, but critics loved it, and Pitchfork famously gave it 10 out of 10. Though it may not be their best album, it remains their most important, laying the groundwork for the bands future.
