Idioteque

"Idioteque" is a song by the English rock band Radiohead, featured as the eighth track from their 2000 album Kid A. Although never released a single as with all other songs on the album, it has since become one of the band's most famous and popular songs amongst critics and fans. The song has been played at nearly every concert since 2000. The song is listed at #8 on Pitchfork Media's top 500 songs of the 2000s, and ranked #56 on Rolling Stone's 100 Best Songs of the 2000s.

In 2008, the song was featured on Radiohead: The Best Of, a compilation album.

Background and recording

According to Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke, "Idioteque wasn't my idea at all; it was Jonny's. Jonny handed me this DAT that he'd... he'd gone into our studio for the afternoon... and, um, the DAT was like 50 minutes long, and I sat there and listened to this 50 minutes. And some of it was just "what?", but then there was this section of about 40 seconds long in the middle of it that was absolute genius, and I just cut that up and that was it...". Musically, Idioteque is driven by a repeating electronic beat and a four-chord synth progression sampled from an experimental computer music piece Mild und Leise recorded by Paul Lansky in 1973.