After months of non-activity on Twitter Chieftan Mews returned for a brief tweet that was deleted within the hour but not before being retweeted by @MeToSpeak (thanks heaps!).
The Youtube link is to a video of R.E.M performing ‘It’s The End of The World As We Know It’
He also updated his Twitter cover to show a previously unpublished Stanley Donwood tree sketch
While at first glance to be just about Atoms for Peace the tweet is a satire of a recent hoax regarding Jonny Greenwood and the band heading to Brazil to await the end of the world.
On December 14th Jonny Greenwood posted the following to Dead Air Space:
In Sydney with the ACO
Just a few weeks left of the residency with the australian chamber orchestra – who are amazing. Hope the resulting music is worth all the trust they’ve put in me. Thanks, gut-scratchers….
The link takes you to a feature by NASA titled ‘Beyond 2012: Why the World Won’t End’ which was the summery of a Google+ Hangout with NASA on the 28th of November focused on disproving 2012 doomsday predictions.
The post is a response to a story run by The Daily Mail (The Newspaper..not the song) on the 13th reporting that Radiohead’s management had been forced to deny claims that Jonny Greenwood was in Brazil to await the end of the world.
Radiohead guitarist forced to deny hiding out at Brazilian hotel ‘waiting for Mayan prediction that the world will end’
Representatives of Radiohead today denied local media reports that the band’s guitarist Jonny Greenwood is hiding out in a rural Brazilian hotel to ‘wait for the end of the world’.
The hoax originated with local São Paulo newspaper Folha who co-incidentally happened to put the story up at 12/12/2012 – 12h12 either as a joke or a publicity stunt.
Chieftan describes himself as ‘Running amok near undisclosed location’
AMOK is the title of the upcoming Atoms for Peace album to be released on the 25th of February 2013.
(Source : Dead Air Space)
The cover and videoclip for the debut single Default features the Lost Angeles artwork by Stanley Donwood.
Wiki provides the following meaning of the phrase ‘ Running Amok’
Running amok, sometimes referred to as simply amok[1] (also spelled amuk, from the Malay meaning “mad with uncontrollable rage”) is a term for a killing spree perpetrated by an individual out of rage or resentment over perceived mistreatment. The syndrome of “Amok” is found in the DSM-IV TR.[2] The phrase is often used in a less serious manner in relation to someone or something that is out of control and causing trouble (e.g., a dog tearing up the living room furniture might be said to be running amok)
Bodysnatchin is a reference to Bodysnatchers, a song from In Rainbows.
With the Radiohead tour over for the year there is hope for a Atoms for Peace and/or Ultraista tour next year.. assuming Cheiftan Mews is wrong about it being the end of the world of course!
The image is taken directly from from Stanley Donwood’s website and consists of the Radiohead ‘Modified Bear’ logo combined with a photo of Lost Angeles which is on exhibition as of Tomorrow (April 28th, 2012) at Subliminal Projects in L.A
Lost Angeles
Stanley Donwood
Opening Reception: Saturday, April 28th • 8PM – 10 PM
There is no future. We have evicted ourselves from our own cities, rendered our agriculture poisonous, criminalized the poor, aggrandized the rich, honored the stupid and ridiculed the intelligent…I have no solutions, no wisdom to offer…Whilst Rome burns, I take up my little chisel and I carve a panoramic apocalypse of my own…and if you want to see it, you’re more than welcome. – Stanley Donwood, 2012
SUBLIMINAL PROJECTS is pleased to announce Lost Angeles, a solo exhibition of art by British artist Stanley Donwood.
Lost Angeles will feature a new body of work where Donwood turns his poignant perception on the impact of current societal trends and behavior towards Los Angeles. His visual meditation on society envelopes viewers in a beautifully, graphic landscape of impending doom. The fluid black and white scene resonates with honesty and forewarning. True to form, Donwood once again succeeds in giving flawless design to his version of our tragically flawed future.
On display will be an 18-foot apocalyptic panorama of the City of Angels being destroyed by fire, flood and meteor storm. Originally carved into 18 separate panels of linoleum then hand burnished onto Japanese Kozo paper, the never-before-seen, limited edition print was inspired by subject matter similar to Donwood’s 2006 work titled London Views.
Nigel also provided a photo of the exhibition though his twitter account yesterday:
Apr 27, 2012:
@nigelgod: Exhibition of new Stanley Donwood’s work “Lost Angeles” at our friend Shepard Fairey’s gallery in echo park! Yee har!
Followed up with news that there would be a Atoms for Peace DJ Set at Transmission LA tonight as of 6-10pm. It’s known that both Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich will be DJing for this event.
If your lucky enough to find yourself in L.A tonight you can reserve a ticket here before they’re all gone.
or you can check out some cool new interviews and reviews of Stanley’s exhibition here and here amongst other places on the web.
Chieftan Mew’s had previously tweeted about Lost Angeles on August 15th, 2011 while Stanley was in the process of working on the print, you can read more about it and Lost Angeles here.
@ChieftanMews: If @nigelgod deletes my scenes from the final cut, I will gladly show him a new way down the staircase! ␄
On June 21st 2011 Phillip Selway announced on Dead Air Space that Radiohead had filmed a episode of From The Basement, in addition to the news was a HD quality Youtube video of a new song titled Staircase (Previously known to fans as ‘A Walk Down the Staircase’ from Thom Yorke’s solo shows and tour with Atoms For Peace in 2010).
Mew’s addresses this threat to Nigel Godrich the mastermind behind From The Basement. Started in 2006 as a Podcast From the Basement is a music program that focuses entirely on a performance doing away with the traditional format of a host and live audience. Thom Yorke performed on the first episode and Radiohead featured in a full length episode for In Rainbows – Live From The Basement.
Chieftan Mews who made his name hosting The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth of All Time clearly is not pleased with this idea and later takes revenge by withholding the footage of Supercollider performed during the set.
As usual Mews signs off with EOT (End of Transmission) to mark the final tweet for the day.
@ChieftanMews: @StanleyDonwood I see you have finally cut “Lost Angeles”. Are you going to toss that into the Ziggurat too? I feel guilt when I go jogging.
Lost Angeles is a eighteen feet linocut Stanley Donwood has been working on over much of the year. The project has proved to be difficult as Stanley describes on his website:
Nothing is easy and everything is complicated. As you can see from the picture below, printing this full-length hand-burnished edition of Lost Angeles involves grovelling around on the floor for hours
Below I present an almost verbatim account of the first day’s printing, as told by a long-suffering printer.
It started off ok, very slow… There is the issue of how you keep the print going in a dead straight line, and trying to keep the edge of the paper to the exact line of the registration mark. Quite difficult, as it only needs to move a couple of millimetres and then that would mean you have several centimetres at the end, up or down. A few degrees out and you’re fucked. Halfway I could see it trying to wander more off the line and at that point tried to gradually ‘bend it’ back in.
I should have established base camp there and then and gone home, but I carried on regardless pressing on for a quick ascent of the summit, thinking that this one could be my printers proof. By the time I’d got to the eighteenth hole I was totally knackered and I probably lost one second of concentration and then in that moment the bugger had me! I had allowed extra paper either end for any misdemeanors, and the paper jumped on the last block, so there was a double print!
I tidied up, locked the studio, then walked off to find the car. Then realised in my delirium I had locked the keys in the studio. So then had to find a ladder to scale twelve feet of wall, and once I got over the top realised I couldn’t get down the other side because I had a large fucking print resting precariously on boards just below. I had to find a second ladder and then drag that up and then walk across the dividing wall like a tightrope walker before lowering the ladder down the wall to the floor. I drove home and nearly crashed the damned car.
As you can see for the image Lost Angeles is similar in style to the previous Eraser and Atoms For Peace artwork.
It seems that far from giving up and ‘tossing it in the Ziggurat’ Stanley has completed the work and will be exhibiting it:
Lost Angeles will be exhibited for the first time at Subliminal Projects Gallery, 1331 West Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90026, USA. The show will run from 28th April 2012.
Could it be that Mew’s is guilty to have spare time when Stanley is hard at work?
@ChieftanMews: #7/10: No more hiding: “The atom had a positive, a negative & a neutral” & “Later for the date than the hadron collider” & “I am open.” ??
This was the seventh of 10 tweets Mews sent out counting down from 10 to 1. Each where phrased as a question and usually paired with a date for when the answer was expected to be received by.
‘Open. No More Hiding’ is a phrase Mews had previously changed his profile to after the release of The Universal Sigh.
The phrase ‘Open. No More Hiding’ appears on page 7 of The Universal Sigh in large letters. You can read it here on the E-Universal Sigh.
“The atom had a positive, a negative & a neutral” is from Dimethyltryptamine by Jay Electronica from the Style Wars EP. You can read the rest of the lyrics here.
“Later for the date than the hadron collider” is from Gazzillion Ear by MF DOOM from the Gazzillion Ear E.P., you can read the lyrics here.
Thom Yorke provided a remix of the song in 2009 and has recently corroborated again with MF DOOM under the alias of SISI BAKBAK.
The last piece of lyric “I am open” is from Supercollider.
Atom’s are of course a name for the base unit of matter. Each contains a central nucleus of positively charged protons and neutral neutrons which are surrounded by a cloud of negative charged electrons. Interestingly enough Hydrogen is the only atom to be not made up in this way as it only has a single neutron and no protons at all.
The usual diagrams you’ll find will show something like this..even though they’re um.. not 100% accurate:
( Source: Post Everything.com )
It’s also part of the name Atoms for Peace which was formed in 2009 by Thom Yorke, Nigel Godrich and Flea from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers.
The hadron collider is the Large Hadron Collider (LRH) the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator taking 10 years to complete and had a number of significant delays. The LRH was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) who are amongst Mew’s followers.
Like the LRH Supercollider was late and missed out on being part of The King of Limbs as the band where still working on it in March, a good month after The King of Limbs and during a period of very little press and communication from the band (except for Mews). It was later released as a 12″ single alongside The Butcher for Record Store Day 2011 in the UK, Japan and America.
On the 19th of April W.A.S.T.E started sending out emails to everyone who had purchased The King of Limbs with a link to download Supercollider and The Bucher along with the following message from the band.
Thank you – Merci – Gracias – Grazie – Dankeschön – Obrigado – Gui lah hui te ha – Ashoge – Shukran – Tsikomo – M goi – Tak – Dank u – Vinaka – Aabhar – Köszönöm – Go raibh maith agaibh – Arigato – Tashakkur – Dziekuje – Gestena – Hvala – Tack – Tesekkür ederim – Spasibo – Dêkuji – Sas efharisto ……
Right, that’s most of you covered, apologies to those we’ve missed out … ok, so here are two tracks for your listening pleasure:
Supercollider and The Butcher. We released these as a limited edition 2 track 12inch vinyl to mark Independent Record Store Day last Saturday, April 16 … so in case you missed out and didn’t get a copy here they are.
It’s a thank you for being SO supportive of what we do …
p.s. This is not part of a new loyalty points scheme, a Radiohead clubcard or even an air miles redeemable reward type thing…
It is just a big old-fashioned thank you!
Hope your Spring/Autumn is good.
Ed, Colin, Jonny, Philip & Thom
x
FYI… ‘The Butcher’ was recorded and mixed during ‘The King of Limbs’ sessions, but we couldn’t make it work on the album; ‘Supercollider’ was started during those sessions and finished off in March of this year.
Continuing with the ‘late’ theme Radiohead posted on Dead Air Space in July regarding a delay in having Radiohead-From the Basement broadcast in the UK due to BBC Worldwide (who had partnered with the band in the project) cancelled the July 1st screening. While MTV and Palladia did broadcast it in June the film had its television debut in Spain.
Mew’s current status image on Twitter and Facebook is a inverted screenshot of him from the Thumbs Down Webcast in 2007 titled afp.jpg
Returned to it’s original form it looks like:
It’s not the first time Mew’s has toyed around with his display picture.
afp is the initials of Atoms for Peace the band formed by Thom Yorke, Nigel and Flea from The Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Nigel was reported to be mastering their album over the holidays.
Mew’s has set his Twitter Status to No Mews Is Good News on a few occasions, first in 2011 after TKOL was released and again in late 2011-Early 2012.
This is a play on ‘No News is Good News’ slogan which appears on Stanley Donwood’s website as the title to his news page.
It can be taken to mean that if Mews is quiet he is busy working on something.
After first setting his status messages to ‘No Mews Is Good News’ on Feb. 28, 2011 there was a gap in tweets for over a month before Mews returned on Mar 24, 2011 just before The Universal Sigh is posted on Dead Air Space.
In 2012 it’s possible to be referring to Nigel working on the upcoming Atoms for Peace album in addition to the current Radiohead tour.
Hunting Mews 