Bert Bultinck writes on Radiohead for Belgium's De Witte Raaf

Issue 108 of De Witte Raaf, the Belgian art magazine, dated March-April 2004, carries an essay on Radiohead by Bert Bultinck, “Cozimnot. Radiohead in twee bewegingen” (Radiohead in two movements). The magazine is sold in Belgium and the Netherlands, and the essay, in Dutch, is also on its website.

The title is the word Thom Yorke sings near the end of “2+2=5”, spelt “Cozimnot” in the lyric booklet. Bultinck reads it as a mangled “'cause I'm not” and gives it the essay's last word, the song telling its listener that it is not what he has made of it.

Most of the essay follows “2+2=5” from the spluttering machine noise and half-heard studio talk before it starts to the run of denials at the end. Bultinck ties its title to Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, where Winston Smith learns to believe that two and two make five, and sets the song beside Stanley Donwood's word-wall artwork for the album, with its words of money (“shareholders”, “0% finance”) next to words of decay.

The two movements of the title are a pull and a push. Pop draws listeners in until they pour themselves into the songs and choose to hear them again and again, and Bultinck reads that through Peter Sloterdijk on the Sirens. Then the songs push back, with bleeps, tempo changes and lyrics rough enough to resist what the listener has made of them. His image for it comes from a Mike Mills film in the fourth episode of The Most Gigantic Lying Mouth of All Time, the band's web TV series, a close-up of a girl singing along at a Radiohead show while elbows and shoulders keep pushing into the frame. For Bultinck the elbow is the song getting in the way of the fan's rapture.