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Thom Yorke remixes a string piece by The Bends' violinist
Thom Yorke has remixed Cortical Songs, a string piece by John Matthias and Nick Ryan, for an album of the work and its remixes that the London label Nonclassical releases on 21 July. Matthias played violin and viola on The Bends; he was a friend of Jonny Greenwood's, and the album credits him alongside the cellist Caroline Lavelle.
The piece is for string ensemble and solo violin, and the orchestra takes some of its directions from software built to imitate the patterns of neurons firing in the brain. Matthias, a physicist as well as a composer, and Ryan, a sound artist, call it a work in four movements… in which the orchestra is partially controlled by a tiny computer brain
3. On the recording Nic Pendlebury conducts the String Ensemble of Trinity College of Music, with Matthias on solo violin and Ryan running the live programming.
Yorke's mix, “Neuron Trigger”, follows the four movements on the album, the first of 11 remixes. NME first reported Yorke's remix in March, when the album was due in May, and said then that Jonny Greenwood had been meant to make one too but ran out of time.
Cortical Songs: tracklist
| # | Title | Remix by |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1st Movement | – |
| 2 | 2nd Movement | – |
| 3 | 3rd Movement | – |
| 4 | 4th Movement | – |
| 5 | Neuron Trigger Mx | Thom Yorke |
| 6 | Electronic Water Feature! | Neil Grant and John Fisher |
| 7 | Brain Bumper Remix | Gabriel Prokofiev |
| 8 | The Squid's Terror of Dry Land | Jem Finer |
| 9 | 2nd Movement Remix | Marcas Lancaster |
| 10 | Phineas Gage Remix | David Prior |
| 11 | Landing Remix | John Maclean |
| 12 | Cortical Cluster Remix | Simon Tong |
| 13 | The Bipolar Shuffle | Dominic Murcott |
| 14 | Thimble Taps Remix | Andrew Prior |
| 15 | 0.2 - 20,000% | Marcus Coates |