Song · The King of Limbs era (2011)
Feral
On most of The King of Limbs a song grew on top of the loops, and on this one it mostly didn't.
The King of Limbsalbum- 2011released
- 3:13length
2009–11
the method, left bare
Most of the album was made the same way. The band played, sampled what they played, and looped and edited it in software Jonny Greenwood had written, and Thom Yorke wrote melodies over whatever came out. What is left on “Feral” is drums cut into pieces and Yorke's voice treated until it stops being words. Mark Pytlik at Pitchfork heard James Blake in the voice and a drum pattern chewed to bits. At 3:13 it is the shortest thing on the record.
2011
the dubstep singles
Alexis Petridis in the Guardian could name its sources. Of everything on the album, this was where he heard the Zomby, Untold and Ramadanman singles Yorke had been recommending on the band's website. Not everyone wanted the song there, and Ryan Leas at Stereogum, writing in the album's defence, said in 2015 that it had no right to a place on a record of eight songs.
Lone's remix went out on the third TKOL RMX 12-inch on 29 July 2011, beside Four Tet's “Separator” and Pearson Sound's “Morning Mr Magpie”, and Lone was one of the DJs when the remix album was launched at Corsica Studios in London that October.
2011–2018
rebuilt by hand
The band held back from touring the record partly because they were not sure it could be played at all. Clive Deamer joined Phil Selway as a second drummer so that the looped drum parts could be rebuilt by hand, and “Feral” was one of two album tracks missing from the surprise Glastonbury set on 24 June 2011. The archive's first is the Maida Vale session for the Live from the Basement film, filed under 1 July, the day BBC Worldwide made it available to broadcasters.
It stayed in the set for fifty-seven nights in 2012. Andy Baber, reviewing the last British show of the tour at the O2 Arena in London for musicOMH, remembered the new songs failing to connect at Glastonbury, and found that “Feral”, which many took for the weakest thing on the album, made sense on stage. After Melbourne on 17 November 2012 it was gone three years, until the Roman theatre of Fourvière in Lyon on 1 June 2016, and from then on it came and went.
2014
a sample of its own
When Yorke's Tomorrow's Modern Boxes came out in 2014, Sam Prickett, reviewing it for Treble, heard a vocal sample in “A Brain in a Bottle” that felt to him lifted straight from “Feral”.
the session
From the Basement.· Radioheadwatch on youtube →
the record(1)
on stage(9)
Live history
| Times played | 74 shows |
|---|---|
| Live debut | Friday 1 July 2011 · London |
| Last played | Tuesday 31 July 2018 · Philadelphia |
| Longest absence | 3 years · back on Wednesday 1 June 2016 · Lyon |
Nights played include broadcasts; opened and closed count gigs only. A cancelled night has no setlist. All setlist stats →
Remixes & alternate versions (1)
- Feral (Lone remix)
sources11
- David Fricke, “Radiohead Reconnect”, Rolling Stone, 26 April 2012, for the software, the method and Deamer.
- Mark Pytlik, “Radiohead: The King of Limbs”, Pitchfork, 24 February 2011, for James Blake and the drums.
- Alexis Petridis, “Radiohead: The King of Limbs review”, The Guardian, 24 February 2011, for the dubstep singles.
- Ryan Leas, “In defense of The King of Limbs”, Stereogum, 10 March 2015.
- Jamie Fullerton, “Radiohead play ‘surprise’ Glastonbury show with sixth member”, NME, 24 June 2011, for the Glastonbury set.
- Andy Baber, “Radiohead @ O2 Arena, London”, musicOMH, October 2012, for “Feral” on stage.
- Sam Prickett, review of Tomorrow's Modern Boxes, Treble, 10 October 2014, for the sample.
- Wikipedia, “TKOL RMX 1234567”, for the remix single and the Corsica Studios night.
- Wikipedia, “The King of Limbs: Live from the Basement”, for Maida Vale.
- SPIN, “Radiohead Announce TV Performance in July”, 4 May 2011, for the 1 July release.
- Performance dates from this site's own setlist archive.