“Atoms for Peace” is variously referred to as either a supergroup ‘including’ or a side-project ‘belonging to’ its most famous and influential member, Radiohead’s Thom Yorke. Technically speaking, it might better be described as a supergroup formed as the result of a side project of a side project, considering that the band’s first and only album originated due to a string of live performances of Yorke’s 2006 solo release, which was, in itself, a foray away from Radiohead.
It was in 2009 that Flea (bassist for Red Hot Chili Peppers), Mauro Refrosco (Forro in the Dark percussionist and tour performer for Red Hot Chili Peppers), Nigel Godrich (Radiohead producer), and Joey Waronker (Beck and R.E.M percussion journeyman) joined Yorke to provide live renditions of his highly computer-generated The Eraser. The chemistry and material developed during the practice sessions for this tour period would, several years later, materialize into the group’s February 2013 Amok.
Though surely crucial to the finished product, the names of the producers and percussionists are, perhaps unsurprisingly, not nearly as eye catching as is the renowned moniker Flea. Almost always performing in some state of undress, this is the same Flea who, in the early days of RHCP, joined his bandmates on stage wearing nothing more than a single, strategically placed sock; it is also, perhaps less famously, the same Flea who voiced the feral child character of “Donnie” in the now classic cartoon show, The Wild Thornberrys.
Such a past doesn’t seem to immediately accord with Yorke’s social activism and highbrow music recognition. The seeming disparities between Yorke’s public image as the chic albeit weird British vegan and Flea’s long, and very punk American history are bridged by a single word: ability. Only a bassist with the technical skill and acumen that Flea has would stand a chance of turning anything that Yorke made on his laptop into a playable, performable track.
Flea is evident throughout Amok, making himself immediately apparent in the opening track, ”Before Your Eyes,” and particularly integral in tracks such as “Stuck Together Pieces” and “Reverse Running.” Without his invigorating line delivered starting a minute into “Dropped,” something like a sped-up version of Weezer’s “Only in the Dreams,” the track would lose both momentum and appeal.
Although neither the riffs nor the jumpy, explorative bass are completely beyond the punk and funk roots with which he is so long acquainted, Flea does, overall, settle into an uncharacteristically understated role. His consistent bouncing along underneath Yorke’s familiar “Creep” croon and varying degrees of synth inundation doesn’t so much overwhelm the Chili Peppers legend as it does sublimate him, making him more of a textural accent than a center of attention.
While playing find-the-Flea throughout Amok provides a familiar point of reference, navigating the more computerized extremities of the album is a much more nebulous task. Speaking to Rolling Stone about the sessions that produced the album, Yorke commented, ”One of the things we were most excited about was ending up with a record where you weren’t quite sure where the human starts and the machine ends.”
This certainly seems to be the effect. There are points in certain tracks that seem to occur in a realm entirely above where traditional instruments and voices can follow, such as the whole of “Ingenue” or the psychobabble interlude in “Unless.” Luckily for the group, this ethereal realm also happens to be where Yorke’s voice seems most comfortable.
Whatever the finer technicalities behind the particular indefinable noises happens to be, it is hard not to appreciate them simply for their immaculate precision. They are hard to explain and figure out, but, somehow, they “just work” and we appreciate it. Indeed, isn’t this the way we often think about and thank our machines? This, it seems, is precisely Yorke and company’s point.
While both the intriguing collaborative product of RHCP and Radiohead and the mysteriously alluring mechanization are worth considering, Amok is, as a whole, a journey to nowhere. The album lacks the energy and smart distinctions, subtle or otherwise, needed to alert the listener to progress or development. There are no maps and no landmarks; a writer for Pitchfork describes it as “giving a perpetual sense of jogging in place.” It is ironic that an album which ends with the repeated lines, “to run amok, run amok, run amok,” does, in fact, pan out like a treadmill stuck on some useless in-between speed.