Perhaps best known for the NPR series From The Top, musician Christopher O’Riley is far more in-tune with music than most of the world. Not only does he host and mentor young musicians, O’Riley also transcribes and arranges songs by Radiohead, Arcade Fire and more for the piano and, more recently, the cello. O’Riley has just released a new album with cellist Matt Haimovitz, Shuffle.Play.Listen. (Oxingale), a tribute to contemporary composers and some of the most modern musicians. Owing to his virtuosic abilities and interesting outlook, we invited O’Riley to guest edit magnetmagazine.com this week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.
O’Riley: Perhaps the most rewarding examinations of Radiohead’s recent King Of Limbs is in the realm of remixes. Several surfaced over the course of the summer after the LP’s release, collected and available now in album form as TKOL RMX 1234567. The whole matter of remixing as a creative venue has gained more recognition and respect in the last few years, but it has been percolating happily for as long as the old release by the Cure, All Mixed Up, and lots of Björk-related singles. The idea of taking songs apart and fragmenting them, then riffing on those fragments or otherwise highlighting background, obscuring and then reilluminating those fragments, went into my own take on a favorite obscure Radiohead b-side (though long my own most popular single track on iTunes, maybe not just because it’s the longest/most bang for the buck?), seen here accompanied by a luminous sequence of dream images.
Video after the jump.
