Enregistrement studio : 1997 /1998 et janvier 2000
Sortie sur album : 4 juin 2001 (Amnesiac)
Clip : fin 2001 (The Mill / Johnny Hardstaff)

[button icon=’iconic-cd’ fullwidth=’true’]4 juin 2001[/button]

Le 4 juin 2001, sort Amnesiac, peu de temps après le révolutionnaire KID A. On comprend vite qu’il s’agit d’un album regroupant quelques titres issus des mêmes sessions que KID A. Pull/Pulk est le troisième titre de l’album, juste entre Pyramid Song et  You and Whose Army….

La chanson étonne (voire déçoit) beaucoup. C’est un assemblage de sons bizarres… On a affaire ici à un pur morceau d’electro, avec des paroles psalmodiées, un arrière plan sonore plus que bizarre… Les arrangements électroniques ont souvent été taxés de “surfaits”… Ça choque un peu, surtout juste après Pyramid Song, qui est une chanson pour le moins très traditionnelle (une ballade au piano).. You and Whose Army qui suit n’aide pas plus à comprendre pourquoi cette chanson se trouve là…

[quote cite=’Rock and Folk, juillet 2001.’ align=’none’] Revolving Doors est un assemblage d’accidents et de sons inutilisés. Je compose de moins en moins à la guitare[/quote]

Et comme la chanson a beaucoup déconcerté, le groupe va mieux s’en expliquer. Non, non, ce n’est pas du n’importe quoi organisé… Le groupe savait ce qu’il faisait : en janvier 2000, après une période compliquée en studio, le groupe a été divisé par Nigel en deux groupes, avec  obligation stricte de ne plus utiliser autre chose que de l’electro… De cette session de deux semaines en  janvier 2000 vont émerger 20% de choses exploitables, dont Pull/Pulk :

[quote cite=’ED / 25 septembre 2000‘ align=’none’]Nigel was really good because he said… We had this thing at the beginning of the year, and Jonny apparently didn’t enjoy these two weeks… We’d completed some songs, and we hadn’t completed others. And we were starting, you know we had a break after Christmas, and he said ‘right, let’s split up into two groups’. And we had two weeks. And we had two weeks of totally… I mean it was a real workshop experimental stuff. And I think we got a lot of that stuff out of our system. The rules were, nobody was allowed to play drums, nobody was allowed to pick up a guitar, the only thing that could be used were electronic, you know, computers, synths etc. etc. It was really good fun. 20% of it was good, and the other 80% was utter rubbish. You realize that sometimes it can be quite valid of… just this phrase of “throw some shit at it”. You know, just be random.” Q: “Was much of it used from that, those experimental stages?” Ed: “Bits… I mean… There’s one track that’s possibly going… that will come out next year. No, but not a lot.[/quote]

En janvier 2000, donc on créée la chanson avec du matos electro (un Roland MC 505 en l’occurence) La chanson a été “amalgamée” à partir de sons enregistrés en 1997/8 :

[quote cite=’Colin / culturelab.co.uk, issue 1, june 2001‘ align=’none’]Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors’ was made using an MC505 and some loops, together with some other found loops that we made in St Catherine’s Court when we were recording OK Computer[/quote]

[quote cite=’The Georgia Straight / 21 juin 2001‘ align=’none’]Q: “I thought, on the new album, on “Amnesiac”, track 3, to me, has almost an industrial…”

Colin: “Yeah, ‘Push/Pulk Revolving Doors’.”

Q: “…hip-hop feel to it. Do you feel that in that track, a little bit of a hip-hop influence, almost, or.”

Colin: “You know, it’s stuff that we all listen to and that we’re into. It was a wide range of tastes. What’s cool about that track is it’s a sequence that Thom did on the drum machine, basically, together with sounds that we were working on when we were doing OK Computer, like piano and Rhodes put together with a really cool treated vocal. It’s a good combination of things there from several years of work. That song is my favorite track, I think.”[/quote]

A noter également, au rayon des effets, de l’Autotuner :

[quote cite=’The Wire, july 2001′ align=’none’]On Amnesiac, the dirty 808 bass of ‘Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors” invites you to reimagine Yorke’s mid-80s adolescence – not pining indoors to REM’s Murmur and The Smiths’ Hatful Of Hollow, but spraying graffiti and breakdancing in deserted shopping centres alongside LFO. […] Another vocal treatment Yorke resorted to was the Autotuner, most famous from Cher’s ‘Believe’, but widely used in contemporary R&B as an intermittent glister of posthuman perfect pitch added to particular lines or words.

“We used Autotuner on Amnesiac twice. On ‘Packt Like Sardines’, I wasn’t particularly out of tune, but if you really turn up the Autotuner so it’s dead in pitch, it makes it go slightly…” he makes a nasal, depersonalised sound. “There’s also this trick you can do, which we did on both ‘Packt’ and ‘Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors’, where you give the machine a key and then you just talk into it. It desperately tries to search for the music in your speech, and produces notes at random. If you’ve assigned it a key, you’ve got music.”[/quote]

Et donc pourquoi reprendre du matos de l’époque OK Computer ? Parce que Thom, qui va mieux, s’est rappelé de son malaise de l’époque OK COmputer en ce qui concerne la mort…

[quote cite=’Thom / Juice Magazine, octobre 2000‘ align=’none’]I had this thing for a while where I was falling through trapdoors all the time, into like, acid flashbacks. I’d be talking to someone and then I’d be falling through the earth, and it went on for months and months, and it was really weird. And that was all happening towards the end of OK Computer. And that was all linked in with death. Seeing people dead, like, as I’m talking to you… It’s okay,” he says reassuringly, looking at my shocked face. “I’m better now.[/quote]

[button icon=’iconic-cd’ fullwidth=’true’]décembre 2001[/button]

Un clip circule pour faire la promotion de la chanson. A ce propos, dans un article du NME en décembre 2001 :
[quote ]« Radiohead have reworked and amalgamated two tracks from their ’Amnesiac’ album for a specially commissioned video, which has been produced by the company behind Aphex Twin’s ’Windowlicker’ and Bjork’s ’All Is Full Of Love’. The short film to accompany the combined version of ’Pull/Pulk Revolving Doors’ and ’Like Spinning Plates’ was unveiled last night (November 29) as the highlight of the inaugural Projectors Animation Festival held at the Centre For Contemporary Arts in Glasgow. »[/quote]

Tout était dit. Un petit clip en animation avait été réalisé pour servir de support à deux chanson emboîtées de Radiohead, et fut présenté pour la première fois lors d’un festival d’animation à Glasgow… Bizarre très bizarre cette vidéo, faite d’image plus alambiquées les unes que les autres…
[quote ]« When I heard Like Spinning Plates it had that same quality. It felt like an exploration of fragility and vulnerability, a state of extreme nervousness. The band had preferred to give no brief, and no leads as to the meaning of the song. It was only on completion of the film that they revealed that the song was a direct reference to the vulnerability of children caught up in conflict. Maybe lucky, but I think this coincidence has a lot to do with Thom and the boys being able to convey a very specific atmosphere without needing to spell it out in direct lyrical references. »[/quote]
Johnny Hardstaff

Voici le rapport complet sur le site de The Mill :
[quote ]The Mill Collaborate with Johnny Hardstaff on Radiohead

new promo Nov 16 2001 — The Mill has helped create outstanding 2D and 3D visual effects for Radiohead

latest double promo for their combined singles Pull/Pulk Revolving Doors and Like Spinning Plates. Directed by Johnny Hardstaff at Black Dog Film, the promo is predominantly made up 3D computer graphics, which have been modelled and animated more in the manner of intricate industrial design than that of traditional CG. As a result the promo can perhaps be viewed as a beautifully crafted piece of video art rather than the usual narrative experience of a conventional pop video.

The centrepiece of the promo is a gigantic machine set in the middle of an ambiguous white space. Within a centrifuge created by the many moving parts of this machine are a pair of conjoined baby twins who are dramatically separated from each other as the forces created by the machine pull them apart.

To create the effect of the two conjoined twins, part of the live action shoot took place at The Mill’s Shepperton based Motion Control studio. Using the Cyclops motion control rig, a single baby was shot in multiple positions with the camera rotating around him shooting at various Frame rates. The Mills Flame team then worked to composite the shots together to create the illusion of there being two conjoined twins. The team also composited all of the CG machine components. These were modelled and animated by ’Pictures on the Wall’ in Glasgow and designed and textured by Johnny Hardstaff. There was also work carried out to composite the prosthetics designed by Harrison Hill Effects, which were used where the babies ribs, modelled and designed in porcelain by The Mills 3D department, begin to petrude through the babies skin.

Additional flame work included the lengthy task of matting out the white panels from Killer whale footage which John Payne, the producer from Black Dog Films filmed at an aquarium in Nice expressly for the promo.[/quote]

Dir : Johnny Hardstaff Production Company : Black Dog Film Production Company Producer : John Payne Post Production : The Mill Mill Producer : Alistair Thompson Mill Flame Artists : Phil Crowe, Barnsley, Paul Marangos, Dave Hougton, Neil Davies, Dave Smith Mill Flame Assistant : Salima Needham Mill Telecine : Paul Harrison Mill 3D : Aron Hjartarson Mill Motion Control : George Theophonous, Ray Moody, Jay Mallet

L’équipe de The Mill a aussi réalisé le clip de Go To Sleep.

[button icon=’iconic-cd’ fullwidth=’true’]2006[/button]

Stanley Donwood, le graphisme ami du groupe, organise une exposition à Iguapop Gallery, Barcelon. Pour l’occasion sort un livret d’expo, Dead Children Playing, où l’on retrouve cette image, qui fait explicitement référence à la chanson. Les dessins semblent dater de 2000-2001 :