INTRO

Q&A MARK PRITCHARD

The Thom Yorke collaborator and electronic musician discusses working with the Radiohead singer, their latest release Tall Tales and the genius of Gentle Giant.

Words: Jeremy Allen Portrait: Pierre Toussaint

It’s more than just an album recorded by two men at the top of their game who are separated by land and sea. Although Tall Tales is that, too. Made by fabled electronic musician Mark Pritchard and Radiohead singer Thom Yorke [opposite, right], it’s ostensibly what Rolling Stone described as a “progtronic journey full of freaky soundscapes and really strong songwriting”, and it goes much deeper still. A third collaborator, Perth-based artist Jonathan Zawada, turned Tall Tales into a film full of eclectic, Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel-like imagery, adding to an artful sense of dislocation, displacement and surrealism.

Songs about technology with uncanny videos, such as This Conversation Is Missing Your Voice, hint at a near-future dystopia that is almost upon us. Moreover, large coins in keeping with the theme of coin-clipping that runs through the record – inspired by Benjamin Myers’ The Gallows Pole – have been produced by Warp Records and are hidden in a number of locations in the hope that some will be found. A real-life treasure hunt can be interpreted as a way to make tangible a project made largely in isolation with just files, emails and video-calls facilitating its development. It’s a thumb in the eye, too, to AI, an unidentified concern that imbues Tall Tales with a sense of anxiety.