Thom Yorke Touches Soon-To-Be-Huge Classical Album

Like the dogs of coastal Indonesian towns, I sense a tsunami-like upsurge in classical music sales in the coming months – possibly a double or triple in total revenue for the entire genre. Did every classical composer suddenly drop dead, creating a humongous post-mortem interest spike? Nope, it’s much bigger than that.

Musical entrepreneur and central nervous system for the Western world Thom Yorke has contributed to another new project, this time a classical album, NME reported Thursday. Called Cortical Songs, the album features orchestral tracks remixed by several notables in British pop, also including The Verve’s Nick McCabe and Simon Jones, The Good, The Bad, And The Queen’s Simon Tong, and John McLean of the Aliens. Yorke’s executive officer Johnny Greenwood was set to have a track for himself, but was forced to withdraw due to time constraints.

Assembled by sound designer Nick Ryan and sonic arts lecturer John Matthias (who also played the violin and viola on The Bends), the project was commissioned by the University of Plymouth and Nonclassical Records - whose owner, Gabriel Prokofiev, also had a hand in the remixing. The aim, according to the BBC, was to create an orchestral work “utilising the rhythms inherent in networks of spiking cortical neurons.” Sounds complicated. The disc is due to be released in May, when it will likely spark a modern renaissance across the globe, birthing new classical art, sculpture and cosmos theories, all centered around Radiohead. I’m first in line for my Amnesiac-Devil-as-Michelangelo’s-David credit card.