Amok by Atoms For Peace

Amok, the one and only album by Atoms for Peace, came out on XL on February 25, 2013, and it's what happens when a laptop record learns to sweat. Thom Yorke put the band together in 2009 to take his solo album The Eraser on the road, recruiting Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, drummer Joey Waronker and percussionist Mauro Refosco. When the tour wrapped they holed up in Los Angeles for three days of jamming, then Yorke and Godrich spent two years slicing those sessions up and splicing them into Yorke's electronics.

The result is twitchy, knotted and hypnotic, Flea's rubbery bass lines and Refosco's clattering percussion tangled up in glitchy beats while Yorke's voice hovers overhead. "Default" set the tone as the first of four singles. The album went top ten in the UK, the US and Japan, though some critics grumbled that it sounded a lot like another Yorke solo record.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.