Idioteque

Idioteque began as an electronic rhythm that Jonny Greenwood built from synthesiser modules, using filters to shape the sounds. Feeling the rhythm needed chaos, he added found sounds and samples. He sampled the four-chord synthesiser phrase from Mild und leise, a piece the American composer Paul Lansky wrote in 1973 and 1974 on an IBM mainframe at Princeton, and briefly a second piece, Short Piece by Arthur Kreiger. Both are on the 1976 compilation Electronic Music Winners, which Greenwood found in a second-hand record shop while the band toured the US. He wrote to Lansky for permission, and Lansky found the use imaginative and inventive.

Greenwood recorded 50 minutes of improvisation and gave it to Yorke, who took a section about 40 seconds long and wrote the song from it. Yorke called it an attempt to capture the exploding beat you hear at a club when the PA is so loud it is doing damage. He drew the lyrics from phrases cut up and pulled from a hat, and in the second chorus his vocals are looped so that he seems to sing the first of the children in 5/4 against the 4/4 of the rest.

Reception and live life

Spin's review said the track does for the modern dance what PiL and Joy Division's She's Lost Control did for disco. Pitchfork's Brent DiCrescenzo said it clicks and thuds like Aphex Twin and Bjork's Homogenic. Pitchfork named it the eighth-best song of the decade, and Rolling Stone ranked it 56th of the decade and number 48 on its list of the 500 greatest songs of all time in 2021 and 2024. The Guardian placed it sixth among the band's 40 best songs in 2020.

A live version is on I Might Be Wrong: Live Recordings (2001), and the song is on Radiohead: The Best Of (2008). In the US it was a promotional double A-side with How to Disappear Completely. Selway said the band wanted to give the sense of the electronic in the piece while playing it with live instruments, which changed how he played the drums. Amanda Palmer released a cover in July 2010 as the first single from her Radiohead covers album, and it was NPR's Song of the Day on 11 January 2011. Yoav performed an acoustic version with a loop pedal in 2010.