Re: Radiohead Awaits Silent Trystero’s Empire

[Patrick Bondaruk]

On Pynchon-head ideas:

Unused In rainbows album art - that screams "Gravity's rainbow" :
http://www.radiohead.com/deadairspace/?a=454


On Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 5:12 PM, Robin Landseadel <
robinlandseadel at comcast.net> wrote:

> Days after being criticized by Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon for its
> pay-what-you-want model for In Rainbows, Radiohead has launched a download
> section of its official online store.
>
> The timing is probably accidental, but it is nevertheless cool. The band’s
> W.A.S.T.E. store is selling downloads for releases the band actually owns,
> including guitarist Jonny Greenwood’s soundtrack for the Oscar-winning film
> There Will Be Blood, vocalist Thom Yorke’s solo effortThe Eraser, In
> Rainbows and In Rainbows 2 (previously available only as part of the In
> Rainbows box set).
>
> More is sure to come as Radiohead pushes the envelope of digital
> distribution.
>
> The store’s name was cribbed from Thomas Pynchon’s conspiratorial
> postmodern classic The Crying of Lot 49. In the book, W.A.S.T.E. is an
> acronym for “We Await Silent Trystero’s Empire,” a slogan used by a shadowy
> organization dedicated to alternative, perhaps anarchic, communications.
>
> The group’s symbol, the muted postal horn at right, shows up as graffiti
> everywhere throughout the hilarious narrative, and illustrates the
> subversion of accepted delivery systems: You can’t blow your communications
> horn if it’s muted by a bunch of anarchists.
>
> It’s a cool metaphor for the current brouhaha over Radiohead’s subversion
> of the music industry’s conventional distribution system. By offering its
> fans the opportunity to pay what they want for In Rainbows, it’s arguable
> that Radiohead became industry anarchists. It’s also arguable, as Sonic
> Youth’s Gordon explained to The Guardian last week, that the
> variable-pricing release was all a hoax.
>
> Like Lot 49’s dizzy executor Oedipa Maas, it’s up to you to assign meaning
> to what has happened. And what will happen when Trystero’s empire, or the
> demise of the music industry as we know it, comes calling.
>
> Clever dudes, those Radiohead lads.
>
>
> http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/06/radiohead-adds-downloads-still-awaits-trysteros-empire/
>
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