What two artists did Yorke believe were "abusing the recording process?"
Yorke said that the starting point for the record was the "incredibly dense and terrifying sound" of Bitches Brew, the 1970 avant-garde jazz fusion album by Miles Davis. He described the sound of Bitches Brew to Q: "It was building something up and watching it fall apart, that's the beauty of it. It was at the core of what we were trying to do with OK Computer." Yorke identified "I'll Wear It Proudly" by Elvis Costello, "Fall on Me" by R.E.M., "Dress" by PJ Harvey and "A Day in the Life" by the Beatles as particularly influential on his songwriting. Radiohead drew further inspiration from the recording style of film soundtrack composer Ennio Morricone and the krautrock band Can, musicians Yorke described as "abusing the recording process". Jonny Greenwood described OK Computer as a product of being "in love with all these brilliant records ... trying to recreate them, and missing."According to Yorke, Radiohead hoped to achieve an "atmosphere that's perhaps a bit shocking when you first hear it, but only as shocking as the atmosphere on the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds." They expanded their instrumentation to include electric piano, Mellotron, cello and other strings, glockenspiel and electronic effects. Jonny Greenwood summarised the exploratory approach as "when we've got what we suspect to be an amazing song, but nobody knows what they're gonna play on it." Spin characterised OK Computer as sounding like "a DIY electronica album made with guitars".Critics suggested a stylistic debt to 1970s progressive rock, an influence that Radiohead have disavowed. According to Andy Greene in Rolling Stone, Radiohead "were collectively hostile to seventies progressive rock ... but that didn't stop them from reinventing prog from scratch on OK Computer, particularly on the six-and-a-half-minute 'Paranoid Android'." Writing in 2017, The New Yorker's Kelefa Sanneh said OK Computer "was profoundly prog: grand and dystopian, with a lead single that was more than six minutes long."
Ennio Morricone Can