Stenography Rocks!

[Leigh Meyers]

Radiohead hides ZX Spectrum proggie in OK Computer re-release

Unclear if code was first mistaken for avant garde instrumental

By Simon Sharwood, APAC Editor

17 Jul 2017 at 07:27

Rock deities Radiohead have snuck a program for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum
into a re-release of their seminal 1997 album “OK Computer”.

Dubbed “OKNOTOK”, the re-release can be had as £100/US$130/€120 boxed
edition that includes three vinyl records, books galore and “a C90
cassette mix tape compiled by us, taken from OK COMPUTER session
archives and demo tapes.”

The Spectrum app resides – natch – on the C90 cassette, as that medium
was the dominant way of storing Speccy programs and data. Accounts of
the cassette's track list suggest it opens with a track named “Zx
sprectrum symphony” but that the application is listed as “Ok Computer
Program” and is the last track on side B.

Buyers quickly identified the track as sounding just like a Spectrum
program's distinctive series of beeps and clicks. Before long clever
folk had ripped the audio and fed it to Spectrum Emulators, producing
the results below.

See site for image:
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/17/radiohead_hides_zx_spectrum_app_in_ok_computer_rerelease/

Radiohead are far from the first band to pull off this trick: The
Stranglers added a game called “Aural Quest” to their 1984 Album Aural
Sculpture. Buzzcock-turned-Homosapien Pete Shelley's second album XL1
included a program that displayed its lyrics on-screen in synch with the
music (With limited success, if your correspondent's 35-year-old
recollections are accurate).

Those efforts appeared at a time the Spectrum was prevalent and popular.
Radiohead's release has proven an education to many, but no surprise to
fans who know well that track five on OK Computer, “Let Down”, featured
sounds produced using a Spectrum. Radiohead guitarist/keyboardist Jonny
Greenwood made those sounds as he is known to have learned to program
the machine.