Mark Pritchard on making Tall Tales with Thom Yorke: "He likes messing around with synthesisers and programming as much as he likes singing"

Aside from his legendary output with Radiohead, Thom Yorke has also released a trio of brilliant solo albums, spread out over the last 20 years. Starting with The Eraser in 2006, the singer has specialised in a wonderfully atmospheric form of electronica, with his sonic adventures continuing on both 2014’s Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes and 2019’s Anima.

His latest album, Tall Tales, is a collaborative effort with Warp Records groove technician Mark Pritchard, which again proves a thrilling listen. One of the best albums of the year, it’s a mesmerising collection of thumping electro, glitchy beats and haunted soundscapes, topped off with Yorke’s characteristically bravura vocals.

With Pritchard having first hooked up with Radiohead when approached to do some remixes for 2011’s The King Of Limbs, Tall Tales had its origins in the dog days of lockdown back in 2020.

“Thom emailed me saying, ‘Hope you’re well, we’re all in this mad time, just checking in’,” recalls the affable Pritchard, a Somerset native now based in Sydney. “He said if I had any music, to send it through, cos I guess he could see what was coming, in terms of everyone getting locked down at home for a long period. To start with, I thought I’d quite like to write specifically for him, cos I hadn’t had a chance to do that before.

“Then I thought about it for a couple of days, and I went, 'I should just send him stuff'. Some of it went back nine or 10 years and some of it was more recent. Also, certain tracks were more fleshed out and others were really just demos. It was a different selection of things, because I thought that would probably be more fun. I know he likes messing around with synthesisers and programming as much as he likes singing. So I picked around 20 pieces and sent them off.”

Yorke loved the tracks’ surprising twists and turns, and the album makes for an excellent blend of his and Pritchard’s styles. While some of the tracks boast the kind of darkly futuristic feel in which the Radiohead man specialises, Pritchard also enjoyed taking the music in different directions.

“There are some tracks that are less dystopian,” he considers. “The first three are quite heavy, and then ‘Back In The Game’ has more of a pop undercurrent – it’s catchy. Then there’s stuff like ‘The White Cliffs’, which I guess is also heavy, but at least the sounds are playful. ‘Gangsters’ is even more playful again, and it’s good to hear Thom over things like that.

“It’s not a full song and it’s not really dystopian at all. It’s the same with ‘This Conversation Is Missing Your Voice’ – it’s a little moodier, but you still don’t normally hear him over those kinds of chords.”

Another track that took an unexpected shape was ‘The Spirit’.

“It’s in a major key, and I assumed he would sing a minor key over that,” recalls Mark. “But he just went with the melody, and when I first heard it, I thought, ‘This isn’t going to work.’ I tried to make it a bit weirder. Then we got on a Zoom call and Thom went, ‘No, you’ve lost the vibe. What’s good about this is that you’ve captured a naïve major chord vibe a lot of people don’t do. We need to protect that and I need to deliver the vocal in the right way.’

“He was like, ‘This is going to be a really difficult one to get right, but if we can, it potentially could be really strong.’ As soon as he said that, I got it. I took the drums out and slowed it down, and he changed it to a first person lyric. All that stuff was an interesting challenge – it was the fun part.”

Starting with The Bends and continuing through classics like OK Computer, Kid A and Amnesiac – the latter two famously inspired by Warp artists like Aphex Twin – Yorke and Radiohead have long been noted for their innovative sonic techniques. Did Pritchard notice that Yorke approached Tall Tales differently than other producers and artists might?

“When he sent me the first vocal ideas, some of them had lyrics and some of them didn’t,” he explains. “Thom was trying to find where he sat in the song, melodically and sonically. He was singing through a modular system, and various pedals and effects, to try and sometimes match the tonal aspects of the song. But also, sometimes a straight vocal on a clear recording can be a really nice contrast.

“He was definitely thinking about that on each song – he was approaching each one carefully, in terms of what he was going to do lyrically and melodically, and how it was going to sit with the music. And trying to do something different each time, and not just going for the same ideas.

“He sang ‘Back In The Game’ clearly with no effects, which I quite liked. But he just said, ‘Now fuck that up with some effects – go wild.’ I was thinking about what I’d like to do with his vocals, but he’d done most of that, and it was really down to me to mix it. But on ‘Bugging Out Again’, I did put him through a Leslie speaker, because I don’t think I’d heard him recorded in that way. That really worked.”

Pritchard further considers Yorke’s distinctive style.

“He’s been doing it a long time, so I guess he’s picked up a lot of tricks,” he says. “There’s a few new things he told me that he found helped. In the way he sings low on this record, I was quite surprised. I’ve heard him sing low before, but maybe not as much. ‘The Men Who Dance In Stags’ Heads’ has harmonium and he’s singing quite low on that. I was like, ‘Wow.’

“We had a Zoom meeting and I said, ‘I’ve never really heard you sing in that register.’ Thom said, ‘Yeah, I’ve found a little trick to help me do it.’ I think it was just through using varispeed, which is an old school technique The Beatles used. You put it on tape, speed it up or slow or down, then sing it and speed it back to the original pitch. He found that helped him get into character, and maybe gave him more confidence to go all out.”

Mark Pritchard and Thom Yorke. Credit: Pierre Toussaint

A long time Warp artist, Mark has a unique insight into the Sheffield label’s incredible growth, and knew Richard D. James, aka Aphex Twin, when he was just starting out.

“I became aware of him because Tom Midleton, another Warp artist who I worked with, had also worked with him,” he reflects. “Tom was from Cornwall, and I met him in Taunton, because he came up to study graphic design. I was DJing in a club there, and Taunton was not a place where you’d expect to hear someone playing Detroit techno or whatever. Tom was so happy, because he moved to Taunton, and then he was like, ‘Oh no, I should have moved to London!’

“But I was playing all the music he liked, and then he told me about Richard, way before he had a record out. He said, ‘My mate writes this mad music’, and he played me some cassettes of early Aphex stuff. Even back then, it was like, ‘Fucking hell, this guy’s unbelievable.’ It was instantly obvious that this guy was one of the most talented electronic producers in the UK at that time.”

Having seen Aphex Twin play live, I’m always disappointed he doesn’t drop in any of his big hits. Given that Mark still supports the techno legend on occasion, I wonder if he could prevail upon him to crank out ‘Windowlicker’ next time he hits Ireland?

“I’ll put a petition out,” he chuckles. “Come on Richard!”

• Tall Tales is out now on Warp.