OK Calculator

OK Calculator is a demo collection from TV on the Radio which they self-released in 2002. The album's title alludes to Radiohead's album OK Computer.

OK Calculator
Demo album by
TV on the Radio
ReleasedJuly 24, 2002
GenreIndie rock, lo-fi, art rock, funk
Length74:58
LabelSelf-released
ProducerDavid Andrew Sitek
TV on the Radio chronology
OK Calculator
(2002)		 Young Liars
(2003)

Origins

We made this disc OK Calculator and left it in cafes and just different places. Just 24 tracks of four-track stuff. And that's on-line now. We sold a few of them on our first tour, a couple, but then the CD burner broke, etc. That's on-line and someone wrote about it as "the extremely rare but superb OK Calculator" and I’m sitting there going, "Are you kidding me?" Rare, yeah, rare because we're making them ourselves, and superb, that's not up to us, but it's not superb. (laughs) I’d be the first person to tell you. There's more hiss on some of those songs than there are songs. And it's fun, and I love it, but I wouldn't call it superb.

— Tunde Adebimpe, in a 2004 Downhill Battle interview

Reception

In Magnet, Bryan Bierman listed the album as a hidden gem and wrote, “Adebimpe’s voice alone makes up most of the tracks, and though the album’s rough sound takes some getting used to, this arrangement is surprisingly effective. Songs like ‘Yr God’ and ‘Aim To Please’ show off his soulful vocals, and you can hear some early signs of the later songwriting style the group would adapt. Sitek's recordings are a little more polished, using the atmospheric electronics that would later envelope a lot of TVOTR's music, like the slow ambience of ‘On A Train,” or the Kraftwerk fever dream ‘Pulse Of Pete.’”[1]

Track listing
  1. "Freeway" – 2:19
  2. "Say You Do" (Samples Raymond Scott's "Night and Day" and Nina Simone's Wild is the Wind)[2] – 5:19
  3. "Pulse of Pete" – 3:36
  4. "Me - I" – 3:20
  5. "Buffalo Girls" – 2:58
  6. "Ending of a Show" – 1:09
  7. "Hurt You" – 6:28
  8. "Netti Fritti" – 5:14
  9. "Yr God" – 2:35
  10. "On a Train" – 16:07
  11. "Sheba Baby" – 3:56
  12. "Y King" – 2:43
  13. "Aim to Please" – 3:07
  14. "Bicycles Are Red Hot" – 3:57
  15. "Los Mataban" – 3:00
  16. "Robots" – 3:10
  17. "Doing My Duty" – 5:52
  18. "Untitled" – 0:06

The tracks "Freeway" and "On a Train" later re-appeared on the 2004 7" and CD single for "Staring at the Sun".

References
  1. Staff, MAGNET (2012-02-16). "Hidden Gems: TV On The Radio's "OK Calculator"". Magnet Magazine. Retrieved 2020-02-20.
  2. "Say You Do by TV on the Radio on WhoSampled". WhoSampled. Retrieved 2020-08-04.



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