搬運自：微信公眾號【評論搬一堆】（在原文基礎上添加了英語原文與排版調整）

翻譯：Lynn Liu

校對：Emma.Zhang

排版：Peter D

Earlier this month, a strange?advertisement?for ANIMA Technologies appeared inside London’s Tube. The company purported to have built something called a “Dream Camera,” a device capable of capturing the world of the unconscious: “Just call or text the number and we’ll get your dreams back,” the copy promised. But curious callers were treated to a cryptic voice message, a jumble of stilted legalese read in a thin, unctuous voice, that apparently rendered the Dream Camera’s promise moot: something about a cease and desist from the High Court, an admission of “serious and flagrant unlawful activities.”

本月早些時候，倫敦地鐵內出現(xiàn)了一則奇怪的ANIMA Technologies廣告。該公司聲稱已經制造出了一個叫做“夢想相機（Dream Camera）”的設備，它能夠捕捉到無意識的世界，廣告承諾道：“只要撥打或是發(fā)短信給這個號碼，我們就會把你的夢想帶回給你”。但好奇的來電者卻聽到了一條含糊不清的語音消息。它由一串生硬的法律措辭混雜在一起，聽起來聲音微弱、油腔滑調，這顯然讓Dream Camera的承諾變得毫無意義:高等法院(High Court)宣布不再受理此事，承認這是一個“嚴重且明目張膽的非法活動”。

There were only ever two things this ad could be: Some exhausting promo for the worst “Black Mirror” episode yet or an oblique tease of Thom Yorke’s third solo album,?ANIMA. Dreams and a healthy distrust of a techno-dystopia have long been pillars of Radiohead and Yorke’s songwriting. The wires of the brain and the wires of the world are forever being crossed: Fake plastic trees, paranoid androids, mobiles chirping, low-flying panic attacks. So of course the man who has sung about the narcotized rhythms of urban life would want to snap commuters out of their reveries with a once-in-a-lifetime promise. Dreams, nightmares, and sleepwalking haunt the songs of?ANIMA, Yorke’s most ambitious and assured solo album yet. It is the darkest and tenderest music he has released outside of Radiohead, floating uneasily through the space between societal turmoil and internal monologue.

這則廣告只有兩種可能:要么是為迄今最糟糕的一集 “黑鏡”做的一些無力宣傳，要么就是對Thom Yorke的第三張個人專輯《ANIMA》一種拐彎抹角的調侃。長期以來，夢想以及對科技反烏托邦的不信任一直是Radiohead和Yorke歌曲創(chuàng)作的靈感來源。大腦和世界的線條永遠交織在一起：塑料假樹、偏執(zhí)的機器人、嗡嗡作響的手機、低空飛行恐慌癥。這位歌手已經唱過關于城市生活麻木節(jié)奏的歌曲，因此，他自然想要用一個一生只有一次的承諾，把通勤者從幻想中喚醒。ANIMA這張專輯的歌曲中縈繞著夢想、噩夢和夢游，這是Yorke迄今為止最有野心、也是最自信的一張個人專輯。這是他在Radiohead之外發(fā)布的最黑暗、最溫柔的音樂，不安地在社會動蕩和內心獨白之間的夾縫中漂浮著。

ANIMA?is the product of what Yorke has?described?as an extended period of anxiety, and it sounds like it, full of wraithlike frequencies and fibrillating pulses. That’s not a huge surprise: Yorke’s solo material has always sounded anxious, sometimes to its detriment. Where?The Eraser, his solo debut, largely succeeded in channeling the decade’s post-millennium tension into compellingly moody electronic abstractions, 2014’s?Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes?too often felt claustrophobic, morose, enervated. In contrast,?ANIMA’s tone throughout is meaty, full-blooded, often a little menacing. Yorke’s melancholy has grown teeth.

Yorke說《ANIMA》是長時間焦慮的產物，這張專輯聽起來像是里面滿是幽靈般的頻率和顫動的脈沖。這并不令人感到很意外:Yorke的歌曲總是聽起來焦慮不安，有時甚至聽起來沒那么抓耳。他的個人首張專輯《The Eraser》在很大程度上成功地將這十年的后千禧年緊張情緒轉化到令人難以抗拒的情緒化電子抽象作品之中，而2014年的《Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes》卻常常讓人感到幽閉、孤僻和無力。相比之下，《ANIMA》的音調自始至終都給人一種充實、飽含活力，且?guī)в行┰S威脅性的感覺。Yorke的憂郁在不斷地生根發(fā)芽。

Yorke has long been a fan of left-of-center dance music;?remixes?commissioned for?The Eraser?and?The King of Limbs?constituted a who’s who of the European club vanguard. But this is the first of his own productions where it feels like he and longtime production partner Nigel Godrich really?get it, where their beatmaking strides beyond contemporary fashion. The influence of?James Holden?and his Border Community label, an avant-techno touchstone, is all over?ANIMA’s burly bass synths and jabbing pulses. Syncopated, spring-loaded grooves are reminiscent of?Four Tet?and?Floating Points; the blippy “Not the News” channels?Zomby?and?Actress. Yet for all the music’s heavy electronic bent, it isn’t obviously mapped to a rhythmic grid: It slips and slides all over the place, wheezy synths surging in waves, feeling restless and hungry. Yorke treats climaxes with a boxer’s strategy—feinting, falling back, changing the angle of his attack.

Yorke一直以來都是非主流舞曲的粉絲;他為《The Eraser》和《The King of Limbs》重新混音，組成了歐洲俱樂部先鋒的名人錄。但這是他自己制作的第一張專輯，與他長期合作的伙伴Nigel Godrich能真正get到他的點，所以他們合作的歌曲超越了當代時尚。James Holden和他Border Community的標簽(一個avant-techno風格的試金石)的影響，遍布《ANIMA》的重低音合成器和跳動的節(jié)奏之中。切分、彈性的節(jié)奏讓人想起了Four Tet和Floating Points;活潑的“Not the News”則模仿了Zomby和Actress。然而，盡管所有的音樂都帶有強烈的電子曲風，但它并沒有明顯地映射到一個節(jié)奏網中:它到處滑動、移動，喘息的合成器在波浪中涌動，讓人感到不安和渴望。Yorke用拳擊手的策略來處理曲子的高潮——佯攻、后退、改變進攻角度。

Critics have sometimes complained—understandably, if not always correctly—that Yorke’s solo work has felt incomplete. As frontman and linchpin of one of the world’s most dynamic rock bands, Yorke has had to work doubly hard to convince listeners that his late nights in front of a laptop are equally worthy of their attention. But?ANIMA?proves how much he and Godrich are capable of on their own. His bandmates’ influence colored?The Eraser; on the more unmoored?Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes, their absence loomed large. But here he and Godrich have perfected a sound of their own, one that doesn’t take Radiohead’s achievements as its primary unit of measurement.

評論家們有時會抱怨Yorke的個人作品感覺不完整。盡管這些評論并非總是正確，但還是可以理解的。Yorke作為世界上最有活力的搖滾樂隊之一的主唱和靈魂人物，他不得不加倍努力讓聽眾相信，他在筆記本電腦前熬夜所創(chuàng)作出來的音樂同樣值得他們關注。但《ANIMA》證明了他和Godrich僅憑一己之力就能做出這樣的音樂。他樂隊成員的影響改變了《The Eraser》，也改變了《Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes》，樂隊成員的缺席顯得尤為突出。但在這里，他和Godrich完善了他們自己的聲音——一個不把Radiohead的成就作為主要衡量單位的聲音。

Track after track, Yorke proves the importance of stripping back. It’s remarkable how much he can make out of so little: The best songs here get by on the strength of just one or two synthesizer patches, a handful of electronic drum sounds—mostly just scraped white noise, plus the occasional booming kick drum—and his voice, processed and layered as often as is needed. “Impossible Knots” rides a propulsive electric bassline that lands somewhere between Afrobeat and Fugazi; the closing “Runwayaway” makes trance-like use of Tuareg-inspired desert blues guitar. There’s not much else. Every element practically dares you to so much as ask for any further accompaniment.

一曲接一曲，約克證明了精簡的重要性。他能用如此少的元素就創(chuàng)作出這樣的歌曲實在是太不可思議了:這里最好的歌曲的只依靠是一或兩個合成器補丁來延續(xù)，曲子里包含了少量的電子鼓聲——絕大部分都是刮白噪聲，以及偶爾的出現(xiàn)的底鼓，而Yorke的聲音通常需要進行分層和處理。單音bass貫穿“Impossible Knots”，最終止于非洲打擊樂和Fugazi之間；最后迷幻電子風格的Runwayaway”使用了受圖阿雷格啟發(fā)的沙漠藍調吉他。這張專輯沒什么別的了，幾乎每一種元素都讓你敢于要求更豐富的伴奏。

There are a few outright topical songs—“The Axe” (“Goddamned machinery, why don’t you speak to me?/One day I am gonna take an axe to you”) will resonate with anyone who suspects technological progress is moving in the wrong direction—but for the most part, Yorke’s lyrics remain imagistic, non-specific, as intractable as eye floaters. Fragmentary lines play out like pages ripped from a journal on the nightstand. Sometimes he seems to be muttering to himself; elsewhere his voice is chopped into a jumble of words dangled teasingly near the outer limits of meaning. “Twist” ends with an incantation that might be straight from a horror film: “A boy on a bike who is running away/An empty car in the woods, the motor left running.” We’re whipped back into the hypnopompic logic of Yorke’s tangled thoughts, the fogged film of ANIMA’s Dream Camera.

有幾首直接的熱門歌曲——“The Axe” (“這該死的機器，你為什么不和我說話?總有一天我要用斧頭把你劈了（Goddamned machinery, why don’t you speak to me?/One day I am gonna take an axe to you）”)能與任何懷疑科技進步正在誤入歧途的人產生共鳴——但在大多數(shù)情況下，Yorke的歌詞仍然帶有意象主義色彩和不確定性，就像飛蚊癥一樣難以處理。零碎的臺詞就像從床頭柜上撕下來的幾頁日記。有時他似乎在自言自語;在其他地方，他的聲音被切成一堆雜亂的詞語，在意義的邊緣搖擺著，令人發(fā)笑?！癟wist”以一句咒語結尾，這句咒語可能出自恐怖電影:“一個騎自行車的男孩跑開了/樹林里有一輛空汽車，發(fā)動機還沒熄火。（A boy on a bike who is running away/An empty car in the woods, the motor left running.）”我們又回到Yorke混亂思緒的半意識狀態(tài)的邏輯，回到了《ANIMA》夢幻相機的模糊膠片。

A short film by Paul Thomas Anderson for Netflix accompanies the album, sequencing “Not the News,” “Traffic,” and “Dawn Chorus” into a single audiovisual suite. Its opening shots—a subway car full of commuters in drab colors, their exaggerated movements a herky-jerky pantomime of restless slumber—explicitly link back to those ANIMA Technologies subway ads, playfully smudging the edges of the album’s world and our own. Exquisitely choreographed by Damien Jalet, the film takes the form of a dream sequence, following Yorke as he follows a woman (played by his partner, Dajana Roncione) along a labyrinthine subterranean course.

Paul Thomas Anderson為Netflix制作了一部來配合這張專輯的短片，將“Not the News”、“Traffic”以及“Dawn Chorus”安排在一個單獨的視頻中。它的開場鏡頭——一截地鐵車廂里坐滿了膚色單調的通勤者，他們夸張的動作就像一出反復無常、沒睡好的啞劇——明確地與ANIMA Technologies的地鐵廣告聯(lián)系在一起，開玩笑地模糊了專輯中的世界與現(xiàn)實世界的邊緣。這部電影由Damien Jalet精心編排，采用了夢境的形式，Yorke跟隨一名女子(由他的搭檔Dajana Roncione飾演)沿著迷宮般的地下路線行進。

Both the album and the film hinge upon “Dawn Chorus,” one of the simplest, most beautiful songs in Yorke’s catalog. It is a reverential song about loss, nostalgia, and regret; a farewell to the departed and a celebration of second chances. Over patient synthesizer harmonies, Yorke mulls over ghosts of a past life, shadows of what might have been: “If you could do it all again,” he muses, each line trailing off into non sequitur, each stanza a stack of stray puzzle pieces. At the song’s apex, the synthesizers pause and crescendo softly, modulating as Yorke sings, his voice hushed:

這張專輯和電影都依賴于“Dawn Chorus”，這是Yorke這張專輯中最簡單、最美麗的歌曲之一。這是一首關于失去、懷舊和遺憾的虔誠歌曲——告別逝者，慶祝第二次機會。在耐心的合成器和聲中，Yorke思考著過去生活的幽靈，思考著本可能出現(xiàn)的陰影:“如果你想再來一次，”他沉思著，每一行歌詞都變成了不合邏輯的結尾，每一節(jié)都是一堆散亂的拼圖。在歌曲的高潮，隨著Yorke的演唱，合成器輕柔地暫停和漸強，他的聲音變得低沉：

In the middle of the vortex
The wind picked up
Shook up the soot
From the chimney pot
Into spiral patterns
Of you my love

If there’s a more perfect image of absence than these ashes dancing in midair, I don’t know it. Anderson’s film ends with Yorke awakening on the train, his face bathed in the light of daybreak as “Dawn Chorus” winds down. A moment before, he and Roncione have been locked in an intimate embrace, but as he opens his eyes, it is clear that he is alone. The song’s title has been a?part?of?Radiohead lore?for years now; only they know what other forms it might have taken, other meanings it might have accrued. But here, on a song starkly unadorned, Yorke expands his already vast catalog with a perfect, unforgettable song, an elegy for the dreams that cannot be retrieved.

如果有比這些灰燼在半空中飛舞更完美的殘缺畫面，那我并未見過。Anderson的短片以Yorke在火車上醒來結束。伴隨著“Dawn Chorus”的緩緩收尾，他的臉沐浴在黎明的陽光之下。就在剛才，他還和Roncione緊緊擁抱在一起，但當他睜開眼睛時，很明顯他獨自一人。多年來，這首歌的名字一直是Radiohead傳說的一部分;只有他們自己知道這首歌可能采取的其他形式，或是它可能產生的其他含義。但在這首毫不修飾的歌曲中，Yorke用一首完美、難忘的歌曲擴充了他本已龐大的歌曲目錄，這也是一首為無法挽回的夢想而作的挽歌。