Ed O'Brien – Radiohead – LSQ
This spring, Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien released a beautiful and soul-stirring album called Blue Morpho, and in this episode, he shares with great depth and candor what inspired the album, his approach to recording it, and the transformative self exploration required to make it. One of the elements of the project was his desire to capture sounds at 432 Hz, and you’ll hear him explain the idea behind that, right at the beginning of the interview. But from there, we go way back into his history as an artist, to his early childhood listening to Simon & Garfunkel with his mom while she sewed, singing in the boys choir, discovering guitar music and freaking out over bands like The Jam and The Police and The Smiths, and while still a teenager meeting and forming a band with the group of school friends who would become Radiohead. Honestly, this interview is one of those occasions, when I can’t believe what an honor it was to hear from an artist whose music has been so important to me personally, and for him to share about the artists that had similar impact on his life. There’s an incredible story right near the end of the episode where Ed talks about being on tour with Radiohead in the US in 1995, and having all of their gear stolen. So they took a fateful trip to San Francisco to get some new guitars and things, but they only had one audio cassette to listen to during the road trip, and the music that was on it ended up inspiring some of their approach to OK Computer. You’ll have to listen all the way through to find out what was on that tape.
LSQ 
432-1 BLASTOFF!
I had an epiphany day before yesterday after hearing you twice mention the LSQ podcasts during your show. You mentioned the recent posting of the Genesis Owusu interview and you said specifically that it goes in depth into the history, origins, & influences of his creative experience, or words to that effect.
That caught my ear and made me think I could use your podcast site as kind of a self-study course on the history and evolution of Indie music. I feel I’m still kind at new to the genre but it is so much a part of my daily life experience that I’d like to understand the origins and foundations better.
You also mentioned that you were posting up on July 1st the interview with Ed O’brien. I already know from being a regular listener that Radiohead figures prominently not only in your personal journey through Indie music, but that the band is also foundational in the spirit and manifestation of what is the core of XMU.
So my notion was I should start at the beginning and go methodically through the interviews on the LSQ podcasts. But I couldn’t resist the temptation to start with the Ed O’Brien interview even though it was out of sequence, and follow it up with Genesis Owusu before starting at the beginning of your podcast library archive because of your comments regarding the scope of that conversation. I thought it would help formulate a baseline for me as I go through your site over time.
I was captivated by your discussion with Ed O’Brien about the 432 frequency, a notion with which I was completely unfamiliar. But as a 50+year practitioner of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique and my resulting limited exposure to some of the Indian Vedic traditional music /chanting, I was fascinated with the insights that you and the gentlemen both shared. It truly “resonated” with me if you’ll pardon the pun.
So since Genesis is the beginning, so to speak, today I’ll begin that journey with Mr. Owasu that you launched for me yesterday with Mr. O’Brien. My apologies for being so verbose, but I really felt the need to share with you the impact your influence has had on me.
Regards – J.B.
jbdunnsmail@gmail.com / @the-jbird.bsky.social
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