Mark Pritchard and Thom Yorke release collaborative single ‘Back In The Game’

Mark Pritchard and Thom Yorke have unveiled their new collaborative single ‘Back In The Game’ via Warp Records.

The track marks the second collaboration between the pioneering electronic producer and The Smile and Radiohead frontman, following their 2016 single ‘Beautiful People’, which featured on Pritchard’s Warp Records album ‘Under The Sun’.

‘Back In The Game’ has been a consistent feature in Yorke’s recent setlists, having made its live debut during the opening night of his ‘Everything’ solo tour in Christchurch, New Zealand, before appearing throughout shows across Australia, Japan and Singapore.

The track features Yorke’s vocals processed through the H910 Harmonizer, one of the earliest digital audio effects devices, with his voice manipulated across various ranges throughout the composition.

The accompanying video has been created by visual artist Jonathan Zawada, who previously collaborated with Pritchard on ‘Under The Sun’. “On first hearing the original demo of Back In The Game I was immediately struck by the deranged bassline that made me think of the final scene of Staying Alive where John Travolta is cockily strutting through the New York streets but I saw it with a more sinister overlay,” Zawada says. “Slowly a version of that visual arose around a character wearing a kind of giant parade head with a fixed expression of mania stuck on their face, such that you couldn’t tell if their endless march was one of aggression or celebration. The more I paid attention to the lyrics the more details began to fill themselves out and the overall concept began to form of parade of many characters marching past a building from within which everything was being thrown out of a window and into a giant bonfire.”

Pritchard’s extensive career includes work under various aliases including Reload, Link, and as one half of Global Communication alongside Tom Middleton. His previous work with Radiohead includes two remixes of ‘Bloom’ in 2011, while his remix catalogue also features work for Aphex Twin, Depeche Mode, PJ Harvey and Slowdive.