The recently teased collaboration between Radiohead and acclaimed German film score composer Hans Zimmer was released this morning. “(ocean) Bloom” is a reworking of Radiohead’s King of Limbs cut, “Bloom.” It soundtracks the trailer for the second season of BBC documentary Blue Planet. You can watch at the top of the page but, while David Attenborough’s soothing voice is always a joy, it does cut across Thom Yorke’s rapt mumbling here. The track was played out in full on BBC Radio this morning, during a conversation between Zimmer and Yorke, and you can hear it at the 51:22 mark.
With Zimmer present, as you might expect, big orchestral swells and lush strings replace the quiet clatter of Radiohead’s original. Yorke said this morning that “Bloom” was initially inspired by the first series of Blue Planet—”the idea of discovering life that humanity doesn’t know about is to me one of the most profound concepts,” he told Zimmer—but the reworked version is more in line with the pretty-colored wonderment of the BBC documentary. In 2011, Thom Yorke considered the wonders of the ocean and made a song that sounded like a soundtrack to existential, underwater terror; now, “(ocean) Bloom” can play over a video of starfish looking cool and nobody has to ponder the howling abyss.
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