[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":174},["ShallowReactive",2],{"codex-\u002Fcodex\u002Fthe-long-way-round":3,"codex-around-\u002Fcodex\u002Fthe-long-way-round":162},{"id":4,"title":5,"body":6,"cover":131,"date":132,"description":133,"draft":134,"extension":135,"faq":136,"kind":146,"meta":147,"navigation":148,"noindex":134,"ogImage":131,"path":149,"readingMinutes":150,"seo":151,"seoDescription":152,"seoTitle":153,"standfirst":154,"stem":155,"tags":156,"updated":131,"__hash__":161},"codex\u002Fcodex\u002Fthe-long-way-round.md","The Long Way Round",{"type":7,"value":8,"toc":123},"minimark",[9,13,19,26,29,34,37,40,43,46,50,59,62,65,72,75,78,82,85,88,96,99,107,114,117],[10,11,12],"p",{},"Thom Yorke was inducted into the Fellowship of the Ivors Academy in May, with\nHarry Styles presenting. He used the speech to make demands rather than to give\nthanks, and the line the Academy pulled out was this:",[14,15,16],"blockquote",{},[10,17,18],{},"It takes time for artists to find their voice",[20,21],"embedded-player",{"height":22,"provider":23,"src":24,"title":25},700,"Instagram","https:\u002F\u002Fwww.instagram.com\u002Fp\u002FDYpHhR8oYXx\u002Fembed","Thom Yorke's Ivors Fellowship acceptance speech",[10,27,28],{},"The rest of it was aimed squarely at the people in the room. Every generation,\nhe argued, has the right to rebel, to embarrass the business, to go stylistically\nwherever it likes — and that impulse is what keeps music alive. For that to\nhappen the industry has to have faith in artists who are, in his description,\nfragile and fairly messed up, and it needs the wisdom to let them develop, take\nrisks and make mistakes. He signed off by reminding the executives present that\nwithout artists they are nothing.",[30,31,33],"h2",{"id":32},"time-is-not-the-waiting-room","Time is not the waiting room",[10,35,36],{},"The obvious reading is that artists need patience the way a crop needs a season —\nthat the work exists in some finished form already and the years are simply how\nlong it takes to arrive.",[10,38,39],{},"That is not how it goes. The time is not spent waiting for the record. The\nrecord is made out of the time.",[10,41,42],{},"Think about what is actually inside a finished piece. An arrangement that\nsurvived three rewrites and carries the scars of the two that failed. A mixdown\ndecision taken at two in the morning by someone too tired to be clever, which\nturned out to be the reason it works. A sound that only exists because of an\naccident nobody would repeat on purpose. A structure that came from a wrong turn\nkept out of stubbornness.",[10,44,45],{},"None of that could have been written down in advance. If it could have been\nspecified, there would have been no reason to make the thing — you would simply\nhave had it.",[30,47,49],{"id":48},"which-is-the-honest-limit-on-the-tools","Which is the honest limit on the tools",[10,51,52,53,58],{},"I wrote a few weeks ago about\n",[54,55,57],"a",{"href":56},"\u002Fcodex\u002Fwhere-theres-a-right-answer","where AI belongs in music",", and the rule was\nto use it where a correct answer exists and never where one does not. Yorke's\nargument gives that a second edge.",[10,60,61],{},"The pitch for these tools is almost always speed: same destination, shorter\nroute. For technical work that pitch is honest. Spectral analysis, mix checks, a\nsanity pass on a master — those are measurements, and arriving at a measurement\nfaster costs nothing, because the number was going to be the number.",[10,63,64],{},"Everywhere else the promise contains a hidden substitution. A path taken quickly\nis a different path, and since the character of a piece is assembled from what\nhappened along the way, a shorter route produces a different record rather than\nthe same one sooner. Remove the detours and you remove what the detours made.",[66,67,69],"codex-note",{"kicker":68},"Where the tools sit",[10,70,71],{},"An assistant can shorten the route. The route is where the work happens.",[10,73,74],{},"So they stay in the supporting role here, and the boundary is not moral\nsqueamishness. It is that I want the thing that comes out the other end to\ncontain a history, and a history is made of decisions somebody actually had to\ntake.",[10,76,77],{},"This applies well beyond the software. It is equally true of writing, of\narranging, of a mixdown — every stage has a version where you decide and a\nversion where you accept a default, and the accumulated difference between those\ntwo is most of what people mean when they say a record sounds like someone.",[30,79,81],{"id":80},"what-he-is-asking-the-industry-for","What he is asking the industry for",[10,83,84],{},"The practical demand in the speech is the harder half, because it costs money.",[10,86,87],{},"Faith, development, permission to fail — those are the things a business\noptimising for immediate return cuts first. A label that gives an artist three\nrecords to find their voice is making a bet with a long payback, and a system\ntuned to quarterly signals has no mechanism for that patience.",[10,89,90,91,95],{},"Which is the same complaint from the other direction as\n",[54,92,94],{"href":93},"\u002Fcodex\u002Fthe-wrong-target","the influencer signings",": people acquired on a signal\nand deployed immediately, with no development period at all, because the signal\nwas already there and waiting would only risk it decaying. Yorke is asking for\nprecisely the phase that pipeline deletes.",[10,97,98],{},"He is also better placed than almost anyone to make the request and have it\nland, which is presumably why he spent the honour on it rather than on gratitude.\nAn acceptance speech is one of the few moments where the room has to sit still\nand listen to an artist, and he used it to argue for the people who do not get\nthose moments.",[100,101],"codex-cta",{"body":102,"kicker":103,"label":104,"title":105,"href":106},"Five tracks that took the long way — Andalusia, Ibiza and Berlin, and a fair number of versions that did not survive.","The work","Buy on Bandcamp","Between Coasts EP","https:\u002F\u002Fhybridflight.bandcamp.com\u002Falbum\u002Fbetween-coasts-ep",[100,108],{"body":109,"kicker":110,"label":111,"title":112,"action":113},"New entries, releases and dates by email — the slow channel, for people who would rather not have a feed decide what reaches them.","No algorithm","Join the newsletter","The Radar","newsletter",[115,116],"hr",{},[10,118,119],{},[120,121,122],"em",{},"Source: Thom Yorke's acceptance speech on being inducted into the Fellowship of\nThe Ivors Academy at the 2026 Ivor Novello Awards, posted by The Ivors Academy on\n22 May 2026. The quoted line is the Academy's own pull-quote from the speech;\nthe remaining passages are paraphrased from contemporaneous reporting, which\ncarried the speech in full.",{"title":124,"searchDepth":125,"depth":125,"links":126},"",3,[127,129,130],{"id":32,"depth":128,"text":33},2,{"id":48,"depth":128,"text":49},{"id":80,"depth":128,"text":81},null,"2026-09-01T23:59:00","Thom Yorke used his Ivors Fellowship speech to ask the industry for something unfashionable: time. On why the route a record takes is not a delay before the work but a part of it.",false,"md",[137,140,143],{"question":138,"answer":139},"What did Thom Yorke say in his Ivors Fellowship speech?","That it takes time for artists to find their voice, and that the industry has to have faith in them — allowing them to develop, take risks and make mistakes. He framed each generation's right to rebel and go wherever it wants stylistically as the thing that keeps music relevant, and closed by reminding executives that without artists they have nothing.",{"question":141,"answer":142},"Why does the creative process matter as much as the result?","Because the result carries the process inside it. Arrangement choices, mixdown decisions and the wrong turns that got kept all leave marks that could not have been specified in advance. A record made by a shorter route is a different record, not the same one delivered faster.",{"question":144,"answer":145},"Where do AI tools fit into a music workflow?","As assistants to the technical layer — measurement, checking, catching what tired ears miss. They can shorten a path. The difficulty is that the path is where the character of a piece gets decided, so anything that removes the detours also removes what the detours produced.","Response",{},true,"\u002Fcodex\u002Fthe-long-way-round",4,{"title":5,"description":133},"On Thom Yorke's Ivor Novello Fellowship speech, why development time is not a delay before the art, and where AI tools legitimately fit into a workflow.","Thom Yorke on artists needing time — why process is part of the work","A finished record carries its own history — the wrong turns kept, the decisions made at two in the morning. None of that could have been specified in advance.","codex\u002Fthe-long-way-round",[157,158,159,160],"creative practice","music industry","ai","making music","ELYp0dgKc68sGRGlonNcffTDJUN2BaiyXeFg442bwR8",[163,169],{"title":164,"path":165,"stem":166,"description":167,"kind":168,"children":-1},"The Floor Is Not a Stage","\u002Fcodex\u002Fthe-floor-is-not-a-stage","codex\u002Fthe-floor-is-not-a-stage","Why the best club nights in Berlin happen when the DJ stops performing — a working argument for reading the room instead of playing to it.","Essay",{"title":170,"path":171,"stem":172,"description":173,"kind":146,"children":-1},"The Personality Tax","\u002Fcodex\u002Fthe-personality-tax","codex\u002Fthe-personality-tax","Cristalyne asks when being a DJ stopped being enough. The shift she describes is not that you have to post — it is that you have to be a particular kind of person on camera, and that selects for something other than music.",1789031393794]