How does one report on the expressiveness of human feeling in a work that is intentionally (or supposedly) devoid of emotion? Langer has met her nemesis, and that is Thom Yorke. As mentioned earlier, Yorke sought to capture the emotion of his words not to emote, to be expressive of emotion, but to simply exist along with the rest of the instruments. In the same breath, he explained, "I think what I find about, like, taking on the electronic sort of thing, taking on programming and editing and that and sampling, is that it stops, it stops you trying to emote... because there's something I find incredibly exciting about leaving something to run and standing there listening to it and not actually play at the time and singing along."
To say that Idioteque is totally emotionless would be to disregard the effect of the instrumentation and timbre, changes of pulse and vocal performance.
The entrance of the solo drum loop is admittedly cold, but as the harmony swirls in, the listener is brought into a transcendental world by the sounds of a warm, futuristic synthesizer in rich harmony. The first verse's vocal performance is relatively apathetic in delivery, but the falsetto, as the lead singer jumps to B in the refrain, conveys a sense of declaration and entitlement as he sings, "here I'm allowed every thing all of the time...".
Section C, following the refrain, is much quicker in pace thanks to a percussive sample, which counters the mellow pacing of the drum loop. The sparse texture still manages to convey a sense of urgency and immediacy. The singer seems to warn of an impending doom, "ice age coming, ice coming... this is really happening, happening...".
After the quick, and perhaps unsettling, C-section, the refrain returns. This time, it is more soothing to the listener. The sense of alarm has been set aside, as if a horrible news story on TV was put of consciousness suddenly at the changing of the channel. The singer is still safe and happy, and perhaps ignorant of the world around him. In the repeat of the refrain, the singer once again comforts himself and reassures himself that he is indeed okay.
The reversed drum loop marks a shift, perhaps once again into the dark aspects of the world, the one which the vocalist is blissfully ignorant of. An eerie, dark sample accompanies the drum loop. It squeaks and wails and cries. It seems to go on and on, perhaps signaling that problems and trouble will not simply go away.
The return of the harmony, the beginning of the coda, initially feels calming, similar to the sensation following the C-section. This time, however, the eerie long hall sound does not go away. The comfortable and the uncomfortable co-exist. The vocal returns, sampled, conveying an ominous message, "the first and the children", contributing more to the sense of uneasiness. The singer must become aware of his concurrent existence in the universe, or at the very least, accept the possibility.
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