Beck has responded to insults from Fiery Furnaces’ Matt Friedberger with a song about the avant-garde composer Harry Partch.
Earlier this month, Friedberger criticised Radiohead after he thought their tribute song for first world war veteran Harry Patch was for American musician Partch.
"Fuck you!" he said to the band. "You brand yourself by brazenly and arbitrarily associating yourself with things that you know people consider cool. That is bogus. That’s a put-on. That’s a branding technique and Radiohead have their brand that they’re popular and intelligent … How’s the song? Is it 48 notes to the octave? What does it have to do with Harry Patch?
"Oh, my wife says I am being very rude. She doesn’t like me insulting Radiohead. She’s afraid they will send their lackeys through the computer to sabotage us. But they needn’t worry – we are a band that sabotages ourselves."
After learning of his mistake, the Fiery Furnaces issued the following statement: "Matt has not heard the Radiohead song about Harry Patch, but if he did, he is sure he wouldn’t like it.
"No doubt Radiohead and their fans can ignore his opinion on this matter and continue with their triumphant artistic interventions. Matt would have much preferred to insult Beck but he is too afraid of Scientologists."
Beck has now responded by releasing his own tribute song for Harry Partch which, according to his website, "employs Partch’s 43 tone scale, which expands conventional tonality into a broader variation of frequencies and resonances."
Click here to listen to the song.
