Electronic music pioneer and producer Mark Pritchard (Aphex Twin, Depeche Mode, PJ Harvey, Slowdive) and The Smile / Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke released their unique, collaborative album, Tall Tales, on May 9, 2025. Wonderfully, it was accompanied by a special global cinema event on the same date which presented a version of the album paired with varied visuals directed, animated and edited by Jonathan Zawada (Flume, The Avalanches, Royksopp, Dua Lipa). We attended a special preview screening on the eve of the album’s release date. The record is out now for your consideration; here’s our Tall Tales film review.

Tall Tales film review

The production company idents were high-def and artistic so when a lighthouse began to scan the sea, it seemed part of the pre-amble. A ‘searchlight’ production, perhaps? No. It soon became apparent that the event had started. This was not to be a narrative experience. Lulled into calm relaxation watching the lighthouse lamp turn, imperceptibly the weather changed and the lapping sea became a torrent.

The encroaching dusk colour-grading melded into more fantastical colours: reds especially colonised the blue seascape, then kaleidoscopic rainbows. Changes continued as the velocity increased subtly but definitively. At times, the lighthouse and the rock rotated rather than the searchlight. All the while, a cacophony of droning noises and layered voices played. Often just below comprehension, although “double scoops for everyone” was proclaimed loud and clear by a child.

As a crescendo was reached, the scene changed. Another seascape, but much more calming. We the viewer are situated in an orange bucket or tube bobbing on the sea. The gentle thrill of anticipating whether or not a wave will fill the void was tantalising, and the underwater camera did a fantastic job of showing us the power of temporarily being at one with the crashing wave.

There was no attempt to hide the artifice though. Light flares and drops on the lens were reminders of the camera work. Hypnotic music was timed to match the ebbs and flow of nature. A distorted, submerged vocal rang out when the first swell breached. Eventually, a lifeboat arrived. Rescue? No, the lifeboat itself was lifted away instead. End scene.

Next up was a coin with Greek comedy mask imagery rolling around a landscape of ancient monoliths, intercut with a crown. Gold glints through many of these vignettes, along with repetitions of rotational movement.

The next scene gave a clue to its delightful absurdity as we see a humanoid carving an arm with a hand in an ‘up yours’ pose. Ancient and Medieval symbolism was visible throughout but so were signs of mundane modernity, like Crocs and air conditioner units.

We enter a macabre still life in perpetual motion; even we as the camera begin to rotate as we dance further into the absurdist village fairground scene. There’s an uncanny valley effect as the not-quite humans smile while they prey on each other; the duo stealing an item from each other in an endless loop, the woman balancing a child off each arm like a see saw, people playing tug of war over a fish. The song soundtracking the scene, Gangsters, was an 8-bit Casio-era delight.

A complete tonal change next, as we watch black and white post-war archive footage of children collecting furniture for a bonfire. This was interspersed, without comment, with AI-looking cartoon clips.

That was just a taste of intercutting ready for a more intense clip show of various disparate scenes; elephants, smelting liquid, a super-pit, and much more. Movement and rotation were visible again, as were flashes of gold and red.

The use of what might be broadly assumed to be AI (but that seemingly encompasses Unreal Engine and Blender in reality) in this film has the potential to be divisive. We’re in the era where some think it’s effortless, almost easy, and others think it’s creatively devoid, akin to theft. However, there’s clearly immense artistry in these myriad visuals. Nonetheless, to avoid some of the anticipated criticism, original conceptions and versions made with AI were replaced with stock footage for the final edit.

In other cases, commentary on machine learning was seemingly part of the piece. See, for example, the robot arms gradually painting an identical Rothko-esque piece bearing no relation to the landscape they’re (not) seeing. Soon, however, they learn to diverge, and one robot does create a stylised version of the landscape. Others rotate around our position while painting Rorschach effect optical illusions, combining other landscapes with a version of the Mona Lisa.

Is this depicting the future of art? Or have we been there for a long time and just the technology has iterated? A Bob Dylan signed print hung in pride of place in an art gallery window near the cinema; is print-making really any different, or better, than a robot arm reproducing the desired artwork?

A face resembling a deconstructed, almost melting C-3PO rotated in and out at times, as if an alien/robot hybrid. More on that later.

For Back In The Game, we get a giant multi-faced mask walked by backwards legs in fetching rainbow tights. Psychedelic colours abound as further shiny, anthropomorphic Masked Singer giant heads with legs join the march. Familiar imagery of gold, coins and theatre symbolism returns.

A play on words shows on an art deco building – after seeing the uncanny amusement park mascots, the sign reads A.museum combining mthe concepts of museum and amusement. Art falls from the top floor, for a while we are within the spinning paintings, before we see that they are being thrown. They collect on the pavement and a fire is started for these discarded works.

These varied tableaux were linked by a red anthropomorphic bird resembling a plague doctor walking around a video game style map, stopping at each new landmark and staring at the viewer. This ‘plague bird’ eventually gets it’s own scene where it is anthropomorphised even further as it trudges through a dramatic landscape.

Then for This Conversation Is Missing Your Voice, we as the camera take our place as a box on a logistics fulfilment centre’s complicated conveyor belt system. Eventually, the boxes that are pushed in front of us have sketched scenes on them, depicting the rise of a civilisation. We see imagery from earlier in the film, including medieval scenes. There is a strong implications that aliens were involved, culminating in the lyrics ‘you know it’s time to go’ when the boxes and the conveyor belts break through to a cloudy blue sky, much as the humanoids emerged from the art.

Lyrics again contextualise the scene for The Spirit, Tall Tales’ final single. We hear “I’m nobody’s fool and you can’t bring me down” as a skeleton in a precariously balanced long boat tries to protect its space from incursion by two rainbow coloured beings. The skeleton wins a pyrrhic victory. The beings are defeated and disintegrate under a gold shroud, but the effort topples the skeleton out of the boat causing self-destruction. There would have been space for all but, instead, none of them survive.
One final hurrah for many of the film’s recurring themes like water, rotation, movement, gold, and uncanny humanoids.

What to make of a film with no obvious narrative but many narrative threads? It may take some time, and a second viewing. The soundtrack might only be of limited help with that endeavour since it has a different running order and different mixes.

Perhaps the initial reaction of one cinema-goer in York said it best: “Wow” ::deep intake of breath:: ::silence::

Everyone stayed for the credits.

Tall Tales album is out now on Warp Records

If our Tall Tales film review or your previous experience of Pritchard and Yorke have piqued your interest, the Tall Tales album is out now. You can choose between a black vinyl 2LP gatefold edition, limited special black vinyl 2LP edition including a 36-page booklet designed by Zawada, a standard CD, or a limited special CD with a 36-page booklet, alongside a digital release.

Despite having a more expansive mix for the stereo rather than the cinema, we’d be keen to also see a home edition of the film to explore the immersive world once more in more detail.

Tall Tales album tracklisting

A Fake in a Faker’s World
Ice Shelf
Bugging Out Again
Back in the Game
White Cliffs
The Spirit
Gangsters
This Conversation is Missing Your Voice
Tall Tales
Happy Days
The Men Who Dance In Stags’ Heads
Wandering Genie

Check out musiccloseup.com for more music news, reviews and photography!