The original soundtrack by Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and 3D, one-half of Massive Attack, also known as Robert Del Naja, in collaboration with Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, Massive Attack producer-engineer Euan Dickinson and Elbow’s Guy Garvey for the documentary The UK Gold, an award-winning film about tax “avoidance”, was released for free on a UK protest site three days ago.

Of the 12 instrumental tracks, especially chilling are Embers with bars of beautifully haunting cello, Bottle Box, which has a pulse and trance-inducing flow that goes deep down into underbelly House, cowbells-filled Bull Market, and Dead Editors, all by Del Naja and Dickinson, and the electronic bumble-bee sounding first track Tap24+ Hiha24 by Yorke and Greenwood.

The investigative, feature-length film came out in 2013 and the score is free.  The soundtrack was released in it’s entirety on UK Uncut, an activist organization that uses “acts of creative civil disobedience to show our opposition to the Government’s cuts to our public services” in the UK.  It all started with #Taxdodgingistheft, which went viral.

UK Uncut says The UK Gold, written and directed by Mark Donne, is so controversial that the BBC and Channel 4 both refused to show it.

A quote from Yorke appears on the site:

“Now is the time to reveal the revolving doors between government and the City that has bred lies and corruption for so long, siphoning money through our tax havens for the global super rich, while now preaching that we the people must pay our taxes and suffer austerity. Just who does our government work for?”

by Cherryl Bird