On the evening of Wednesday July 30, 1997, a troupe of eager celebrities snaked into 10 Downing Street for Tony Blair’s now-infamous "Cool Britannia" party. Noel Gallagher, Vivienne Westwood and Alan McGee were among the guests invited to celebrate the new Prime Minister’s landslide general election win three months earlier.

Britpop – the chirpy, undemanding, retro musical movement that had dominated the cultural landscape for four years – still ruled, and hope abounded that the youngest Prime Minister since 1812 would take the country in an exciting new direction after 18 years of Tory rule. The party’s attendees, Westwood later recalled, where “euphoric” to be there.

But five musicians from Oxford saw the world differently. Released on 16 June 1997, the month before Blair’s shindig, Radiohead’s album OK Computer provided a stark antidote to this euphoria. Musically complex, its 12 songs were foreboding, textured, crammed with snatches of white noise and electronic flourishes, and at times sublimely beautiful. Lyrically, singer Thom Yorke eyed the future with twitchy fear, singing about the march of technology and its dehumanising effects, machines spiraling out of control, alienation, artificial intelligence and sensory overload. Within months of Vanity Fair proclaiming that "London Swings Again!", OK Computer’s nervous jolt suggested a darker reality.