The Smile (Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood and Tom Skinner), “A Light For Attracting Attention.”

The sign of a good chef is the ability to combine a bunch of cold leftovers into a mouthwatering gourmet experience. Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, freed from their familiar Radiohead kitchen and working with Sons of Kemet drummer Tom Skinner, take some new wave and jazz and soul and various other spices out of the musical pantry and whip up something new and delicious on The Smile‘s debut album, A Light For Attracting Attention.

Like an old science fiction movie, A Light For Attracting Attention manages simultaneously to capture both a retro and futuristic vibe. Vintage synths throb and pulse with Kraftwerk precision on album opener “The Same.” The minimalist blooping grows and warps, calling to mind the studio sorcery of Low’s genius Hey What album released last year. As the song reaches critical percolation, Yorke repeatedly intones, “We are all the same.”

Kubrick-like synth sounds (you know, the ones Wendy Carlos conjured for “The Shining” and “A Clockwork Orange”) animate “Waving a White Flag,” while bleeps and bloops punctuate the moody piano on “Open the Floodgates.”

Some of the songs could be mistaken for Radiohead hits from earlier records. Yorke’s falsetto voice on the piano ballad “Pana-vision,” the droning over-driven organ and minimalist groove of “Speech Bubbles,” and the acoustic guitar and lush string arrangements on “Free in the Knowledge” will all feel like cozy old blankets for fans of the band’s somber signature sound.

But The Smile really shines when boldly striking out for new sonic territories. The elaborate drumbeat on “The Opposite” undergirds a weird Krautrock-style groove that sometimes warps out of tune but never stops being groovy. On other songs, Yorke and company seem to be mining the new wave riches to be found in The Police’s back catalog. “The Smoke” is buttressed by a heavy-lidded skank as Yorke sings, “We set ourselves on fire.”

“You Will Never Work in Television Again” chugs with Sonic Youth power chords that skip like rocks over water, while sneering and nasally punk vocals blast the listener.

But “Thin Thing” combines all the album’s sonic spices into a single song that somehow exceeds the sum of its parts. Anchored by Tom Skinner’s motorik-inspired drumbeat and relentlessly bloopy synthesizers, the song eventually transcends its mechanistic groove and becomes something totally new and weird. Perhaps the highest praise that can be heaped on the song is that they just aren’t a lot of similar sonic reference points that make for easy comparison.

The Smile’s A Light For Attracting Attention is like a good episode of “Iron Chef.” It’s a bunch of ingredients that might seem weird and scary on their own, combined by masters to become not just nourishing food, but art. Yorke, Greenwood and Skinner provide ample evidence that you can have a bunch of chefs in the kitchen without spoiling the broth.