Radiohead starts recording LP8

[MarkGrace]

Ed will appear on the BBC's radion 6 tomorrow. The interview has been pre-recorded, and some teaser snippets were recently played. Ed says they're "in the heart of it right now," he thinks it's "the best thing [they've] ever done," and it's "very different from In Rainbows."

I kind of hate that type of hype, especially when the album's not even done, but these guys have been good judges of the work they've done in the past. I don't for a second think they could ever do anything as good as OKC or Kid A again, but based on what I've heard so far I think the album could be at least as good as The Bends/In Rainbows/Amnesiac/HTTT -- and I'd be quite thrilled with another album of that quality.

[SteelBlue]

he thinks it's "the best thing [they've] ever done," and it's "very different from In Rainbows."

Just once I'd like to hear an artist say, "It's probably going to be at least decent. You know, we just hope it doesn't suck. This is our 8th album and let's face it, what more can we really do? We're at the stage of our career where we could take a crap on a disc and sell millions so it is what it is."

[MarkGrace]

Just once I'd like to hear an artist say, "It's probably going to be at least decent. You know, we just hope it doesn't suck. This is our 8th album and let's face it, what more can we really do? We're at the stage of our career where we could take a crap on a disc and sell millions so it is what it is."

Oh, don't worry, you'll get that as soon as Thom and Jonny start doing interviews. Ed is the eternal optimist. Thom will get out there and start saying that he couldn't finish songs, that he feels like they couldn't get X song quite right, and will probably go off into a tangent about they effed up the track list on Hail to the Thief since he can't seem to get over that. Jonny will talk about how the album is too long, how he doesn't like anything they've ever done except Kid A and Pyramid Song, and now that they've released the album there's only one song on it that he still likes.

When IR was released, Ed was talking about how he felt they had made a great album (and he was right). Jonny was saying that a month after the release he only liked four of the songs. Though he admitted that for him that was extremely good.

Apart from Ed's always boundless episode, these dudes have a crippling sense of self-doubt. It's what makes them so charming.

[MarkGrace]

Recap of Ed's interview:

Guitarist Ed O’Brien was a guest on Adam Buxton’s show on BBC 6 Music today, saying he thinks the new Radiohead record ‘is the best record we’ve ever made’. Ed: “We’re in the heart of the record. It’s genuinely exciting. It’s very different from what we did last time. It’s really nice to be doing this. It’s so good to be making music with the band that you feel is still as good as it’s ever been.”

When Adam Buxton asked if he had any idea when this record would see the light of day, Ed answered: “No, Ideally it would be great if it came out sometime this year. It has got to. I hope so. We’re at the finishing line. When you’re making a record, a film, write a book for ages and ages you think the finishing line is miles away. Now it feels it’s in touching distance. But of course, it being a creative process, at the last bit also, you have bursts of energy, you achieve a lot of things in a small period of time and then you’re nearly there…it might slow down. But yeah, hopefully it will be a matter of weeks.”

With ‘In Rainbows’ you seemed to have turned a corner and having a lot more fun. That’s what it looked like from the outside looking in. Is that fair?

Ed O’Brien: It wasn’t fun making the record. Making records has been hard. It’s always been a slog. Traditionally Radiohead in a studio has been: Don your tin helmet, just see it out, like a war of attrition. And basically at the end of In Rainbows it had taken three years to sort of come together. And we initially started off on our own, pulled in someone else and after a year we worked with Nigel [Godrich] again. It was such a slog. We knew we had these songs. We really believed in these songs. So, we had to do it right. It just took a long time. And we basically decided then and there at the end of that record: ‘We are never doing this again this way’. That was kind of like the end of Radiohead, mark 2. We decided, the only way that worked for us to carry on was to do it in a different spirit. Enjoy it.

On the recording process of ‘In Rainbows’ Ed continued explaining why it was much harder than everybody thought. Ed: “We hear it all the time: ‘it sounds like you had a great time in the studio’. But, oh man… that [In Rainbows] was a slog. It was a really long process. At the end, for instance a song like ‘House Of Cards’ has been recorded six times. Plus the fact: we had this genius idea in 2006 to go on tour and do 50 odd shows, play all these songs, go back to studio and record them. And that’s when we went back in with Nigel. We went in and recorded them having played these songs 50 times. So we kind of got the arrangements sorted. We just wanted to get them down. We played these enough. And we got them down and most of them were rubbish. A lot of work in the creative process is rubbish.

However Ed praised producer Nigel Godrich for his influence on the band. Ed: “The art is to not give in, to carry on, persevere. You just have to keep going. The great thing about Nigel is; he raises the bar. He drives you hard. You think you’ve done the take, you think you’ve done your overdub, you think it’s in there and then he says: ‘Maybe one more time’. He gets the best performances out of you. He’s amazing. Cause he also drives himself really hard as well. The quality of the stuff that he does is really high. So, it’s good to be driven hard.”

Ed also brought in a "Space" inspired mixtape to play on the show. Track list:

Radiohead - Subterranean Homesick Alien (OK Computer, 1997)

Eric B & Rakim - Follow The Leader (Follow The Leader, 1988)

Aphex Twin - Polynomial-C (Classics, 1995)

The Police - Walking On The Moon (Regatta De Blanc, 1979)

John Barry - The Black Hole Main Titles (Black Hole OST, 1979)

Rip Torn & Bowie - The Man Who Fell To Earth dialogue (1976)

The Beach Boys - 'Til I Die (Landlocked, 1970)

David Bowie - Space Oddity (Scary Monsters/Alabama Song b-side, 1979)

Frank Black - Space Is Gonna Do Me Good (Teenager Of The Year, 1994)

Deodato - Also Sprach Zarathustra (Theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey) (Prelude, 1972)

Diplo - Into The Sun (feat. Martina Topley-Bird) (Florida, 2004)

Radiohead - Meeting In The Aisle (b-side of Karma Police, 1997)

Roy Orbison - Blue Bayou (In Dreams: The Greatest Hits, 1987)

Plone - The Greek Alphabet (For Beginner Piano, 1999)

The Kingsbury Manx - Hawaii In 10 Seconds (The Kingsbury Manx, 2000)

Scott Walker - Angels Of Ashes (Scott 4, 1969)

XTC - Runaways (English Settlement, 1982)

Mary Wells - My Guy (1964)

Brian Eno - Always Returning (Apollo, 1981)

The Beatles - Across The Universe (Let It Be... Naked, 2003)

[MarkGrace]

Photo on DAS today of Thom and Stanley working on the album artwork -- post was initially titled "finishing touches," but was subsequently changed to "in the shed."

How close are we? I don't know, but I'm excited.

[MarkGrace]

Well, we may be close. Great read from Colin today:

Radiohead’s Colin Greenwood explains why the band released their last album direct to their fans

It’s been nearly three years since we announced our ‘pay what you think it’s worth’ scheme for the launch of our last record In Rainbows. I remember the excitement of it all, not least because the release date was my wife’s birthday, 10 October. The idea came from a friend of our manager, who proposed an ‘honesty box’, placing the onus on people to ask themselves how much they valued our music. Last summer, as we finished some more recordings, we started to think and talk about how to release them. So it seemed a good moment to take stock of the technological and cultural changes that have happened in the meantime.

In August 2007, we had finished our first record after the end of our deal with EMI. Previously, we would have given it to our record company at least three months up front, and then gone through the protracted round of meetings to decide on videos and singles — experiences we’d had for the previous six records. This time there was no EMI, and no one to decide anything but ourselves. We owned it outright, and could do whatever we wanted with it. This coincided with the growth of the internet as a medium to discover and share music, something we had used to reach fans while we made In Rainbows. This desire to use the technology was driven by distrust and frustration with trying to broadcast our music via traditional media, such as radio and television. Music on television is scarce, and hard to do well. Radio has such regulated playlists that disc jockeys are lucky to have one free play per show. Why go exclusively through such straitened formats when you could broadcast directly to people who are interested in you, in that moment?

The other attraction for us was the conjuring up of an event, a way of marking our releases and performances as special, unique times. The internet makes it easier for everything to be live, and that’s what we do. While we were in our studio, making the last few records, we would schedule last-minute ‘web casts’, and, at short notice, make small, spontaneous and impromptu programmes where we would play our favourite records, talk to fans, play new and old songs live, and even cover versions of songs from bands that had inspired us. It was stitched together on old Sony cams and video editors from eBay. It did feel like a Ruritanian broadcast, but it was thrilling to be sharing a live moment with our fans that wasn’t mediated by anyone except the internet service provider, and a live show that could be created ten minutes from home. I’d like to think the equivalent of this in broadcasting history would be the mom and pop radio stations that set up in America between the wars, when the excitement of a new medium was explored through the immediate community. In the same way, we saw the internet as a chance to treat the global constituency of Radiohead fans as our community. Also, it helped break up the studio tension, and made us feel less cloistered and isolated while we finished recording.

Against all this positive experience of using net technology, we’d had a bad experience on the previous record, when someone had taken some of the songs from a computer and put them online, well ahead of the official release. Everyone became very careful about carrying songs around, in the car, on CDs, music players and computers. It made you realise how easy it is to store and transmit music once it’s digitised, and that the fundamental thing about music is its destiny to be broadcast or shared. Part of the process of making a record involves listening to new songs or ideas in lots of different places: the car, the kitchen, with friends late at night. Having feelings of mild anxiety about music escaping onto the web wasn’t conducive to that, and there were a few panics. Fortunately, we managed to keep everything unreleased until the online download of In Rainbows.

The success of keeping the music off the net until release proved very powerful. A pre-digital album launch would involve some shows perhaps, record shop queues if you were lucky, and plans by the record company to mark the release as an event. In the digital world, with the ease of music escaping online, that sense of an event is diminished.

With In Rainbows, we were able to be the first people to digitally release our record, directly to people’s personal computers, at 7.30am GMT on 10 October 2007. I was having breakfast, and watched as the file appeared in my email, and the album streamed onto my desktop. I spent the next day and night monitoring people’s reactions online, both to the music and the means of delivery. Journalists in America had stayed up overnight to write the first review as they received the music – again, in the pre-digital age they would have had advance copies up to three weeks before. On the torrent site bulletin boards, people were arguing over whether they should be downloading and paying for the record from our site, rather than the free torrents. Various online pundits and pamphleteers were pronouncing the end of the record business, or of Radiohead, or of both.

For all the giddy prognostications, the most important reason for the success of In Rainbows was the quality of the music. I think this was overlooked, but without the great songs that we were proud of, the online release would have counted for nothing. I am optimistic that if you make good work you can secure the patronage of your fans.

Three years later, we have just finished another group of songs, and have begun to wonder about how to release them in a digital landscape that has changed again. It seems to have become harder to own music in the traditional way, on a physical object like a CD, and instead music appears the poor cousin of software, streamed or locked into a portable device like a phone or iPod. I buy hardly any CDs now and get my music from many different sources: Spotify, iTunes, blog playlists, podcasts, online streaming – reviewing this makes me realise that my appetite for music now is just as strong as when I was 13, and how dependent I am upon digital delivery. At the same time, I find a lot of the technology very frustrating and counter-intuitive. I spend a lot of time using music production software, but iTunes feels clunky. I wish it was as simple and elegant as Apple’s hardware. I understand that we have become our own broadcasters and distributors, but I miss the editorialisation of music, the curatorial influences of people like John Peel or a good record label. I liked being on a record label that had us on it, along with Blur, the Beastie Boys and the Beatles.

I’m unconvinced that the internet has replaced the club or the concert hall as a forum for people to share ideas and passions about music. Social networking models such as Twitter and foursquare are early efforts at this but have some way to go to emulate the ecosystem that labels such as Island drew upon, the interconnected club and studio worlds of managers, musicians, artists and record company mavericks, let alone pay for such a fertile environment. Shoreditch, in east London, has a vibrant scene right now, with independent labels such as Wichita, Bella Union and distribution companies like The Co-op, alongside the busy Strongroom studio. I spoke to a friend,
Dan Grech-Marguerat, about the scene. He is a busy mixer and producer, and told me that he could just sit at home and work on the computer but would miss the social buzz and benefits of working at the Strongroom and other studios.

There are signs that the net is moving out of its adolescence, and preparing to leave its bedroom. I have noticed on the fan message sites that a lot of the content and conversations have grown up, moved away from staccato chat and trolling, to discussions about artists, taste and trends, closer to writing found in music magazines.

There is less interest in the technological side of the net, and more focus on what services the web can deliver, like any other media. People are using touch and gesture-controlled devices such as the iPad to see through those objects to get to the content they want. This transparency and immediacy is exciting for us as artists, because it brings us closer to our audience.

We have yet to decide how to release our next record, but I hope these partial impressions will help give some idea of the conversations we’ve been having. Traditional marketplaces and media are feeling stale – supermarkets account for around 70 per cent of CDs sold in the UK, the charts are dominated by TV talent-show acts – and we are trying to find ways to put out our music that feel as good as the music itself. The ability to have a say in its release, through the new technologies, is the most empowering thing of all.

Colin Greenwood is Radiohead’s bassist

http://www.indexoncensorship.org/201...espeech-music/

[MarkGrace]

Phil said they were headed back to work on the album after the summer, but at this point it looks like the majority of the work has been done. My guess is they've spent the last couple of months agruing over the tracklist and listening to things over and over to make sure they like the result. Then, within the next month or so, they'll recovene to give it a final listen and get ready for release. Or, if they don't like the results on the final listen, maybe do some last minute re-dos to get the songs where they want them.

I've listened to Thom's solo sketches of the songs so many times that I'm just really anxious to hear how they turned out with the full band. Looks like we could get LP8 this year afterall.

[MarkGrace]

I was listening to the Amazing Sounds of Orgy (killer b-side from Amnesiac if you haven't heard it), and had a chuckle at these lyrics:

ill laugh my nuts off the day the banks collapse
im alright jack
the day the banks collapse

Thom the prophet.

[Coastal Ute]

Thom the prophet.

Agreed.

I think These are My Twisted Words is absolutely brilliant. I've been listening to it over and over again as I work on a paper here.

Around 5 years ago one of my music teachers hooked me up with some rad Radiohead B-sides from Hail to the Thief. After all this time I got the track names for them, and I think "Paperbag Writer" has always been a favorite (bass player bias).

I found an awesome performance of it with Flea on bass. Awesome.

[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RA8FVqm-cHY"]YouTube - Thom Yorke "Paperbag Writer" (Radiohead b-side) Live at The Echoplex 10-02-09[/nomedia]

I wonder who played it on the original recording.

[MarkGrace]

Agreed.

I think These are My Twisted Words is absolutely brilliant. I've been listening to it over and over again as I work on a paper here.

Around 5 years ago one of my music teachers hooked me up with some rad Radiohead B-sides from Hail to the Thief. After all this time I got the track names for them, and I think "Paperbag Writer" has always been a favorite (bass player bias).

I found an awesome performance of it with Flea on bass. Awesome.

YouTube - Thom Yorke "Paperbag Writer" (Radiohead b-side) Live at The Echoplex 10-02-09

I wonder who played it on the original recording.

Hey, alright, I got someone else to participate in this thread!

Twisted Words is just awesome, I absolutely love it. I have no idea how many times I've listened to that song, but it's a lot.

Paperbag Writer is pretty sick, and has never been played live by Radiohead. I'm guessing it was just Colin that played bass on the recorded track, though I'm not certain. Definitely cool that it's been resurrected by Atoms For Peace, and if you're into that bass thing you should check out some of their other stuff as they have a really cool low-end sound.

My favorite Atoms For Peace rendition of The Eraser songs is Harrowdown Hill: [nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fNnCKU_gUs"]YouTube - Thom Yorke "Harrowdown Hill" Live at The Echoplex 10-02-09[/nomedia]

The percussion on Cymbal Rush is so good: [nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlIzuoyfigo"]YouTube - 9/16 Atoms For Peace - Cymbal Rush (HD)[/nomedia]

Quite the little lineup Thom has assembled there for this project.

[Coastal Ute]

Hey, alright, I got someone else to participate in this thread!

Twisted Words is just awesome, I absolutely love it. I have no idea how many times I've listened to that song, but it's a lot.

Paperbag Writer is pretty sick, and has never been played live by Radiohead. I'm guessing it was just Colin that played bass on the recorded track, though I'm not certain. Definitely cool that it's been resurrected by Atoms For Peace, and if you're into that bass thing you should check out some of their other stuff as they have a really cool low-end sound.

My favorite Atoms For Peace rendition of The Eraser songs is Harrowdown Hill: YouTube - Thom Yorke "Harrowdown Hill" Live at The Echoplex 10-02-09

The percussion on Cymbal Rush is so good: YouTube - 9/16 Atoms For Peace - Cymbal Rush (HD)

Quite the little lineup Thom has assembled there for this project.

A couple of years ago I would've said "Yeah, that's Colin for sure" but after delving more into the tangible mystique we choose to call Radiohead, I've found that it's really hard to determine who's playing what on WHAT song. I know for a fact Thom Yorke played the bass line for National Anthem on Kid A (apparently he wrote it on acoustic guitar at Oxford) and have seen Johnny Greenwood toy around with just about everything (see video below).

[nomedia="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oDXXljmhDA"]YouTube - Radiohead - There There (old version)[/nomedia]

Radiohead rocks. Johnny Greenwood is a mad scientist.

[MarkGrace]

A couple of years ago I would've said "Yeah, that's Colin for sure" but after delving more into the tangible mystique we choose to call Radiohead, I've found that it's really hard to determine who's playing what on WHAT song. I know for a fact Thom Yorke played the bass line for National Anthem on Kid A (apparently he wrote it on acoustic guitar at Oxford) and have seen Johnny Greenwood toy around with just about everything (see video below).

YouTube - Radiohead - There There (old version)

Radiohead rocks. Johnny Greenwood is a mad scientist.

Yeah, that's the only obvious example I can think of where Colin doesn't play bass (at least not on record, he still plays the bass part live).

And Thom didn't go to Oxford, but that riff does date back to On A Friday.

[Coastal Ute]

Yeah, that's the only obvious example I can think of where Colin doesn't play bass (at least not on record, he still plays the bass part live).

And Thom didn't go to Oxford, but that riff does date back to On A Friday.

O'Brien and the Greenwoods were born in Oxford, England. Close enough, dammit .

[Commando]

I'm pretty excited at the prospect of new radiohead. They bring the hitz.

[MarkGrace]

I'm pretty excited at the prospect of new radiohead. They bring the hitz.

I know I've already said this, but I've just listened to Thom's solo sketches of the new songs so many times that I'm just really excited to get the finished product. I get the vibe that this will be their most chilled out album (even more than IR), but from what I've heard I just really have a good feeling about this album. It's not going to be OKC or Kid A (even the very best bands get no more than one or two records at this level), but I think it will very much be on the level of The Bends/HTTT/Amnesiac/In Rainbows, and at this point that's a pretty damn good standard to match. Let's revisit some of the songs I posted and the beginning and see what has happened since.

Come to Your Senses - Jonny may finally get his banjo appearance!
No word since the time I posted about this one, but I still want to hear Jonny get his banjo debut

Follow Me Around - Ed said they recently started working on this one again
In addition to Ed mentioning the rehearsals way back when, Thom played this solo at the Latitude festival about a year ago and also played it as part of an impromptu jam with Atoms For Peace. I think it's still in play.

Spooks - instrumental jam may turn into something more substantial; Jonny seemed a bit disappointed that they didn't work on it more during the last sessions
No sign of it. Apparently this was just a fun little jam and nothing more

Super Collider - the piano part sounds pretty great, but we've yet to see a full band version, if they're even planning on one.
Thom played this solo a couple of times during the Atoms For Peace tour. He appears to have added a new coda at the end, so this is clearly something he's still working on and my guess likely to make the album

Slave - sent to Nigel to mix during the IR tour. Still unclear if this is a Thom or Radiohead thing.
No word.

Wake Me - recently soundchecked, sound pretty great in the small snippets I've heard
Only news since the soundcheck is that Colin mentioned it as one of his favorite new songs in an interview

Mornin' Mi Lord - still out there somewhere
Not a peep on this one

Burn the Witch - this apparently has been done for a while. Will the already legendary song make its debut on LP8?!?
Thom mentioned that Jonny was working on the strings for this at the same time they recorded Harry Patch -- could still be in play

Old Reckoner - Ed says they are still working with the old version, and if they let that riff die I will not be pleased
Thom finally released this as a solo song with Jonny also doing some work on it. The awesome guitar riff turned into a bass riff, and the final recorded version was pretty disappointing.

Like a Weapon - another recent soundcheck
Still only heard as a faint soundcheck

Riding a Bullet - see above
See above part II

Big Boots - as per the initial post, I'm still holding out hope.
Maybe I should let the hope die

True Love Waits - do they take another crack at a full band version?
Thom has played this in full at least three times -- once at Latitude, once at the Cambridge solo gig he did, and once as the intro to Everything In Its Right Place at the show in Prague. He seems to have smoothed out some of the chords and strumming, so maybe he's still tinkering with it -- thematically it really fits the vibe of some of the other new material, and I still really want a studio version to make a record.

Exciting possibilities!

So, beyond that, we've got a peak at other stuff, which I think I've linked along the way in this thread. This is how I would rank my excitement for them.

1. Give Up the Ghost - this has the potential to be a Radiohead classic if you ask me. The vocal loops are just stunning and the melody has that great Neil Young feel to it.
2. Lotus Flower - lyrically one of my favorites in the bunch
3. Present Tense - great guitar and vocal song, I think would be served well in a Reckoner type arrangement where everyone else is just adding atmosphere around the guitar and vox
4. Wake Me - really love the sort of laid back feel to this one and that little ringing guitar line; another one that has a strong Neil Young vibe to me.
5. Skirting On the Surface - another song I really like lyrically
6. The Daily Mail - appears to be a piano based tune; love the vocal climax
7. A Walk Down the Staircase - great bridge on this one, nice atmosphere.
8. Mouse Dog Bird - another where Thom shows he's experimenting with vocal loops; a lot of people seem to like this one, but it hasn't grabbed me yet.
9. Open the Floodgates - hard to get a feel for this since the version Thom played was so short; I have to believe that with the band there would be more to it, but right now it feels like it would be a "We Suck Young Blood" style thud in terms of the pace of an album.

Wildcards:

I Froze Up - Kid A era song that Thom played solo during the last year. This song has some huge fans, but I don't love it. If it's back on the radar, I don't see it as an album track.

Dawn Chorus - in an interview in South America, Thom said this was his favorite of the new stuff he'd been working on. Since it hasn't appeared in solo form yet by this title, part of me wonders if we've already heard it and the name was just changed.

Codex - some jazz sessions musicians mentioned that they had just recorded a song called Codex with Radiohead (also mentioned I believe an additional two songs, but the names escape me). Nothing more is known about it, and quite possibly this is just the name they used for another song during the sessions.
EDIT: ok, it was one more song, and it was called "Blossom." I think that's quite likely to be a code name for Lotus Flower, which is what led me to believe that Codex was just a "code" name for something else they were doing.

Beyond that, we know they're using the ondes martenot again somehwere (excited about that), and they recorded 2-3 songs with some jazz musicians/horn section (also very excited about that).

I just want to get this damn record.