Tag: interview

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Ed O'Brien Radiohead The King of Limbs Thom Yorke

Thom Yorke: The way TKOL was recorded was a gamble

Thom Yorke and Ed O’Brien recently gave an interview with NPR’s Guy Raz and talked about the recording process for The King of Limbs:

Speaking recently with NPR’s Guy Raz about recording The King of Limbs, singer Thom Yorke and guitarist Ed O’Brien agree that, after coming off the long tour cycle for In Rainbows, the band was feeling exhausted and uninspired. To make the new album work, everyone had to slow down and step back.

“We had an initial session of about five weeks, and it was really like kids in kindergarten,” O’Brien says. “You had to simplify what you were doing — you couldn’t do loads of ideas. You had to listen to one another. Believe it or not, in a band you can lose that.

“Part of what you do is rejection,” O’Brien adds. “I think everybody finds it hard, but I think part of creativity is bouncing back from that. What’s great about the environment that we have is that no one ever says, ‘You can’t do that.’ You try it, and then it’s judged on whether it’s right for the track.”

Radiohead tried a new approach for The King of Limbs: Each member worked, piecemeal, on his own contributions before sharing them with the group. Yorke says working that way was a big gamble.

“Almost every tune is like a collage: things we’d pre-recorded, each of us, and then were flying at each other,” Yorke says. “You get to a point where you think, ‘OK, this bit needs a big black line through it.’ It’s like editing a film or something.

“I don’t think we really genuinely thought anything would come out of it,” he adds, “certainly not an entire record.”

Playing live presents its own set of challenges. O’Brien says that, as happy as he was with The King of Limbs upon its completion, the prospect of turning an intricate studio creation into a concert experience was panic-inducing.

“That’s the scary part — you realize that you have created in this vacuum, in this bubble,” O’Brien says. “It plays tricks on the brain.”

But Yorke says adapting the new material was liberating, as well.

“That’s one of the ways we move on musically, is having to force ourselves to learn this thing,” he says. “It’s a backward process, but it really exists in another way once you can actually play it.”

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Ed O’Brien interview reveals 2012 tour, possible solo album

Ed O'Brien's nippleLast week, Ed O’Brien gave an interview to Argentinian website, Al Tuntún, as well as lost-pixel.net and revealed that Radiohead were booking tour dates at the moment for 2012. He was also asked about a solo album. “I’m writing songs,” he remarked. If true, this leaves Colin Greenwood as the only Radiohead member who hasn’t released a solo album.

Sorry, this is all the information we have. The full interview should be up soon at Al Tuntún.

(Many thanks to Samuel Dietz. Irrelevant zany gif of Ed’s nipple from Gif Soup)

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A Moon Shaped Pool Jonny Greenwood Radiohead The King of Limbs

Jonny Greenwood: “We’re recording again”

Jonny GreenwoodIn an interview with BBC 6 Music where he discusses his recent role composing the film score for We Need to Talk About Kevin, Jonny is asked about the future of Radiohead:

Speaking for the first time publically since the sudden release of The King of Limbs, Jonny told 6 Music that the band as a collective were being non committal about their future:  “We are recording with Radiohead and rehearsing, playing and making music and working out what to do.

We have stopped planning ahead very far, just making music and wondering where to go next and what to do,” he said.

You can listen to his full interview below.

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Radiohead The King of Limbs

Liam Gallagher hates the new Radiohead album

Liam Gallagher

Surprise surprise, Liam Gallagher is mouthing off about the new Radiohead album, The King of Limbs. Our friends at the Quietus recently sat down with the former Oasis frontman to talk about his new band, Beady Eye, and the subject of Radiohead was brought up.

“We just like what we do. I heard that fucking Radiohead record and I just go, ‘What?!’ I like to think that what we do, we do fucking well. Them writing a song about a fucking tree? Give me a fucking break! A thousand year old tree? Go fuck yourself! You’d have thought he’d have written a song about a modern tree or one that was planted last week. You know what I mean?”

Whatever.

Read his full interview at the Quietus.

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Colin Greenwood Ed O'Brien Radiohead

New Documentary about Radiohead/Oxford Music Scene

Anyone Can Play GuitarJon Spira writes in to tell us about a new documentary he made called Anyone Can Play Guitar:

My documentary about the music scene that inspired, nurtured and launched Radiohead is now finished. Ed, Colin and their manager Chris Hufford all took part in the interviews and there is a bunch of hugely significant never-before-seen archival material including early live footage and what we believe to be the earliest ever band photos (taken during the recording of their first demo). We need to raise a few thousand pounds to fund the sound mix and picture grade, so we’ve signed up with indiegogo.com.

Anyone who donates to the project via the link below will get perks packages which include tickets to the premiere, credits on the film and free very limited edition pre-release DVDs of the film with extras that will never be available elsewhere. This is really your only guaranteed chance to see the film as early as possible.

The link to see the trailer and donate is:

http://www.indiegogo.com/Anyone-Can-Play-Guitar

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Phil Selway Radiohead The King of Limbs

Radiohead returning to studio next week

Radiohead is heading back to the studio in a week’s time to “take stock” of new material and assess when — and how — it should be released to the world.

Drummer Philip Selway told The Canadian Press the band will regroup next Monday to determine how close the followup to “In Rainbows” is to being ready.

“We’ve been working on material on and off for a year now and we’ve had the summer off so yes, we’re basically taking stock on Monday and seeing what we need to do with the material to move it to those final stages,” Selway said in a telephone interview from Amsterdam on Monday.

“We’re just returning to it with fresh ears and taking stock of where we are and how close we are to finishing stuff, really, and we won’t know till Monday.”

The band is working on the eagerly anticipated followup to its seventh album, “In Rainbows,” which sent shock waves through the music world in 2007 when it was first released digitally online, through the band’s own website, and at an indeterminate “it’s up to you” price. The band also streamed a free concert to fans months later on New Year’s Eve, and Selway hinted the band might have some more digital or online plans up its sleeves — although he wouldn’t say what exactly.

“Whatever we do with any record, it always has to come from the music we’ve made, whatever we release, and because we’re not at that stage at the moment — we haven’t finished anything — we don’t know how or what’s the most appropriate way for getting it out there,” he said.

“Then again, you look at the track record of what we’ve done over the past decade in that area and I suppose, you know, it’s probably a safe bet to say there’ll be something in there somewhere along the line.”

While “In Rainbows” was largely shaped by extensive touring and live experimentation with the songs, Selway said that won’t be the case with the new project.

“Uh, no,” he said laughing.

“I don’t know what we’ll be doing but the process of making ‘In Rainbows’ — so much came about through what we were doing live — has been quite the opposite so far. But you never know, we might get back together on Monday and after discussing stuff we might just throw this all out and say maybe we need to go back to the drawing board. Who knows, as I say, it’s all up in the air at the moment.

“But we’ve been enjoying what we’ve been doing.”

(from 570News, thanks to Caroline)