2008 January 3 | XFM

John: You’re listening to X-Posure. It is XFM. I’m John Kennedy and that is Thom Yorke, recorded in the studios of XFM last year for X-Posure. And I’m very pleased to say that he’s back, with friends. Hello, Thom.

Thom: Hello, this is my friend, Ed.

Ed: Hello! How are you all?

John: It’s Thom Yorke and Ed O’Brien tonight because In Rainbows is the new album, which is out in a physical form this week around the world pretty much, I think. Am I right? It’s out in the UK, in Europe… around the world around by now?

Ed: Yeah.

Thom: We have manifested ourselves in a physicality.

John: And we’re going to give it the Exposure album playback treatment tonight, which means that you get to hear the whole thing, but with Thom and Ed talking us through it track-by-track. Which—we’ve already played the album on the day of release--on the 10th of October—when you could download it. We played the whole thing in the middle of the day, but for some reason now that you’ve come in to talk to us about it, they want to put it on at night time. I don’t know how it works.

Thom: Poor dear!

John: I know. Don’t feel offended.

Thom: Was anybody listening then, or did they all turn off?

John: No, no, it had a great response.

Thom: Good!

John: I listened. There were some other people as well.

Thom: They listened too, did they?

John: Yeah, they did. And then we all had a chat… chat rooms around the world.

Ed: [laughs]

Thom: Well…

John: No, I mean, we did. It went down really, really well, and it’s really interesting to be able to do that… to be able to play the whole of the brand new album and just kind of let it out in the day…

Ed: Yeah.

John: …which was really, really cool. And obviously, the delivery of this album seems to be such a talking point, I thought we’d get that out of the way.

Thom: Let’s get it out of the way.

John: I mean, it’s seems to have had such a massive impact on various different aspects of industry and art. I mean, how do you feel about it now, a few months down the line?

Ed: It was, like you said… the excitement comes from the fact that you could… you would actually hear it at the same time as everyone else. And that was something that we really loved and the whole aspect of people saying what, you know, speculating about what it means for the industry, I mean, all that stuff is really, you know, it’s not really our point, it’s not our agenda. Our agenda was to get it out as quickly as possible, and we weren’t in contract so this seemed to be the obvious way to do it, really.

John: Yeah. And, I mean, how quickly was it… two-three weeks between finishing the album and actually getting the people to hear it?

Thom: Mm, I think we were actually taking the pre-order thing, and asking people if they were interested in it on the net… while we were doing that we were actually mastering the record. [Laughs]

John: [laughs]

Thom: So it was a little bit tight in the end.

John: So that kind of gave you a deadline to work to… to make sure you got that mastering done, which is good, because I get the impression that deadlines can be good for you, um.

Ed: They can be very good.

John: Yeah.

Ed: [laughs]

Thom: Every four years or so… yeah. [laughs]

Ed: Yeah, that’s the deadline [laughs]

John: I’m just thinking it could’ve… you know, you started work on the album, you knew there’d be these messages saying… Yeah, ‘with no deadline to work to it’s kind of difficult to get going’ or words to the effect.

Ed: Yeah.

John: But obviously that was a very tight deadline. And mastering, do you get involved in that, is that part of the process that you’re involved in?

Ed: Yeah, it’s a really, really important part. We had the record mastered about three or four proper times and then each time they would’ve been mastered about two, three times each of those four times, so it makes a huge difference in terms of the overall sound. It’s a bit like framing a picture… if you will. Mm, the frame, you can bring out certain elements of the picture itself, and colours and stuff, and that’s exactly what mastering does.

Thom: Or squeezing it through a shape.

John: And now…

Thom: [laughs]

Ed: [laughs]

John: I don’t know how to carry on from ‘squeezing it through a shape’.

Thom: [laughs]

Ed: [laughs] Ah, it’s good!

John: Need to change tonight.

Thom: I think you should.

John: Now it’s out physically. I mean, a CD format, and a box and all that kind of stuff. Um, does it feel more real in any way? I mean, you know in… maybe in the old days, when you’d be able to walk into a record shop and see your record, that you had made, and it must’ve been a huge thrill—from Pablo Honey, or something—to be able to go in and see ‘Yes! We exist! We have an album’ and all that kind of stuff. Does that… is there any level of importance there now? Because obviously there were some people who wouldn’t have been techno-savvy or whatever—wouldn’t have been able to download it or something. And there was almost a kind of splinter group, the naysayers, who were saying ‘It’s not fair! We’re left out of the equation!’ But now obviously this week, they’re not.

Thom: Yeah, well, I mean, that was always the condition of us doing it in the first place. We probably were the naysayers in believing the internet is a… it’s not the universe, it’s a… it has its limitations. And it was also very important for us that it physically did exist—and not just the record box, which is a sort of special sort of… another part of the experiment, really. It was important that friends of ours who can’t be bothered to go through the whole shenanigans on the net… yeah, they could get a hold of it. I mean, it’s important… the act of putting it… you know, there’ll be a vinyl of it as well, but I was going to say, the act of putting a CD player, CD in the CD player is still kind of like an important thing. I mean, trouble with like your MP3 players is you can just flick around a lot, you know? (I’m) sounding like an old fart, which of course it’s what I am, and now I’m gonna shut up. [laughs]

John: [laughs] So the discbox, is that going to be available in the shops as well?

Ed: Mm, I don’t know. We’ve only made… we made a hundred thousand and we’ve sold most of them, so I think some shops might pick them up but it’s mainly really the vinyl and the CD.

John: Yeah. So those extra tracks on the second CD…

Thom: Not sure what’s going to happen with them yet.

Ed: Yeah. We don’t know yet, do we?

Thom: I mean it’s cool that they’re just there. I mean, they’ll get passed around. Anyway… we’ll just see… we’re not quite sure.

John: Yeah. Fair enough. Well, let’s get talking about the creation of this work, In Rainbows. We’re gonna play the whole thing tonight. You’re listening to Exposure. It is XFM. I’ve got Thom Yorke and Ed O’Brien with me. My name is John Kennedy. And the creation of the work… Did work actually start in 2005? I mean, was it that… kind of drawn out? I mean, obviously we can’t look at 2003, when the last album came out. There was a bit of a break.

Thom: There was a break. And it took a while to sort of gear up. Mm, I’d say we probably started uh… properly last year. Mm, like October last year?

John: Yeah.

Thom: In a derelict house in the middle of nowhere… as is our wont. Mm, so yes. I would say everything up to that was kind of leading to that, really.

John: Yeah, so that was kind of the preparatory…

Ed: Yeah.

John: … the foreplay.

Ed: We needed to take a year off. You have to realize that it’s, it’s, it’s—you lose so much inertia and momentum.

Thom: Momentum.

Ed: Yeah. And you just need that… you know, you don’t realize quite when you’re going on how much you exist by that by that… by just rolling on. When you stop dead, you know, for a year, it takes a—it takes a long time to get it going. You know?

Thom: It’s a curious combination of things that happened as well because uh, you know, we sort of got out of contract with a big label. We took a long break and nothing. After about a year, most of us were sitting around going ‘What is it exactly that we do? What… I do distinctly remember playing in front of 60,000 people in America. It was… did I imagine that? I’m having some really wild dreams at the moment… some odd flashbacks.

Ed: Yeah.

John: Do you get caught up in other things? I mean, obviously you did a solo album, Thom, but I mean… Do you get caught up in DIY projects…? Or doing up the house? Or building, you know, an extension or whatever it is that you do… to make your life better?

Thom: [laughs]

Ed: Well, personally speaking, I mean, you know, having children and doing all of that for the first time and, you know, really getting my hands dirty doing that, and…

Thom: Oh… you didn’t have to say that!

Ed: And that stuff and doing that for a while, that’s when, you know, when you’re in the middle of that, when you’re in the traffic jam, having gone, you know, and you’ve got the shopping in the back, and you’ve got a screaming child or whatever, in the back…

Thom: [laughs]

Ed: … and you go, ‘What is it that I do? I remember there was a [undecipherable] when they were doing a thing on… just before Glastonbury 2005, and it was on another radio station—a national radio station—with one. And they were doing sort of a run up, like they had a poll with uh… you know, who they’d like to see playing Glastonbury this year and I was literally stuck in a traffic jam outside Oxford, on the ring road on a Friday afternoon, and Glastonbury’s about to kick off and I was just like ‘What’s this?! What is it that I do?!’ And you know, you get those moments, and I think they can be kind of quite important at times. You know, the juxtaposition of what you do with this kind of domestic existence.

Thom: If you want to know what the record is really about. That’s what it’s really about.

John: [laughs] But I mean, it must be important… I mean, you talk about inertia… there must be important to have that period of inertia that recharges your batteries and makes you kind of want to do this again… to do what you really do again.

Thom: Yes.

John: Hmm… yes, that’s what I would’ve thought. So you reckon in earnest the album proper started recording in October 2006 or so… something like that. After you’d road-tested some of the songs on the tour.

Thom: It was annoying that we couldn’t get it together until sort of Nigel came and gave us a walloping kick up the ass.

John: [laughs]

Thom: ‘Cause we love that stuff.

John: [laughs] A bit of spanking.

Thom: Yes.

John: Is he good at that kind of thing? I mean, after all these years of knowing you, is he still able to say ‘Look, just get your shit together and go and do something’.

Thom: Well, he tends to be a bit more polite than that.

John: Right.

Ed: He’s really… he was really good because we hadn’t worked together for about three years, and obviously he worked on The Eraser, and he came in and he literally… the way he records, he holds a mirror up to what you do, and I don’t remember in the first—up until Christmas—not once did he ever say ‘Listen, this is just not good enough.’ He just… he knew it wasn’t good enough but he let us realize it wasn’t good enough. And it was after that, when we started really—beginning of this year—when we started to, you know, notch it up a bit. He was uh, he was a bit more critical. But, you know, he was amazing in that respect. He was very gentle at the beginning, ‘cause he knew it was kind of quite fragile at first.

Thom: The weird thing is that, you know, there’s too many traffic jams, basically. We’d lost our confidence. Even though we’d gone out on tour and stuff, it’s easy in some ways to rattle the songs out in a situation like that. But once we got back into the studio, um, and, you know, we listened to sort of how it was rough and ready all over the shop, it was like ‘well, this ain’t quite good enough’ and it really knocked us for sick for ages. Mm, yeah.

John: That’s interesting, but you were able to pull yourselves up and face that, and conquer that.

Thom: It could be worse, you know? It could be worse.

John: [laughs] So this house in the middle of nowhere, is it Tottenham House? Is that…?

Ed: Yeah.

John: Is it in Wiltshire?

Ed: It is.

John: Somebody mentioned Somerset. Did you ever go?

Ed: Yes, we did go to Somerset.

John: Okay.

Ed: This place is in Wiltshire and it’s just outside… Mm, what is it? What is it called? It’s not Malmesbury. It’s somewhere like… It’s a little market town near where my Granny lives. And I forget the name of it. But it’s uh… it’s literally, apparently it’s the last thing that’s going on there before they do the big refurb. It think one of these big chains… Well, I think it’s “Four Seasons” or somebody…

Thom: Yeah, another golf course.

Ed: Yeah, they’ve got these beautiful capability brown landscape front gardens which are gorgeous and of course they’re turning it into a golf course. [laughs]

Thom: That’s because that’s what people want, ain’t it?

Ed: Yeah.

Thom: All they want is their irrigated bleaming green holes.

Ed: Eighteen holes in the middle of the English countryside.

Thom: For old duffs.

Ed: Yeah.

John: Wow! But I guess, well they might be doing as they’re going around the tees… Maybe you might get a hole named after you or something… you know, the In Rainbows…

Thom: After that, probably not.

Ed: [laughs]

John: They’d be discussing the qualities of the album. [laughs] ‘Of course, it was recorded here.’ Did it have an effect, you think, on the recording? I mean, obviously on the recording physically, but do you think it affected the mood of the songs or anything like that? Were you literally camping out?

Ed: Yeah!

Thom: Well…

Ed: Well, we went on the canvas. We were in caravans.

Thom: See, it was a carry on camping-type situation, rather than a…

John: [laughs]

Thom: … you know…

John: It wasn’t like boy scout camp.

Thom: Too cold for that. Mm. Did it have an effect? Yeah, it definitely had an effect. I mean, I think you just absorb… I mean, it had some very weird vibes, it being a… um, a heroin recovering addict place, being a weird prep school… but it was like, derelict in the stricter sense of the word, where there’s holes in the floor, rain coming through the ceilings, uh… half the window panes missing. You know, it was a pretty weird place. I’m not sure whether it was haunted or not, but it had some pretty strange vibes. There was places you just basically didn’t go.

John: [laughs] Wow! Wow! Bizarre. How did Nigel find this place?

Ed: Well, he put the… He went looking—he went scouting in the summer. And whereas, when we did this the first time, we did this ten years ago when we went to St. Catherine’s Court, did OK Computer, there were a lot of houses then. Now there aren’t… they’ve all been bought up. So there are very few sort of run down… because we didn’t want to go in somewhere that was really smart and… you know, it’s just not the right kind of vibe. And I think this was—I think apart from—I think there was one in Scotland, like possibly. Um, this was sort of the only one available, really.

John: Wow! And uh, then how long did you spend there and how long did you…? Did you return there? Or did you…?

Ed: No.

John: So this is kind of autumn 2006.

Ed: Yeah, we were there end of September and beginning of October: three weeks.

John: And you ended up getting the basic of the album done there?

Thom: Interestingly, no.

John: No. [laughs]

Thom: [laughs] We got extremely random stuff done there. I mean, the joke was, when we left, that ‘Well, it’s okay, guys, ‘cause we’ve got the reverb sound’...

John: [laughs]

Thom: …for every track.

John: Yeah.

Thom: Um, and that was kind of it. Although actually, looking back that wasn’t it but it definitely felt like that at the time.

John: Yeah.

Thom: Reminds me of the story of Trevor Horn. Do you remember Trevor Horn, who produced…

John: Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

Thom: Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Spending like a week in the studio, someone we knew was coming out the end of the week going ‘I’ve got it! I’ve got it!’ And it was like ‘What?’ ‘The kick drum! I’ve got the kick drum sound!

John: [laughs]

Thom: It was a little bit like that.

John: So you had the reverb sound.

Ed: Yeah.

John: All you needed to do was the rest.

Ed: Yeah.

John: Which you did where?

Thom: Small fry. [laughs]

Ed: Well, we did the rest of it… We then went for three weeks down to Somerset and had a…

Thom: Went bonkers.

Ed: Again it wasn’t—it didn’t seem to be—we didn’t get all achieved, but we did, I think, things like “Reckoner”, I think the basics of “Reckoner” came out of that, so that was cool.

Thom: No! We got a lot achieved, but I mean that was the way things… Both these sessions…

John: Yeah.

Thom: …we got an awful lot achieved but we didn’t know that at the time.

John: Yeah.

Thom: It was… I mean, we did “Videotape” at that one throughout.

Ed: Yeah.

Thom: We…

Ed: “Bodysnatchers”.

Thom: “Bodysnatchers” we did at Tottenham Hall, and “Nude”, the vocals we did at Tottenham. “All I Need” bits of. It was just a weird… this weird jigsaw, funnily enough, stuff that… We were deliberately using different versions of different things with uh… spliced together as well. I was really into that. The sort of notion of, not exactly sampling but… ‘Appropriating’ was the word I was using. You get a vocal of one version and the drum thing off another. Very, very sort of artificial, but actually not. That was the idea, anyway.

John: Hmm… And so after Wiltshire, after Somerset, you completed the album in your own studio?

Ed: Yeah, and in Covent Garden.

John: Right.

Ed: Nigel’s been using a studio there.

John: Yeah. And so…

Thom: We need to feel glamorous.

John: [laughs] Um, then literally I guess September would’ve been when you finished it. So in a way it took. No? September, I mean if…

Thom: This September…

John: Yeah, September 2007.

Ed: The master.

John: Yeah, yeah.

Thom: In a way. We took a big break over the summer, but yeah.

Ed: We basically got all the tracking done by the end of… by the beginning of July.

Thom: Um.

Ed: And then did a mastering beginning mid-July. Then took six weeks off. There were… there was one other master done and then I think there were two done back in September.

Thom: [sighs] And that’s the timeline, John.

John: Yeah, I like the timeline.

Thom: [laughs] The whole thing, yeah.

Ed: I think it’s almost like a year.

John: I think it’s brilliant that that took a year in effect but then you got it so everybody could listen to it…

Ed: Yeah.

John: Almost instantly…

Ed: Yeah.

John: …especially to what we’re used to.

Ed: You know, that’s the… but that’s also been one of the frustrations about what we do, is that you finish something and, of course, you’re like kids, you want it to be heard immediately. You’re excited about it. And you have to wait. There’s always this traditional way of waiting at least three months. You know, Supergrass have finished their record they’re not gonna be—it’s not going to be out until March, you know?

Thom: Mm.

Ed: They finished it quite a while ago. And that’s quite demoralizing.

Thom: [laughs]

Ed: You know, if you’re going to treat musicians as musicians, musicians want to keep on moving. They keep on evolving. If you’re going to say, ‘Okay, this piece that you just recorded isn’t going to come out for six months. And you have to wait until there’s a slot in the marketplace that’s right. Then it’s just, you know, it’s really demoralizing. So um, it’s been incredibly liberating doing it this way.

John: So it’s kept you buoyant?

Ed: Yes!

John: Not demoralized. You’re ready, up and excited.

Thom: Yeah. [laughs]

John: The future’s looking good.

Ed: [honks]

John: And we will discuss more as we hear the whole of the album. On the way, the first track from In Rainbows, plus more from Thom and Ed. Do not go away.

[“15 Step” plays]

John: You’re listening to X-Posure. It is XFM. I’m John Kennedy and that is Radiohead. “15 Step”, the opening track to the new album In Rainbows. I know you’ve heard it for the last few months but it’s actually physically available this week in the shops.

Thom: It physically exists.

John: It physically exists. It’s probably in your hand as you’re listening to the radio, maybe. Um but I have Thom and Ed here. They’re gonna talk us through the whole of the album. “15 Step”, where does this figure in that timeline that we were just discussing in such great detail?

Thom: [laughs] Um, uh…

John: Is it worth trying?

Thom: Yeah, no. It was kind of a cool one because um… uh, I think for a lot of people it was a sort of breakthrough song for us because it came together very fast. I mean, what you just heard is basically one take, um, with almost nothing changed at all. Um… uh… so and it was… it evolved in a very interesting way as well because it was originally extremely electronic, and very much sort of… um, stripped, and noisy. Um, and then we sort of wanted to work out a way of doing it live, um, and then out of that came the one that you heard. And it’s sort of just, you know, everything’s sort of… it turned into something… we agonized over like whether um, the real scrouchy electronic one was good, or whether this one was good, and it was a sort of blindingly obvious that what we ended up with was miles better. And it was very much in the sort of vein of when we finished Kid A and stuff, like say, “Idioteque”, which was, you know, has a very specific sort of sound on the record and then when we sort of try to work out how to play it live, it became something even more sort of bigger and madder. Uh, and the “15 Step” is sort of the same sort of thing, really. Um, it’s sort of got an important lesson that we learned during that period.

John: Yeah. No, go on. I won’t interrupt you.

Thom: Well, I’m just waffling, really. Me? Surely not. [laughs]

John: [laughs] [mumbling] What I was going to say or ask was about the importance of playing some of these songs live, and obviously you’ve played “15 Step” live and tried it out and it does lots of clapping on it and…

Thom: Do you do that?

Ed: In the spirit of the…

Thom: Aww!

Ed: Yeah, it’s a nice moment, actually.

Thom: Sweet. I bet you don’t do that anymore, do you?

Ed: No, not in the studios, only you bastards do it!

Thom: Yeah.

John: [laughs] Can we look forward to you clapping in this upcoming tour?

Thom: C’mon kids!

Ed: Yeah… well, we’ll just have to see. In the heat of the moment, you just never know.

John: [laughs]

Thom: You might go for a swifty and then come back.

Ed: Yeah.

John: And “Bodysnatchers” is the next song. Was this road tested as well?

Ed: Yeah.

John: This is road tested. Is that fuzzy guitar? Is that guitar or bass?

Thom: Yeah, it’s guitar. It’s um… uh, Nigel has this really wicked old mixing desk that he managed to get off a studio in L.A., which was… it’s the same… exactly the same model—if you’re interested in this, if you’re not then turn off—the…

John: [laughs] [whispers] Don’t turn off!

Thom: No, go on, they won’t. It’s a Motown desk. It’s from like late 60’s. It’s the exact model that they used to record Motown stuff. Um, of course, and if you turn on everything on full, it sounds exactly like a guitar and it sounds like that.

John: I think it sounds brilliant. It kind of sounds like Sabotage or something like that, but at least it was in that fuzzy…

Thom: In my dreams, yeah.

Ed: [laughs] You’re just saying the right things!

John: That’s how it sounds to me. Is it a film reference at all? Invasion of the Bodysnatchers? Near the end I thought…

Thom: Actually, it was a film reference but not that one. It was a… I started the tune um, watching the original Stepford Wives… bizarrely…and cutting and pasting bits from that. But I think it never actually got used. That’s where the tune started from. I got a little bit obsessed by Stepford Wives. Watched it several—three or four times.

John: So in a way I guess that’s about bodies being possessed.

Thom: Yeah, well there’s the bit at the end where uh, yes all the women are finally being turned into the robots or whatever. Anyway… uh. But also the song actually—the title actually came from a very strange ghost story—a Victorian ghost story.

John: Any further elucidation on that?

Thom: No. Pfft. Just, you know… digging up bodies, you know, Sun in the morning and then the bodies come back and get ya.

John: Right. Okay.

Thom: Good stuff!

John: Yeah. The author, do you…?

Thom: No. I can’t remember.

John: [laughs]

Thom: It’s an anthology. Victorian ghost stories.

John: [laughs] Excellent! And with that in mind, here’s Radiohead: “Bodysnatchers”, on X-Posure, XFM.

[“Bodysnatchers” plays]

John: Brilliant. “Bodysnatchers”. Radiohead. On X-Posure. XFM. From In Rainbows. Getting the X-Posure album playback treatment tonight with Ed and Thom talking to us though track-by-track. What do you think of it so far? John Kennedy at xfm.co.uk. 83 XFM. And hello again to Andy Hewitt who said, ‘Did you just mention me? I missed it! [undecipherable] Please do it again!’ Hello, Andy. Good to have you listening, and I’m glad you like In Rainbows. ‘Please play “Bangers and Mash” afterwards, if there’s time.’ Andy, it’s a very good suggestion. But on the way, next, of course, track three “Nude”.

[“Nude” plays]

John: Radiohead, with “Nude”, on X-Posure, XFM, getting the X-Posure album play-by-play treatment tonight as part of In Rainbows. Thom Yorke and Ed O’Brien in the studio here with me.

Thom: Butt-naked.

John: Butt-naked. It’s a pleasant sight. I think it’s a good, good sight. I’m up for it. We always do the shows naked.

Thom: Sure!

John: Yeah.

Thom: Is that why we’re in such a small room?

John: Yes. It keeps the temperature up.

Everyone: [laughs]

John: Um, “Nude” dates back a long time.

Ed: Yeah. So all you pock pickers in Radiohead fans will know that it’s on the end of Meeting People is Easy. That’s the rock version.

Thom: Is that right?

John: Yeah.

Thom: ‘Cause I have to say I haven’t watched that since we did it.

Ed: From Radio City Music Hall, from the last show we did on the OK Computer tour.

Thom: Really?!

Ed: Yeah. And so…

Thom: Did we play it?

Ed: Yeah, man! We played it. We played it. And it’s uh… it’s, you know, it’s one of these songs that you know that it’s great but had never seemed appropriate, or maybe, you know, it’s partly it’s to do with you singing it.

Thom: Yeah… Getting back into that.

Ed: Yeah.

Thom: The old uh… you know, high—high thing.

John: [laughs] Yeah.

Thom: Yeah.

John: Having gone through various different versions, this is the one you’re happiest with because it’s now on the record.

Thom: Yeah, we’re gonna do the remix version…

John: In ten years’ time.

Thom: In ten years’ time. Um…

John: Nice.

Ed: Yeah. Kind of a theme emerging here.

John: I like that.

Ed: Yeah, so it’ll be remixed in…
John: …2014.

Ed: Sure!

John: Yeah, yeah. Excellent! “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” is the next track. Another song that was road tested and now, if you search on the internet… I’m always amazed by how much information is about you on the internet, and how much is speculation and how much of it is fact. Do you ever look at any of that stuff?

Thom: If I’m trying to remember some words, then I do.

John: Right.

Thom: But, you know, they’re usually slightly wrong. Um, uh…

John: Listening to the song…

Thom: I don’t uh…. I like… I’ll tell you what I do like. ‘Cause when we were out on tour, the first time we did “All I Need” was uh… it was, I mean it was [undecipherable] a good version in Chicago, and like 40 minutes after we came off it was on youtube. First time we’d done it, you know? And it’s sort of like a bizarre—I mean it’s all crunchy, it’s all from mobile phone but… ah, that’s sort of an element of it I really find incredibly exciting. Um… and I think it’s nice that people are interested enough to come up with all these mad ideas. There’s one about… ‘ten’ comes up a lot. I don’t know what… But every time, you know, I get asked about it, yeah, you know I say ‘Oh, yes, absolutely! We thought of all that.’ Yes.

John: [laughs] This is the binary theory.

Thom: Is that the binary theory? I think there’s the binary one as well.

John: The binary theory seems to have something to do with, yes, ten years since OK Computer.

Thom: Oh, right!

John: And ‘ten’, some kind of number pattern within the sequencing…

Thom: Yeah.

John: …of this album. And then there’s the ‘Golden Section’?

Thom: Theory, is it?

John: Yeah.

Thom: Umm.

Ed: I love that one.

Thom: You know that one.

Ed: Because I’m actually interested in the ‘Golden Section’.

John: So the ‘Golden Section’ is…

Thom: Is that that film coming out…

John: Uh…

Thom: ….coming out at Christmas? Oh no, that’s…

Ed: [laughs] That’s the Golden Compass! [laughs]

John: [laughs] There might be a Golden Section in the Golden Compass.

Ed: Right. [laughs] The Golden Section! Right… [laughs] Yeah…

John: Maybe we’ll go back to the Golden Section.

Thom: I think you should carry on!

Ed: This is really interesting, because you know it’s basically found in nature. Another thing that’s interesting in terms of the record—because this theory apparently says that you get to the heart of the record right in the middle of “Reckoner”. Which is…

Thom: That’s very true.

Ed: Which is true but it’s… it wasn’t deliberately done like that, obviously.

Thom: Yes, of course it was! Completely! What are you talking about?

John: [laughs]

Ed: There’s a ratio there.

Thom: Yes!

John: Yeah.

Thom: I just don’t know where it is.

John: The Golden Section is like the sweet spot? Or the…?

Thom: Darling!

Ed: It’s the… it’s like the Greeks used to… you know like Georgian houses and the proportions of their rooms.

Thom: No, mate.

Ed: They got it right because they borrowed it from the Greeks, and the Greeks had this ratio that was in relation to the Fibonacci sequence. It’s a ratio as well. The Fibonacci sequence is obviously found in nature a lot in the way that things grow. And it’s a very—the Golden Section is the same as, you know… Leonardo’s picture of man, the proportions… there’s a ratio that’s inherent in the Golden Section of Fibonacci, that’s uh. … We don’t really need to know.

Thom: I’m impressed!

John: [laughs] I’m listening.

Ed: [laughs] It’s not very relevant to the record. It’s more really…

Thom: It's more relevant than anything else.

John: A bit of art history…

Thom: I just want to know what your bookshelves look like now. I wanna know what on Earth you spend your time reading.

Ed: [laughs] Yeah! You haven’t been around for a while. [laughs]

Thom: Yeah—God! That’s what education does to you, man!

Ed: Yeah…

John: It’s a good thing.

Thom: Is it?

John: It is. And this is Radiohead with “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi”.

Thom and Ed: [laugh]

[“Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” plays]

John: Radiohead: “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi”, track four from In Rainbows, was the album which has just been released physically this week through XL Records. We’re playing the whole of the thing tonight with Ed and Thom from the band talking us through it track-by-track. Somebody’s asked ‘Where are the others? Why aren’t they all there? They were involved in the album as well. Where are Jonny, Phil and Colin?’ says Kyle. They often divide these things up, and take turns to do interview duties and all that kind of stuff ‘cause it’s kind of tedious, I think, for some people’s perspectives. And there’s somebody else asking something too. Well, Angelo saying ‘Please tell Thom and Ed thank you for In Rainbows.’ That is all. That definitely seems to be the reaction from most people. Most people getting in touch just saying how much they like In Rainbows and how important it is. We’ve got more to come, of course. “All I Need” on the way soon, plus “Faust Arp”, and of course more from Thom and Ed. You’re reaction? john.kennedy@xl,co.uk, 83XFM on the text.

[“All I Need” plays]

John: You’re listening to X-Posure. It is XFM. I’m going to be here until one, and that is Radiohead with “All I Need” from the brand new album, In Rainbows, which is out now this week, in a physical form. You can touch it, stroke it, do whatever you like to it. Maybe even play it. And it’s getting exposure on [undecipherable]. I probably said, because I have Thom and Ed here with me. That was “All I Need”. I’m getting distracted by various different things. I don’t know why.

Thom: It’s ‘cause we’re talking nonsense, first of all.

John: [laughs] You were saying Thom how you were excited about the fact that within minutes of you performing “All I Need” for the very first time…

Thom: Oh, yeah.

John: … it was up on the net for all to check out, in a kind of dodgy phone version.

Thom: Hmm.

John: And it’s great the way it could’ve built to the end. What else can you tell us about “All I Need”?

Thom: Well, we actually used that version that someone recorded off the Chicago sort of phone as one of the reference points. [laughs] What else can I say about it? It was originally done—it was a sort of a beat sequence thing that Colin and I did very rapidly and then got out, and I found again. It was actually written extremely quickly. I got to rehearsal one day early, which is very unusual. I had twenty minutes to meself and wrote the words then… and then… I mean, that was it. It’s sort of, really… It’s extremely full-on. [laughs] That bit in the middle is extremely full-on.

John: Is it about obsession? Is it about… something like that?

Thom: Oh, John! That’s up to you!

John: Well, it’s sort of a personal interpretation.

Thom: Yes, I… Yes. Someone said it’s about music business, which I really think is stretching it possibly a little.

John and Ed: [laugh]

John: What do you think, Ed?

Ed: It’s definitely about the music industry. That’s for sure.

Thom: Right.

Ed: Right. Spot on.

Thom: Yeah [undecipherable]

John: “Faust Arp” is the next track and I wanted to ask you about some of the other contributors to the album. We've got some children on 15 Step I think... and there are strings, ehm, evident in "All I Need", "Faust Arp" and uh... the track we heard few minutes ago...

Ed: "Nude".

John: Thank you. Ehm, who has provided the strings sound? Particularly beautiful, I think.

Ed: Well, Jonny did the scoring and, ehm, he was conducted by a woman called Sally Herbert and... they're not an orchestra or an ensemble as such... but they sort of play together, do the odd session. They called themselves the Millenia String Ensemble

Thom: Well... well done, Ed!

Ed: Yeah. And... uh... and they're great! They're great. They had lead violin player, Everton, who was... he was very good really on the case. And it was a joy we went back to RAK to do it, where we recorded The Bends... Studio 2.

John: Wow.

Ed: Uh... and had a couple of days there. Had one day, and then another day.

Thom: Yeah, we did, yeah.

Ed: And it was really good. It was a really lovely day because also when the strings are put down, we still hadn't completed the songs, you know? "Jigsaw's" got strings on it as well, so it kind of... we needed to put the strings on for these songs at this time for them to sort of either, like "Faust Arp" to be sort of complete. Or "Jigsaw" to embelish and...

Thom: It was quite funny 'cause Jonny needed loads of, sort of, ehm, you know, I kept saying to him--I kept saying to him: 'It needs some strings, Jonny!' [mumbling]

John and Ed: [laugh]

Thom: You know... and he was like 'What do you want?'. "I don't know"... Fluffy stuff!

Ed: [laughs] He's got different styles, you know?

Thom: Yeah.

Ed: He doesn't have the one... you know? He's obviously very apt at this.

John: Yeah

Thom: Yeah.

Thom: Ehm, but it was...

John: But he was still having to write the score without the finished shape or songs?

Thom: Yeah, you know, there are some songs like "Nude" and stuff, it was sort of, you know, the... when we mixed it, you know, the strings were on one fade and then we just brought them in for a little bit, bring them out, after all that work. Poor chap. Never mind.

John: (???)

Thom: That's the way it goes.

John: ?

Thom: Well, you have to ask him that. [laughs]

John: [laughs]


[“Faust Arp” plays]

John: It’s Radiohead, with “Faust Arp”. On X-Posure, XFM. From In Rainbows. Thom Yorke and Ed O’Brien from the band are here talking through us track-by-track. The “Golden Section” is on the way. “Reckoner” is the next song.

Thom: Ooh, ah.

John: Which is another one that hasn’t been played live yet, or…is that right?

Ed: Yeah, not in that form.

John: Yeah, not in that form. Yeah.

Ed: Yeah.

John: I should… While I remember talking of playing live, and I’ve got a few questions, because I mentioned to X-Posure listeners I was going to talking to you and a few came through with some questions. I’m trying to remember off the top of my head. One was from Diana, who listens in Brazil…

Thom: Ahh!

John: … and wants to know if you’re ever going to go to Brazil.

Thom: Funny you should say that.

Ed: Yes, please!

Thom: Yes, sir.

Ed: We’re really… we’re hoping to go next year, for sure.

Thom: We’re working on it.

Ed: Yeah.

John: Mm, another question that somebody came up with was with regard to Glastonbury. You mentioned Glastonbury earlier on…

Ed: Yeah.

John: … listening to a radio reportage of Glastonbury and stuck in a traffic jam.

Ed: Yeah.

John: Is Glastonbury 2008 a possibility for Radiohead?

Ed: Um… no, no, no.

Thom: I can’t tell you.

John: Is that ‘I couldn’t possibly comment’?

Ed: No, I couldn’t possibly comment.

Thom: Is it?

Thom: We… no.

John: ‘Cause that’s not saying ‘no’.

Thom: What usually happens is that Mr. Eavis announces…

Ed: Yeah… Yeah….

Thom: [laughs] And then we find out afterwards. Uh…no. He hasn’t done that this time. Which is probably…

Ed: Yeah.

Thom: Yeah. Am I digging a hole?

Ed: I think we should…

Thom: Yeah.

Ed: We don’t know but probably not.

Thom: Probably not.

Ed: Don’t presume that we are.

Thom: Yeah.

John: Okay.

Thom: Don’t…

Ed: Don’t think that we are.

Thom: No.

John: And the dates that you are doing, have you got supports already?

Ed: Yeah. No.

Thom: No?

Ed: But there will be supports.

Thom: God! We’d better sort that out!

Ed: Yeah. That’s fun.

Thom: Yeah.

Ed: Yeah. That’s really fun.

Thom: Yeah. We change around a bit but…

Ed: Yeah.

Thom: Yeah, that could be very exciting.

John: So people will get value for money and all that kind of stuff.

Thom: Yeah, hopefully we won’t get blown off stage.

John: [laughs] Always a tricky one.

Thom: It is a bit.

John: Uh, “Reckoner” is the next song. Another percussive number. I like the percussive numbers.

Ed: Sure!

John: Personally they are my favourite.

Thom: Hmm.

John: What else can you tell us about “Reckoner” apart from the Golden Section, which comes up midpoint?

Ed: Well… it’s… What can I say? Um, it was one of the songs that really, truly evolved in the studio. It hadn’t been road tested. It was exciting for the… it was… for us probably it’s one of the most exciting tracks on the record because we didn’t really have a vision for it. It just evolves and I think to hear Thom singing falsetto is really new and it’s uh… It’s kind of… it feels… we weren’t trying to do it, but we were just trying to get it out and do it, you know, try and present something with a percussion and do it differently, and looking back it sort of has a real gospel-y feel. And I think it’s very…

Thom: Really? Reminds me of early rave 1992. It’s just the drumbeat thing, I guess. Uh… um… early rave isn’t 1992. Get your facts right, boy! Anyway, the funny thing was that to be honest the guitar on it was really influenced by… I went to see the Chili Peppers a few times and I really like the way John Frusciante plays. And uh… it was sort of a homage to that, in my sort of clunky ‘can’t–really-pick' kind of way.

John: Okay. And this is it… Radiohead… “Reckoner”.

[“Reckoner” plays]

John: Radiohead with “Reckoner” on X-Posure XFM out of In Rainbows, getting exposure album treatment tonight. Did you enjoy the ‘Golden Section’? I hope so. And uh…

Thom: Yeah. Did you come?

John: [laughs]

Thom: Sorry.

John: What was I going to say? Oh!

Thom: [laughs]

John: Critically, a lot… You were talking about Thom…

Ed: Yeah.

John: … Thom’s falsetto…

Ed: Yeah.

John: … in that track.

Ed: Yeah.

John: And uh… I’ve read somewhere, at least one critic thought that was… that’s the pinnacle of the whole album.

Ed: Yeah. I can totally see that. Absolutely.

John: And the whole critical reaction…

Ed: Yeah.

John: … to this album has been really strong…

Ed: Yeah.

John: … in favour. Do you pay any attention to critical reaction?

Ed: Well, personally, I mean, you’re talking probably to the two people in the band who aren’t… I mean, I don’t read reviews. Thom, I know you don’t read reviews.

Thom: [undecipherable]

Ed: So, stopped reading reviews a long time ago, but, having said that, friends have texted me on the mobile and stuff and said they’d been obsessing about the record, so you know… I get the feel that there’s a good feeling about the record.

John: Yeah. So that kind of personal reaction…

Ed: Yeah, yeah.

John: … is kind of worth it.

Ed: It’s great. I mean, friends… You know, your good friends will… you can see it on their faces as you play it to them. You get a different reaction. And they come out with some, you know…

Thom: Do you play it to people?

Ed: No, no, I don’t. I can’t do that.

Thom: I can't do that.

Ed: I can’t do that.

Thom: No.

Ed: No, that gives me the horrors but friends will, you know, um… having played it or whatever, you can tell when their response, rather, is different in its…

Thom: I got a mate who’s a brain surgeon called Simon Hurt. ‘Hello, Simon’. And he likes it and he plays it when he’s operating on brains.

John: No way!

Thom: And he says it’s the best one we’ve done so…

John: Does he…

Thom: And he’s clever. He’s got…

Ed: [laughs]

Thom: He’s clever.

John: Does that help him concentrate? Is that why he would play it?

Thom: Well, normally he plays Aphex Twin so I should imagine his patients are very grateful.

Ed and John: [laugh]

John: Luckily then. [undecipherable]

Thom: Yeah. Actually, sometimes they’re not.

John: Really?!

Thom: No. The top of their head’s unscrewed but they’re talking to him. Well, sometimes you need to know that, like in case you hit the wrong bit.

Ed: Wow!

Thom: Mm.

John: Wow!

Thom: So are we getting off the point a little?

John: Amazing!

Thom: [undecipherable]

John: Very impressive! Uh, “House of Cards” is the next track. A question that can relate to some—well, quite a lot of the songs: Are they more personal lyrically venture for you, Thom? I mean, are they personal things that you’re… Let’s say, well…

Thom: It was very much um, uh… psychic dumping… um, where I was deliberately trying to uh… as much as I possibly could, except for “Faust Arp”, to write quickly and not think about how… what sense could be made about it or not, so… Um, you know… in essence, one of the things I’ve been most wary of—talking about the record at all—is actually taking any responsibility for the lyrics, or having to comment on them, because um… it was…[sighs] I kind of don’t feel answerable to them in a way. Sometimes with these lyrics I’ve done sort of paste them together in a sort of much more constructive way, and you sort of feel there’s a point to explaining how you’ve done it. And I kind of… To me, of all the records we’ve done, this is the one I feel I can least explain anyway. [laughs]

John: Hmm. No, that’s interesting because I was listening to it the other day and thinking that there’s a kind of dream-like quality to the album as a whole, in a way. If you listen to the whole thing… say, if you’re driving along, it’s just kind of there, around you. And it’s almost as if the band are kind of lost in the music as you play together. And there are points when the singing seems as if it could be a shaman, or a shaman dancing as part of some kind of ritual, or something like that. Loosing, getting lost in the music, and…

Thom: Well, there are things… One of the reasons it took so long—and yes, I would love to be a shaman…

John: [laughs]

Thom: [laughs] One of the…

John: Maybe you are…

Thom: Maybe I am… I don’t think I do enough drugs for that. Um, one of the things that was really important—one of the reasons it took so long—was to get this… the pulse right on each tune—“House of Cards” being the most obvious example—where you kind of lose yourself in the pulse, and then the vocals can come in, sort of thing. Which is much like… you know, which is a much more… a dance music thing…much less a rock music thing. You can argue the Stones do it. And sometimes it happens. So I would agree to some extent that there’s this thing about being lost in stuff. I mean, “Reckoner” is absolutely that. You know, I think Nigel… that’s one of the things Nigel’s really, really good at… is finding the bits when we play, when we are lost in stuff. And it’s not necessarily the bits, but we’re enjoying it. It’s usually just before all that. [laughs]

John: [laughs]

Thom: ‘Cause by the time we’re enjoying it, we’re thinking ‘Ey, we’re good!’ And that exact point is where it gets crap.

John: Excellent. This is “House of Cards”. It’s Radiohead, on X-Posure. XFM.

[“House of Cards” plays]

John: Radiohead: “House of Cards”. On X-Posure XFM. From In Rainbows. Getting the X-Posure album playback treatment tonight. Two more tracks to go. Thom and Ed to continue explaining what it’s all about. And the e-mails and texts keep coming through. Can’t go through them all but it’s great to get them and I will pass on all your questions and everything to the band. John.kennedy@xfm.co.uk 83 XFM. “Jigsaw Falling Into Place” is next.

[“Jigsaw Falling Into Place” plays]

John: You’re listening to X-Posure. It is XFM. I’m John Kennedy and that is Radiohead with “Jigsaw Falling Into Place”, the ninth track from the album In Rainbows, physically released right now, in the shops, as I speak and getting the X-Posure album playback treatment tonight with Ed O’Brien and Thom Yorke, from the band talking us through it track-by-track. “Jigsaw” is also the first single from the album. Having released it in the digital way and obviously you said that you were always going to release it in a physical form at some point, and that was always part of the plan. Uh, singles and all that sort of thing, they still are the picture, or the way that you see yourselves releasing music?

Ed: Well, I guess. I mean a single is a song that gets played on the radio. So yeah... I mean, we wanna get our songs played on the radio so if that’s the form that—if that’s the means that you have to do, then absolutely, you know?

John: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’ll probably shift in the…

Ed: Yeah.

John: … years to come, they will become key tracks.

Ed: What was interesting was when the record came out, people… there were no singles picked out. People—different radio stations picked whatever tracks they wanted and that was interesting.

Thom: But then they all come out to you and go ‘Can you tell us what it is now? ‘Cause we don’t know—we don’t want to make a mistake’.

Ed and John: [laugh]

Thom: ‘Why can’t you just carry on playing the one you like?’

John: Yeah. No…

Thom: Weird.

John: I agree with you. Uh, and I mean, “Jigsaw” almost has a… Is it a reference to “Paranoid Android” with that guitar line at the beginning? I mean, it kind of reminds me of “Paranoid Android”. Or it almost seems as if you could’ve chucked it in there just as a nod to your past.

Thom: Really?

John: Yeah.

Thom: I think it’s more that I only have about three ideas.

John: [laughs]

Ed: Oh, c’mon! I like this. I mean, one of the things for me in this record was I always kept on sort of saying was the lyrics. And one of the things I love about this whole song is that, if I may…

Thom, Please, please do.

Ed: Um, it’s the Friday night in the pub and it’s all kicking off. And there used to be a line in there that wasn’t there but that’s central ‘You’ve just been paid’. And, you know, and it’s all going off and I love that kind of…It’s kind of—to me—it’s totally, you know… For me, when we get our songs right it’s very visual. And I totally imagine kind of like a quiet, thin bar and it’s all kicking off. and people looking at one another, and it’s all in the music and buying more drinks, and that euphoria at the end of the week. And you get to that—you get to the last section and it’s all building up and it’s just that glorious feeling, you know? 11 o’clock and before it all goes nasty and you kind of have enough booze inside you, and it’s all… And the world doesn’t get better than this in this very moment and that is… that’s what I love about this song.

Thom: And half an hour from now it’s all going to get [undecipherable]

Ed: [laughs] Yeah, exactly! [undecipherable] that first kebab.

John: [laughs]

Thom: Or you wake up in the morning and you don’t know what her name is.

John and Ed: [laugh]

John: So that moment is when the jigsaw falls into place. Before it all goes wrong.

Thom: Yeah.

[“Jigsaw Falling Into Place” plays]

John: You’re listening to X-Posure. It is XFM. I’m John Kennedy and that is Radiohead with “Jigsaw Falling Into Place”, the ninth track from the album In Rainbows, physically released right now, in the shops, as I speak and getting the X-Posure album playback treatment tonight with Ed O’Brien and Thom Yorke, from the band talking us through it track-by-track. “Jigsaw” is also the first single from the album. Having released it in the digital way and obviously you said that you were always going to release it in a physical form at some point, and that was always part of the plan. Uh, singles and all that sort of thing, they still are the picture, or the way that you see yourselves releasing music?

Ed: Well, I guess. I mean a single is a song that gets played on the radio. So yeah... I mean, we wanna get our songs played on the radio so if that’s the form that—if that’s the means that you have to do, then absolutely, you know?

John: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it’ll probably shift in the…

Ed: Yeah.

John: … years to come, they will become key tracks.

Ed: What was interesting was when the record came out, people… there were no singles picked out. People—different radio stations picked whatever tracks they wanted and that was interesting.

Thom: But then they all come out to you and go ‘Can you tell us what it is now? ‘Cause we don’t know—we don’t want to make a mistake’.

Ed and John: [laugh]

Thom: ‘Why can’t you just carry on playing the one you like?’

John: Yeah. No…

Thom: Weird.

John: I agree with you. Uh, and I mean, “Jigsaw” almost has a… Is it a reference to “Paranoid Android” with that guitar line at the beginning? I mean, it kind of reminds me of “Paranoid Android”. Or it almost seems as if you could’ve chucked it in there just as a nod to your past.

Thom: Really?

John: Yeah.

Thom: I think it’s more that I only have about three ideas.

John: [laughs]

Ed: Oh, c’mon! I like this. I mean, one of the things for me in this record was I always kept on sort of saying was the lyrics. And one of the things I love about this whole song is that, if I may…

Thom: Please, please do.

Ed: Um, it’s the Friday night in the pub and it’s all kicking off. And there used to be a line in there that wasn’t there but that’s central ‘You’ve just been paid’. And, you know, and it’s all going off and I love that kind of…It’s kind of—to me—it’s totally, you know… For me, when we get our songs right it’s very visual. And I totally imagine kind of like a quiet, thin bar and it’s all kicking off. and people looking at one another, and it’s all in the music and buying more drinks, and that euphoria at the end of the week. And you get to that—you get to the last section and it’s all building up and it’s just that glorious feeling, you know? 11 o’clock and before it all goes nasty and you kind of have enough booze inside you, and it’s all… And the world doesn’t get better than this in this very moment and that is… that’s what I love about this song.

Thom: And half an hour from now it’s all going to get [undecipherable]

Ed: [laughs] Yeah, exactly! [undecipherable] that first kebab.

John: [laughs]

Thom: Or you wake up in the morning and you don’t know what her name is.

John and Ed: [laugh]

John: So that moment is when the jigsaw falls into place. Before it all goes wrong.

Thom: Yeah.

John: Like it. “Videotape” is the next track. And when you were sequencing the album. Did you always think this is the best way to end the record?

Thom: Well, no. Mm, Nigel and I for ages thought it should be the first track, until some… Chris, our manager, pointed out, you know—having come in from the outside, we’d been locked in the studio for a while—‘You must be bloody kidding! They’ll just play that and say forget it’, ‘cause it’s pretty dark, but um… I think that was only just because it was the thing at that particular moment that we were most proud of, you know? So…

John: So usually I mean, that’s the one that you want to share first and say ‘Hey! Look what we’ve done!’

Ed: Mm, not necessarily. I think—no, not necessarily. I think it’s like every song has its place and if I was… in the morning—well, I don’t play the songs to friends—but if I were to. I mean, it depends, if I come back from the pub and—maybe one o’clock in the morning—and sit and have a smoke that would probably be a good one to start with. But it might not be a good one at ten o’clock in the morning. You know what I mean? It’s like, I like that thing someone said once about ‘every song has its hour of the day’ almost.

Thom: That’s true.

Ed: So, it seems… I think the reason that Nigel… I remember Nigel said he wanted it to be at the start of the record because it’s just literally Thom’s voice. You’ve got the piano but you just got his voice, and we haven’t done that for a while, you know? The thing that was cool about the rest of us, when we heard The Eraser and it was like ‘Ooh… his vocals are loud! Ooh! I like that!’

Thom: ‘Why can’t he do it with us?’ [laughs]

Ed: [laughs] No, exactly. ‘Why does he want to bury it in all our noise?’

Thom: Just giving you space, chap! It’s alright.

Ed: That’s right. Hiding? No. And so I think that it’s great for that because it’s really—the voice is upfront and, you know? It’s such a great lyric.

John: Mm, yeah. Well, it’s a great way to end the album, great way to start it, then. And, of course, people can shuffle it around if they want to.

Thom: If they must.

John: Listening to the whole of In Rainbows. Something: Phil has got in touch with the programme and wanted to know that in the past, at some point, Thom, you had said that “How to Disappear”, you reckoned, was probably the best thing that Radiohead...

Thom: Oh, yeah.

John: … had ever done. Is there anything on In Rainbows you think you could’ve, as a band, have reached that pinnacle again?

Thom: Uh, me personally it would be “Videotape”. Because it was one of those songs where it was absolutely sort of—we just didn’t know how on Earth we were gonna do it; and, you know, and to end up with this really stripped-down thing where you’re hearing all this extra stuff—it’s maybe there, maybe not—you know, it’s just… it exists on a different sort of weird… There’s something else going on which you can’t hear, but it’s going on, and it transforms you hopefully, that’s the idea. “How to Disappear” was a similar thing. There’s a point in there where it’s like… You know the old Murakami?

John: No.

Thom: Uh, Japanese author. Japanese-American author. And in his books they always have this—well, it’s a constant theme of like having holes in walls that you go through and then you’re sort of a parallel… You break through to the other side sort of thing. And I think that’s the aim of records for us. Making music is—every now and again you get those bits where you break through to the other side.

John: And will that keep you going? You mentioned a remix in ten years time, 2014, of “Nude”, was it? And…

Thom: [undecipherable] [Thom sings a silly "Videotape" remix]

John: [laughs]

Thom: [undecipherable]

John: There was a point when you released a series of albums quite quickly, in a row, you think you’ll ever return to that?

Ed: Hopefully, yeah.

Thom: Yeah.

Ed: Yeah, that’s the idea. We’ve got to kind of change some of the model that’s been floating around the last few years. And we will… we’ll do it quicker. And now we’ve got the means to do it as well, so…

John: Yeah.

Thom: I think this is a very specific method of working, as well. We deliberately, like, didn’t—we kept with what we knew in a sort of weird sort of way and concentrated on just getting the songs right. But the next time it’s much more concentrating on what we’ve done now. [laughs] You know what I mean. Trying some different gear, you know, different methods.

John: Yeah.

Thom: Next. [undecipherable] Now.

John: Thom, Ed, thanks so much for coming in. It’s great to see you. And this is the last track tonight from Radiohead: “Videotape”.

[“Videotape” plays]