No Surprises / Running From Demons

a mini-album for the visit

Toshiba-EMI released No Surprises / Running From Demons on 10 December 1997, five weeks before Radiohead began their third tour of Japan. The label had done this once before, with Itch for the first visit in 1994. This time it was a limited digipak at 2,039 yen.

The front says what it is for, in English, above the band's name. The obi, the paper strip Japanese CDs wear down the spine, says more in Japanese. It calls the record a limited special mini-album to mark the visit, which takes the third British single from the album and adds songs not yet out in Japan and a new remix, all chosen by Thom Yorke himself. The strip also lists what the money bought: the special digipak, liner notes by Erika Yamashita and a Japanese translation of every song's words. Its back printed the tour.

This is a mini-album aimed at the Japanese market.

the front cover · no surprises / running from demons, 1997

six songs, picked around a single

The choice follows from what Japan already had. Toshiba-EMI's own “Paranoid Android” single that summer had carried “Polyethylene (Parts 1 & 2)” and “Pearly”, so “Polyethylene” stays off, and “Pearly” comes back in a new mix. The 2003 version of this site described the difference: cleaner production, the guitar a little louder at the start, a different ending from Jonny Greenwood, and no fade. Both versions open with Phil Selway and Ed O'Brien drumming together.

“No Surprises” was the lead. Parlophone did not put it out as a single in Britain until 12 January 1998, the day before the Japanese tour began, so Japan heard it as a title track first. “Melatonin” and “A Reminder” had been on the second British CD of “Paranoid Android”, which had no Japanese edition, and “Meeting in the Aisle” on “Karma Police”, which had no Japanese release at all.

The sleeve credits the programming on “Meeting in the Aisle” to Henry Binns and Sam Hardaker, two engineers from RAK Studios in London. That year they remixed “Climbing Up the Walls” for the band, called it the Zero 7 mix, and kept the name for themselves.

The odd one is “Bishop's Robes”, two years older than the rest. It was cut in September 1995 in the same run as “Lucky”, and went out behind “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” in January 1996. Of the six it fits least, and it was in the set from the first night of the tour.

donwood and chocolate

The packaging is credited to “Donwood & Chocolate”, Stanley Donwood and Yorke under his White Chocolate Farm name, and where OK Computer was white, this is black. On the front, a line drawing of an old saloon car sits under a globe in a gunsight marked with two eights, with a grey X off to one side. On the back, blurred white figures stand in a field beside a road, a house is drawn in outline in the corner, and there is something like a chalk outline of a body on the ground. Open the digipak and a troop of scouts with a flag faces a formation of fighter jets.

The booklet is glued inside the left panel. One spread has a passage typed in red over two figures walking above a motorway, a picture that also hangs in the Radiohead Public Library's gallery of OK Computer cover variations, with Yamashita's Japanese translation on the facing page. The other spread is what looks like a negative of a man standing alone in a tree-lined avenue, opposite a page left blank. Under the clear tray a red figure stands between tower blocks.

do you really know where you are going? do you have a plan-of-action to take the kinks out of your road to the future?

the booklet · no surprises / running from demons, 1997

The only drawing on the disc is the star with “against demons” written underneath it, the one that sits under the tray of OK Computer. Against Demons was what the band called the tour. This record runs from them.

The lyric sheet has the six songs in Japanese only, translated by Makiko Saito, Motoko Oshino and Jun Tanigawa. A boxed note at the bottom explains where the English went.

The lyrics have been left out at the artist's wish. We ask for your understanding.

toshiba-emi · no surprises / running from demons, lyric sheet, 1997 (our translation)

the liner notes

Yamashita's notes are dated late September 1997, ten weeks before the release date. She had seen them at Glastonbury in June and at Brixton Academy on 13 September, where she stood beside a shy teenage guitarist and his father of about forty, both having a fine time.

She calls the selection Yorke's own, made with care and drawn mostly from songs buried on singles. The notes also carry something Yorke told her about “No Surprises”: the carbon monoxide in it is the exhaust from the buses in Oxford, a big problem in the band's home town that nobody, he said, was trying to fix. On “Melatonin” she admits to taking the stuff herself on trips abroad, and wonders whether it works.

japan tour '98

The obi printed ten dates, from the Izumity 21 in Sendai on 13 January to Akasaka Blitz in Tokyo on 24 January, and shows how they grew: two extra nights at Blitz on 23 and 24 January, and then another, on 17 January, added on top.

The mini-album was all over the sets. Most nights started with “Meeting in the Aisle” over the PA before the band came on for “Airbag”. “A Reminder” came out in the encore at Sendai and Niigata, and “Pearly*” was played on most nights of the run. On the last night at Blitz they played the second part of “Polyethylene”, which the mini-album had left off. From Tokyo they flew to New Zealand, and in Auckland on 28 January the walk-on tape was “Fitter Happier” again.

In Britain “No Surprises” went in at number four while they were in Japan.

sample not for sale

Toshiba-EMI also pressed promotional copies, with “SAMPLE NOT FOR SALE” printed round the inside of the disc and a fold-out sheet carrying the translations and the Japanese notes. The retail digipak was a limited pressing and is long deleted.

In 2017 OKNOTOK gathered the OK Computer B-sides, so every song here except “Bishop's Robes” can now be had in one mix or another without hunting. When Com Lag came out for the next Japanese tour in 2004, The Star in Malaysia had warned its readers that Radiohead's Japanese tour records came at Japanese prices, and named this one and Itch as the proof.