Radiohead

Thom Yorke and Ed O'Brien look back over the four years before In Rainbows. They took 2004 off, spent 2005 rehearsing and producing themselves without really getting anywhere, toured in 2006 and started recording with Nigel Godrich that autumn, doing the bulk of it in 2007. Doing things differently, rather than having the record put on the same rack as every other sausage, was a fundamental reason for the band to carry on at all, though a physical copy in the shops mattered because not everyone has the internet. Japan brings back Fukuoka, the place Yorke remembers most, where the band went twice and he wrote the words to “Airbag”, and a round festival arena outside Tokyo with 60,000 people that felt like being inside a cauldron.