Thom Yorke

For a Japanese interviewer, Thom Yorke and Ed O'Brien account for the four years without a record. They took 2004 off, started rehearsing and producing themselves in 2005 without getting anywhere, toured in 2006, began recording that autumn and did the bulk of the record, In Rainbows, in 2007.

Asked why In Rainbows came out the way it did, Yorke says the band carried on partly to do things differently, because it was boring to bash their heads against a wall for months and then have the result put in the same shape as everything else, on the same rack as every other sausage. They still wanted a physical record in the shops, since not everyone has the internet or knows how it works. Touring should start in May and be mostly done by the end of August.

Then Japan. They remember Fukuoka from the OK Computer tour, and a festival outside Tokyo in a round stadium of about 60,000, which one of them likens to being inside a big black cauldron of stew.