Thom Yorke on BBC Radio 5

Thom Yorke talks to BBC Radio 5 Live about his Suspiria score, which frightened him more to listen to than to make. Only when the cues came off the picture and became a record did he hear how dark he had gone, and that cheered him, partly because he hadn't known he could. The director Luca Guadagnino won him round describing the central dance, “Volk”, and a visit to the derelict hotel where they were filming reminded him of the old buildings Radiohead had recorded in.

Jonny Greenwood taught him to take in what a film wants and then work away from it, so as not to freeze. For the dancer flung round a mirrored room until her limbs break, the script suggested something vicious, but he went the other way: a little piano melody, like something coming out of a tape recorder. Under the screams and the sound effects it becomes, he says, “the most horrible thing”. Being asked for music by next week, with a crew of 300 on set, was new: once “Creep” had made Parlophone some money, Radiohead asked in return never to be given a deadline again. He can't read music and had always left that sort of job to Jonny, but the London Contemporary Orchestra told him what he does on a computer is still a score. Hearing the surround mix move round the cinema at the Venice premiere was, he admits, an artistic highlight.

His studio is in the basement, and the children had to stay out. Next time he wants something quick, a Disney animation perhaps, so they can come in. He watched The Exorcist alone at the back of the bus on the OK Computer tour, and the Hail to the Thief songs now sound to him like an alarm bell. Years ago a manager brought an offer from Nokia of two million pounds for content, and he felt like an idiot. “It's not content, this is life or death for a lot of people.”