Stanley Donwood on BBC Radio 6

BBC 6 Music talks to Stanley Donwood, down the line from his studio in Brighton, about How to Disappear Completely, his show of the Kid A and Amnesiac paintings at Christie's in London from 9 to 15 October, where they are also for sale. His friend Thom Yorke first asked him to help with the “My Iron Lung” sleeve in 1994. The first plan, for the twentieth anniversary of Kid A and Amnesiac, was to weld shipping containers together so they looked as if they had crashed into the side of the Albert Hall, and fill them with an exhibition. Westminster council called it a massive advert for Radiohead, and Donwood answered that the Albert Hall is a massive advert for the royal family; coronavirus ended it anyway. The canvases, nearly two metres square, had been in storage, and selling them beats paying someone for warehouse space so nobody ever sees them.

He works alongside the band from the start, flailing around visually while they put musical ideas together. Music looks like something, he says, and once you find what it looks like the rest is painting by numbers. Seeing the old canvases is like seeing a child you haven't seen for a while, and a corner of one is a time portal to the weather and the music of the day he made it.