Phil Selway on BBC Radio 6

Phil Selway talks to Steve Lamacq as an ambassador for Independent Venue Week, back for its tenth year from 30 January with more than 300 venues. He fronted a documentary for it in 2019, going round rooms he had played with Radiohead and on his own, and what stayed with him were the people who run them. Colin Greenwood was the first ambassador 10 years earlier, which feels to Selway like a Radiohead full circle.

The band had little touring experience before those small rooms, he says, and a lot of the relationships inside the band were forged there, and talking to people after the show made a real connection. Lamacq names the Duchess of York in Leeds and the Princess Charlotte among the places that have since shut.

He says he has five dates booked that week, from the Norwich Arts Centre to the Boileroom in Guildford. On the new record, Strange Dance, he started as his own drummer, got about a day in, decided he was not the best person for it, and so got to work with the drummer Valentina Magaletti. He wanted a big, fat sound wrapped round an intimate vocal, somewhere a listener could lose themselves, almost a refuge.