The Smile on BBC Radio 6

Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood and Tom Skinner talk to Lauren Laverne for BBC Radio 6 Music at Jonny's studio, booked as Saturday headliners at the 6 Music Festival with Wall of Eyes on its way. They are bringing the London Contemporary Orchestra, who play the strings on the record, and wrangling scores and violins live is a different matter from the studio. Jonny has just made a soundtrack with their conductor, who is fazed by nothing and turns whatever nonsense the band speak into something an orchestra can play.

One Tom calls the other super quick, and an idea can be off the ground in half an hour; take three has become the one. The songs they had already played live often turned out the trickier ones to finish. The band began in 2020, when their Radiohead bandmate Ed O'Brien was off making another solo record and Yorke and Greenwood wanted to carry on making music. Their first performance of any kind was the film for the year Glastonbury was off, which they went into straight from the studio, and on their first tour, with one record, they ran out of songs after 45 minutes.

Live they have six hands and three feet between them, a lot less than on the record, plus Robert Stillman on saxophone and clarinet. Yorke is trying not to think about the shows yet. There is a lot of counting, his hand doing one number while his voice does another and the drums something else. “It's not prog though, I promise.”