The Smile on BBC Radio 6

Tom Skinner speaks for The Smile to 6 Music's New Album Fix on the day Cutouts comes out, the band's third album and, the host says, the only interview any of them had given for it. He doesn't think they have ever thought in albums. Wall of Eyes and Cutouts were started at the same sessions, mostly in Jonny Greenwood's studio in the garden of his house in the woods outside Oxford, where every guitar, drum and synthesiser stays set up and ready. Parts of both were done at Abbey Road, where Skinner had never made a record, and finishing touches went down with the producer, Sam Petts-Davies, in dressing rooms and hotel rooms on tour.

Radiohead's music was a large influence on him long before he met Thom Yorke and Jonny, and he brings the improvising of his jazz background, which he feels they have embraced. “Don't Get Me Started” grew from one of Jonny's delay-pedal riffs, jammed in soundchecks for a while, until it moved onto a Prophet-5 synthesiser and took on a new life; its B section Jonny almost improvised on the spot. Opening the record with “Foreign Spies” was a statement of intent, since nothing they had done sounded like it. “The Slip” is close to a drum solo: Skinner did about three free passes and the track was cut around moments from those passes. “Eyes & Mouth”, a live favourite they had struggled to catch in the studio, was finally nailed with Skinner and Jonny cutting drums and guitar together.