Radiohead put down guitars, drums and vocals for a fortnight

Radiohead are back in the studio after Christmas under a new rule from Nigel Godrich: for the next couple of weeks there are to be no guitars, no drums and no vocals, and every sound has to be generated electronically. Ed O'Brien writes in his online diary that they all arrived dreading picking up the old tracks where they had left them. The rule means they cannot fall back on what they did before, and it makes them learn the equipment. it’s actually an incredible amount of fun¹, he writes, which is not something we’ve had in abundance over the last year or in studios in general.¹

Four abstract pieces have come out of it so far, to be judged in a few weeks. “True Love Waits”, around for about four years, went down the same old paths every time the band tried it, and now sounds like the start of something exciting. “Feeling Pulled Apart by Horses” has gone in too, and Thom Yorke has attached a band version of “Bombers” to the song O'Brien used to call “the Neil Young song”.

His call for demos before Christmas brought in far more than the handful he expected; publications and radio stations had reported it as a Radiohead talent search. O'Brien suspects payback for the band being miserable and contrary in their last round of interviews. What separates the good from the rest, he finds, is taste, and making music to get signed is pointless. A technically polished demo from Simply Red would still be no good to him.