Ed O'Brien gives the next album a March date, then says June

Ed O'Brien and Jonny Greenwood tell NME's Christmas double issue that the follow-up to Kid A is being sequenced, with “Knives Out” certain to be on it, and O'Brien says it will be out in March. On 19 December he gave Australia's Triple J a later date, probably June.

James Oldham met the pair in Didcot, in a room above the studio at the band's management offices, during a break from finishing the record. Most of its songs will already be familiar to fans, O'Brien says, and “Knives Out” is the most direct thing on it and the closest to how it sounds live.

For 2001 he lists America, with the tent, perhaps some singles from the new record, no videos with the band in them and no interviews. There won't be two albums next year, though there might be an EP, and the band are already working on songs that won't be on this one.

By the time he spoke to Triple J the record had a reported name, Amnesiac. He said it includes material recorded but left unused in the Kid A sessions, and that it is closer to The Bends, its mood not constant the way OK Computer's and Kid A's are.

Kid A went to number one in Britain and, for the first time, in America. There were no singles because the band heard none on it, O'Brien says, and no videos because there were no singles; much of what Radiohead do happens by chance, not to a master plan. “Optimistic” has still become their biggest American radio hit since “Creep”, which he puts down to the compression on US FM stations making it sound like an American rock song. Jonny says the band got wrong how people first heard Kid A, and it should have been available sooner.

Jonny puts the £25 tent ticket down to building a venue every night instead of playing sports halls. O'Brien says the tour made no profit, and sets the price beside £28 to £30 for a Premiership match and £17.50 for Wembley Arena, though with the exchange rate, he says, they were the most expensive ticket in Paris.

Some people, Jonny says, were secretly hoping Radiohead would make a record that sounded like the bands who sound like them. They basically want their hands held through 12 'Mull Of Kintyre's.¹ O'Brien questions the idea that the new record will be more song-based. What are the ten tracks on Kid A, he asks, if not songs? “Treefingers” may not be verse and chorus, but it is still a song. OK Computer was an extremely emotional record. Kid A is a lot more controlled.¹