Jonny Greenwood says Radiohead have two albums' worth unreleased

Radiohead have more than two albums' worth of material recorded and unreleased, Jonny Greenwood says, and there is talk of an EP next spring of songs a little more straightforward than Kid A. He was speaking from his home in Oxford to Matt Galloway of Toronto's NOW, which gives Kid A five N's, its top rating, ahead of the band's sold-out show at the Air Canada Centre on 17 October with Dan the Automator.

Greenwood wrote the album's string and brass parts himself, spending three months in his room on arrangements that were recorded in three hours. “Motion Picture Soundtrack” was a guitar song for years; now the guitars are gone, a harmonium carries the tune, and a harp and a choir come in. The harp is there because the band were listening to Alice Coltrane. Charles Mingus and Bitches Brew are models too, he says, filtered through what the band cannot do, which is play jazz, play the trumpet or write string parts properly.

The sessions went badly off course at times, he admits, but once a direction was clear the making of Kid A was easier than the stories have it. The songs were written first, with their melodies and harmonies settled, and then arranged. With one or two exceptions nothing was written in the studio or built up from sounds; the hard part was putting it all together.

To me, Kid A sounds like half of the last record and halfway toward something else. We can really go anywhere now, and that's a tremendous feeling.

Jonny Greenwood¹