Thom Yorke tells The Big Issue how Amnesiac joins Kid A

Thom Yorke has told The Big Issue, the UK street magazine, that Amnesiac, the next Radiohead album, is about forgetting things, and about remembering. The two records are joined, he says, by the Kid A sleeve, because if you look at the artwork for ‘Kid A’, well that’s the fire from afar. ‘Amnesiac’ is the sound of what it feels like to be standing in the fire.¹

The music has been finished for six months, and Yorke likens the choice of which album to release first to picking which of two guns to fire. Amnesiac has vocals sung through egg boxes, and its artwork is being made on a broken photocopier. Four days ago, on the band's messageboard, he ruled out a release before June because the artwork was unfinished and film material was still to be made.

Yorke also finds hope in George W. Bush's win in the American election, because of the anger it will stir. When Bush gets in, that’ll be the start. There’ll be real anger. It’s going to galvanise.¹ He likens the negativity around him to a virus, which in the end kills itself, and says we are in the middle of that now.