Radiohead's Com Lag (2plus2isfive) is out in Japan

Com Lag (2plus2isfive), a limited tour CD for Japan only, is out today on Toshiba-EMI, three weeks before Radiohead play two nights in Osaka and two at Makuhari Messe outside Tokyo. Of its 10 tracks only the opener is new, “2 + 2 = 5” recorded by Nigel Godrich at Earls Court in London on 26 November 2003, the first of the band's two nights there. Toshiba-EMI had marked the band's earlier visits with records of their own, Itch in 1994 and No Surprises / Running From Demons in 1997.

The other nine tracks come from the British singles. “Fog (Again)” is the Amnesiac B-side “Fog” redone at the piano for the French television programme Music Planet 2nite in Paris on 3 July 2003. The enhanced part of the disc has a film of “2 + 2 = 5” from the Eurockéennes festival at Belfort, the night after the Paris taping.

Drowned In Sound reported in February that there would be no British edition, so fans in Britain will be paying import prices. EMI Australia is to release it there on 19 April, ahead of the Sydney shows, in place of the tour EP it had planned.

The sleeve first turned up on a fan site at the start of March, and though it looks like the artwork of the Kid A and Amnesiac years, Stanley Donwood has confirmed it is the real one. On the front a bear marked MB, at a bellows camera on a tripod, photographs a grinning figure marked DSPT under a Japanese speech bubble that says “say cheese”. The front also tells buyers, in English, that “This compilation is for Japan.” The decorations are credited to Donwood and Dr Tchock, the name Thom Yorke uses in the band's artwork credits.

Donwood says the designers gave it a Dutch flavour by imagining a range of delftware painted with genetically modified bears and despotic sperm monsters, and the packaging has a very shiny varnish, like a glaze. I would like to make an entire range: tea pot, gravy boat etc.²

Com Lag (2plus2isfive), Toshiba-EMI TOCP-66280