Radiohead open Dead Air Space, and Thom Yorke's no-deal posts come down

Twice this week Thom Yorke has written on Dead Air Space, the band's new blog on radiohead.com, that Radiohead have no record contract, and twice the post has been taken down. The first read we have no record conntract. as such. any offers?¹ What the band would like, he went on, is the old EMI back, the genteel arms manufacturers who treated music as a side project and were not much bothered about shareholders, though he doubted they would get it.

The second followed, and new photographs of the band went up on the blog. Still no contract, Yorke wrote, and the least the band would expect when their music is downloaded is a few “poultry pennies” rather than nothing at all. Then he broke off with sorry im being told to be quiet¹. That one came down quickly too.

The blog opened on Tuesday. MaxK, who looks after radiohead.com and once ran the fan site Planet Telex, says every member of the band will post words and pictures to it, when they have something to say and when they don't, and that it will be updated like the rest of the site, sporadically, with no guarantees or refunds. It recalls the online diary Ed O'Brien kept during the Kid A sessions.

On Wednesday Yorke posted under the heading “announcement which may be of interest”. The band were going into a proper studio on Thursday for a little while, he wrote, with 192 faders and a lot of choice, a bit like the supermarket⁴. They did, to carry on with their seventh album, the follow-up to Hail to the Thief, which has no title and no release date.

The EMI deal ended with Hail to the Thief in 2003, and EMI would not comment. Courtyard Management, the band's managers in Oxford, told Billboard that Radiohead are out of contract and putting some ideas together to see where to go next, and dismissed months of talk that Warner Music were about to sign them.