Thom Yorke plays two new songs alone on Godrich's From the Basement

Thom Yorke opens the first episode of From the Basement, the music programme made by Nigel Godrich, Radiohead's producer, playing two new Radiohead songs alone at the piano: “Videotape” and “Down Is the New Up”. The episode is out as a download on 18 December, through fromthebasement.tv and the iTunes store; no television broadcast in Britain or America has been arranged yet, SPIN reports.

Both songs have been in the band's sets this year with no record to put them on. “Videotape” was first played by the full band at the Hammersmith Apollo in May and “Down Is the New Up” in Toronto in June, and both stayed in the set through the summer. NME says they are being considered for the next Radiohead album, which it expects in 2007.

There is no host and no studio audience. The performances are the whole programme, filmed in London in high definition, with the sound recorded to analogue reel-to-reel tape. The White Stripes also play on the episode, and so does Kieran Hebden of Four Tet with the drummer Steve Reid.

Godrich announced the show in September, with the first series already recorded and Yorke named for the opening episode. He said then that he wanted to work out what the album is turning into as a medium. MTV destroyed the art of music television, ironically.⁴ For Yorke, playing for it was exciting to get plugged straight into the mains. No producer director egos messing it up.³