Radiohead release The King of Limbs a day early

Radiohead put The King of Limbs out as a download on Friday 18 February, a day before the Saturday they had announced on Monday. Ed O'Brien broke the news on Dead Air Space, the band's blog, thanking everyone for waiting and wishing them a good weekend. It's Friday... It's almost the weekend... It's a full moon...¹ He was right about the moon, which was full at 08.36 GMT, a couple of hours before the album arrived.

The statement XL Recordings sent out that morning, which reached the Guardian at 10.14, said that with everything ready on the website, the band saw no reason to wait for Saturday. Those who had pre-ordered got their copies first, and new orders could be placed at radiohead.com the same day. The download site crashed, and some buyers were sent an email saying their copy would come on Saturday after all.

The band's eighth studio album, and their first since In Rainbows in 2007, produced by Nigel Godrich, runs to eight tracks and about 37 minutes. Amos Barshad, filing a first listen for Vulture, found a short record built on synths that didn't knock him over at first, and picked out the bare piano of “Codex”.

The MP3 download costs £6 ($9 in the US). A lossless WAV costs £9, and the blog mp3hugger predicted a backlash over that £3 gap. The CD and vinyl reach shops on 28 March through XL, and a day later in North America through TBD Records. The Newspaper Album, with vinyl, a CD and sheets of artwork, costs $48 and ships in May.

The video for “Lotus Flower” went up on YouTube the same morning. It is in black and white and has Thom Yorke alone in a bowler hat, dancing for the whole five minutes. Garth Jennings, who made Son of Rambow, directed it, with choreography by Wayne McGregor, photography by Nick Wood and editing by Leila Sarraf. Yorke first played the song in a solo spot on guitar at the Echoplex in Los Angeles in October 2009, at the first show of his band with Flea, Godrich, Joey Waronker and Mauro Refosco, the band now called Atoms for Peace. At a Radiohead show it has been heard once, when he opened the second encore with it, alone on guitar, at the Haiti benefit at the Music Box in January 2010.

On the same Friday a tweet from the band, Hachiko Square Shibuya, 59 minutes at 18 Friday², sent fans to Tokyo for 6.59pm local time, where Uncut says Yorke was to have made a broadcast about the album, moved to the Japanese site thekingoflimbs.jp. The event was called off over security concerns. A crowd gathered in the square anyway.

The King of Limbs