Thom Yorke names the Atoms for Peace album Amok

The first Atoms for Peace album is called Amok and comes out on XL Recordings on 25 February (26 February in the United States). Thom Yorke announced it on Monday 3 December in a post on Dead Air Space, Radiohead's blog, just over two weeks after Radiohead's last show of the year in Melbourne. The Atoms for Peace website opened pre-orders the same day, with a cover by Stanley Donwood that The Quietus likens to his sleeve for The Eraser.

We formed to learn to play The Eraser record, if you don't know that, and discovered a really good energy doing that.. and it fell into this record.

Thom Yorke¹²

Yorke writes, of the band he first gathered to play his 2006 solo album live. He lists himself on vocals, keyboards, programming and guitars, Nigel Godrich on production and programming, Joey Waronker on drums, Mauro Refosco on percussion and Flea, of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, on bass.

He told David Fricke of Rolling Stone, in a Q&A published in November, how the record was made. After eight North American shows in the spring of 2010 he booked three days in a Los Angeles studio. The band went in with nothing and came out with what he calls a mountain of jams, which he and Godrich spent the next two years cutting up and setting beside their own laptop work. When we first hung out, we were at Flea's house. We got wasted, played pool and listened to Fela Kuti all night.¹⁵

“Default”, the single from September, is the second of the nine songs; it grew from a sampler Yorke had patched in wrong. “What the Eyeballs Did”, its B-side, is not on the album. Fact reported in November that “Judge Jury and Executioner” had already been played live. The running order is the one that went round in early November without a word from the band or XL, though the 28 January release date that came with it was wrong.

Yorke admits February is a long wait and expects other things to happen before then. He says he is still reeling from touring with Radiohead for much of the year, but the band plan to get together and play next year and are working out how. He calls Atoms for Peace ongoing and open-ended, and says not knowing for certain where it leads is the nice thing about it.

Amok, running order