Thom Yorke says Radiohead's break will probably run past a year

Radiohead have decided to take a proper break, Thom Yorke tells Rolling Stone, and it will probably last longer than the year the band agreed on. He and Nigel Godrich met Simon Vozick-Levinson in a Manhattan hotel cafe to talk about Atoms for Peace, and when the next Radiohead album came up, Yorke said he didn't know when it would be. We said a year, but I'm sure it'll probably be slightly longer than that, 'cause I am actually going to have to have a break.¹

Yorke is happy not to know, and nobody has fallen out. It was quite exciting to actually finally decide to take a proper, proper break. We'd never really done that, not by choice.¹ In February Colin Greenwood said they would regroup at the end of the summer.

Yorke thinks one other tune from last summer's session at Jack White's studio might work, but “Identikit” was the main one, cut in a few hours while it was in good shape and before the band could tire of it. It's not finished, finished. No. That's homework. Haven't done it yet.¹

Yorke and Jonny Greenwood talked for years about cutting tracks to vinyl and building songs from them. “The Gloaming” grew out of the idea of locked grooves, though in the end they used multitrack loops. “Black Swan”, from his solo album The Eraser, started as a long piece Yorke calls six minutes of rubbish (nine, Godrich corrects him) with one good section, which Godrich found. What Yorke is writing now is more electronic again, simple and stripped down.

For now he has gone straight from Radiohead into Atoms for Peace, and jokes that three days off is all the break he needs. Atoms for Peace's first tour since 2010 opens in July and takes in three nights at the Roundhouse in London, a room Yorke calls quite small. Amok went into the Billboard 200 at number two in March, behind Bruno Mars's Unorthodox Jukebox, which Godrich puts down to an Amazon discount. Yorke answers, Yeah, Bruno Mars. Who the fuck is Bruno Mars? Sorry. I'll get slandered now.¹

Yorke admits he doesn't get on with 90 per cent of DJ culture, and has turned down a promoter from Ibiza; his favourite DJ is the Gaslamp Killer. Anyone who calls Atoms for Peace a supergroup to his face, he says, will get their teeth knocked out.