Special-edition tape fragment turns out to be “Jigsaw Falling Into Place”

A buyer of the A Moon Shaped Pool special edition took the scrap of half-inch studio tape that came in his box to a mastering studio to have it played, and found less than a second of “Jigsaw Falling Into Place” from In Rainbows. A video of the playback is online.

Nigel Godrich's first answer was “Bodysnatchers”, and Thom Yorke retweeted the post that said so. Listeners online put him right, and Godrich conceded on Twitter with My mistake! It is jigsaw¹, placing the scrap as a drum fill and owning up that he had first heard it on his phone.

Every copy of the edition holds one such fragment, cut from session reels from across the band's career. When the edition was announced, Radiohead explained that old tape decays until it can no longer be played, and that cutting it up beat sending it to landfill.

You may have silence, you may have coloured leader tape, you may have a chorus… It's a crapshoot.

Radiohead¹