Radiohead's “Ill Wind” is online a day after the box starts shipping

The special edition of A Moon Shaped Pool started going out to buyers on 28 September, and by the night of the 29th its one unheard song, “Ill Wind”, was online. A buyer had shared a copy, and Stereogum had it up at 10.27pm New York time.

Neither of the two songs on the box's second CD is on the standard album. “Ill Wind” opens on something close to a bossa nova groove that gives way to cold synthesisers, with Thom Yorke in falsetto all the way through; DIY compared its synth line to the music of Stranger Things. The other song, “Spectre”, was already public. Radiohead wrote it for the Bond film of that name, saw Sam Smith's “Writing's on the Wall” chosen instead, and put theirs on SoundCloud on Christmas Day.

The band launched the box with an unboxing film on Twitter, narrated by Chieftan Mews, the digital character Nigel Godrich devised, with “Ful Stop” playing underneath. It went through everything in the box and gave nothing away about the new song.

The box costs £60 from the band's store and was announced when the album came out on 8 May. Besides the bonus CD it holds the album on CD and on two heavyweight 12-inch records, a 32-page art book, and a strip of half-inch master tape, under a second long, from one of the band's earlier sessions. Old session tape decays until it can't be played, the band said then, and cutting it up was better than letting it end up as landfill.