Stanley Donwood has heard the new Radiohead album

Stanley Donwood, who has made Radiohead's sleeves and posters since the My Iron Lung EP in 1994, has heard the band's new album. Asked by DIY whether he had heard it, and whether it was finished, he wrote back, I have. Is it done? Not yet…¹ His artwork for it still needs quite a lot of work.

El Hunt sent him the questions in February for the magazine's Hall of Fame feature on In Rainbows, and he answered on 19 March. On what to expect he offers only that it is a work of art, and he laughs off a yes or no on a release this year. It would be Radiohead's first album since The King of Limbs in 2011, and they start touring in May. Asked for his favourite Radiohead album and sleeve, he picks the next one. I've just had a think about this and I think it's the one that no-one's seen yet. It was made by the strong warm winds of southern France.¹

Donwood works on a sleeve while the band are recording, so he can hear the songs change, and he and Thom Yorke take turns destroying each other's paintings. I rely on Thom's ability to fuck up whatever it is that I'm painting. He's very good at it.¹ One idea from their talks about taking the human out of making art was a spinning “painting Dalek” that would fire paint at large square canvases around it. It was never built, which he still regrets, and the thinking led him to making paintings with the weather instead.

Looking back at In Rainbows, Donwood says it took him a few hours to be persuaded that letting people pay what they liked for it was not crazy.

For the sleeve he cycled across southern England to Tottenham House, the derelict country house where the band were working. His drawings of cathedral-like malls and car parks stopped fitting as the music grew more organic. A plan to fire black ink from a paintball gun, using syringes from a doctor friend to refill the paintballs, failed, and while he was drawing with the needles he spilled wax on a piece.