Ed O'Brien starts his first solo album, with Flood and Catherine Marks

Ed O'Brien has started work on a solo album, with Flood and Catherine Marks producing, he told Matt Miller of Esquire in an interview published on 14 November. The music began while he was living in Brazil, set off by going to Carnival in Rio. Rhythm and groove are at the heart of it, though he says it does not sound overtly Brazilian.

He has just come out of a three-week session with Omar Hakim, who drummed on David Bowie's Let's Dance, Nathan East, and Dave Okumu of The Invisible as his lead guitarist. The backing tracks are down. Next week he goes back into the studio with Flood and Marks to finish them, and he plans to start new material in the new year.

Because the Radiohead touring has been going on longer than I expected, I wasn't able to start the record October of this year.

Ed O'Brien¹

The aim now is to have it finished, mixed and mastered by summer 2018. No label has taken it on yet, and he expects it out late that year or early in 2019. Radiohead dates for 2018 are being looked at too, which fits the little tour he spoke of in July.

The guitar he designed with Fender, the EOB Sustainer Stratocaster, went on sale the same day at £979 ($1,099). It is a Stratocaster with a Fernandes Sustainer in the neck position, a pickup that holds a note indefinitely, so at the flick of a switch an ordinary Strat becomes the sustainer. The idea goes back to the Kid A sessions around 1999 and 2000, when Peter Frank, who looked after Radiohead's gear, fitted a sustainer into O'Brien's Clapton Stratocaster. It sounded poor played straight, so on stage he changed guitars for nearly every song. He recorded all of A Moon Shaped Pool on the new one, and it now covers about half his set. Okumu has played one all through the solo sessions.

The design came to him in a dream early in 2013, he told MusicRadar, and he did not want a signature model. There is no name on the headstock, and the neck plate carries the flower of life, the symbol of his tattoo. Fender make it in Ensenada, Mexico, at a price he wanted young players to be able to afford. I didn't want to have my name on it - it's great if Radiohead fans like it, but I feel like it's more than Radiohead; it's more than me.⁴

Ed O'Brien on the EOB Sustainer Stratocaster, Fender's launch film, 14 November 2017· Fenderwatch on youtube →