Thom Yorke announces ANIMA, with a Paul Thomas Anderson film for Netflix

Thom Yorke announced ANIMA, a new solo album, on 20 June, a week before it comes out. ANIMA, a new record by me, 27 June. ANIMA, also a one-reeler by Paul Thomas Anderson & me. 27 June.¹⁷

The announcement ends a week of posters for Anima Technologies, a company that does not exist. They turned up on the London Underground, in Milan and in the Dallas Observer, offering to recover lost dreams with a “dream camera” that records the subconscious. Anyone who rang the number on them heard a recorded message saying the authorities had ordered the company to stop trading, and then “Not the News”, a song Yorke has played on tour but never released, which is on the album. On the night of 19 June, projections on Big Ben and Tate Modern asked passers-by whether they had trouble remembering their dreams.

The film is a “one-reeler”, the silent-era name for a short of 10 to 12 minutes on a single reel, which Anderson has made to three songs from the record. Netflix bills Yorke as its star as well as its composer, and its summary ends “Best played loud.” It goes up on Netflix from 8am British time on 27 June, after screenings in selected IMAX cinemas the evening before.

ANIMA is Yorke's first solo studio album since Tomorrow's Modern Boxes in 2014. Nigel Godrich produced it, and XL Recordings release the download on 27 June and the CD and vinyl on 19 July.

Several of the songs were first heard at the Tomorrow's Modern Boxes shows Yorke plays with Godrich and the visual artist Tarik Barri, and on 17 June he booked an autumn of them in North America. The two pieces he premiered at the Philharmonie de Paris in April, “Gawpers” and “Don't Fear the Light”, are not on the album. The fourth track, “Dawn Chorus”, shares its name with a Radiohead song the band have held for years without putting it on a record, and with the company they formed before A Moon Shaped Pool.

ANIMA, tracklist