For Christopher O'Riley, the Shostakovich Fifth Symphony finale and the slow movements of the Ravel Piano Concerto in G and the Shostakovich Second Piano Concerto can only mean one thing: failed romance.

He uses Bach's Goldberg Variations for what they were intended: to put the listener to sleep. (Bach wrote them for a count with insomnia.) And "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik," by Mozart, is, um, something like his Viagra.

Repeat after me: It is not a sin to listen to classical music while doing other things. In fact, it makes it personal. And some of it was even meant for the purpose.

There are several of these pieces that were meant to be background music, O'Riley said in a phone conversation last week from Portland, where he was performing the Gershwin Piano Concerto with the Oregon Symphony. Take it from him - the Sony recording artist, host of NPR's popular weekly show for teenage classical performers and a guy with enough clout that he can sprinkle a serious tour with goofy tribute recitals to the art-rock band Radiohead.

His Radiohead concert in Tacoma earlier this month was a study in devotion. The fans wore their hats in the theater, sang along with the piano and shouted requests between songs. They hungered for the familiar melodies.

Thom Yorke has told NME that Radiohead were apprehensive about touring the US after expressing his views about US President George Bush.

The band have spent much of the autumn on tour in America supporting their current album Hail To The Thief. Thom said that because of his public anti-war stance and the perceived anti-Bush album title, the band feared some kind of backlash.

We were sort of worried about the reaction to what we had been saying when we went over there, Thom told NME. Colin, whose wife is American, didn’t see a problem at all. It turned out that he was right, when you met people face to face the resistance, disgust and dismay was obvious.

Thom said that some of the band’s older songs have taken on new meanings. He continued: When we played No Surprises a huge cheer would go up every night over the line ‘Bring down the government / They don't speak for us..’. Although in Houston, Texas it was a little err...muted shall we say.

Pick of the year (clockwise from top left): Radiohead's Hail to the Chief, Lost in Translation soundtrack, Blur's Think Tank and The Lonesome Organist's Forms And Follies

12. Radiohead
Hail To The Thief (Parlophone)
Guitars! Less muttering! Jubilation was in the wind as Hail To The Thief emerged, jubilation that as time has passed has started to look slightly premature. Whatever, here was a record at least in parts adventurous and genuinely thrilling, even if perversity occasionally seemed to be lurking outside the door.

For ten years, Radiohead has produced challenging, thoughtful rock without a fear of experimentation. With the release of Hail To The Thief, Radiohead, whose members have taken strong political stands off stage, put their politics into the music. All five members of the band autographed a poster announcing Thief.

Q: Two of the bands you have often been compared to, Travis and Radiohead, have also returned. What have you made of their albums?

I haven’t actually heard the Travis album in full; I’ve only heard bits of it. I know there has been a lot of talk about their new political direction, but I don’t think that sits that easy to be honest. I think if you are going to write political stuff you have to do it from the outset. I just don’t think it suits Fran Healy, he is better suited to writing their older, more universal pop stuff. I have heard the Radiohead album however, and in parts it is fantastically wonderous, but a little bit lost in other areas. I really love a lot of it though.

On the eve of the release of his Bodysong soundtrack album (taken from the movie of the same name) Greenwood spoke to Xfm’s John Kennedy about the project which, while the guitarist’s first solo project, wasn’t totally free from Radiohead’s influence, Radiohead were asked to do it, but they were keen to have some time off, Greenwood said, And I’m never keen to have time off. I did it in the Radiohead studio though, using some of the techniques learnt on Kid A, so it felt like an extension in a way rather than a new start.

I was still asking for advice from which ever bandmates turned up at the studio, as people were always popping in to write or rehearse, and Colin is on the album anyway.

Not that Bodysong marks the start of a new career for the guitarist as a solo soundtrack composer.

I’d only do it again if everyone else in the band was taking time off, he explained, While it’s fun and can be productive, compared to Radiohead stuff its still a pleasant waste of time. What Thom is doing is really important and there’s lots of good music to be made. That’s where my heart is, that’s where my passions lie.

He also explained that Radiohead would hopefully be returning to the studio to start work on new material as soon as the tour is over, saying, It’s straight back to some kind of work I hope. There are already lots of songs and half written songs, so there’s things for us to chew on already.

David Busta, son of Dave and Carol busta of Chetek, was paralyzed in a fall on Aug. 24, 2002. He's been at the Courage Center in Minneapolis since January.

I'm not going to lie to you; there is nothing that I like about my situation. Every day is filled with obstacles, challenges, frustrations, "What ifs" and "Why mes?" While every day seems to get a little more difficult, I get by with an inherent positive attitude that is fueled by encouragement from all of you.

Q: Judging from many of your website journal entries, and your job title at GMR, you're a big music fan. Who are some of your favorite bands/artists? What's been the best concert you've attended in recent memory?

Busta: I enjoy many different types of music, but my favorite artists tend to be those that you aren't likely to hear on the radio.

A cross-section of my favorites: my favorite is Radiohead, and others include Jeff Buckley, Morphine, Death Cab for Cutie, Tool and Blind Melon.

I saw Radiohead at Alpine Valley Music Theatre outside Milwaukee on the anniversary date of my accident. Spending that day with my friends, and seeing my favorite band that evening kept my mind off of the events of one year prior. I hope to spend every anniversary of my accident at a concert.

Stop! Stop! Stop! hollers Thom Yorke mid-song. The other four members of Radiohead halt abruply and a confused hush engulfs the 18,000 crowd at Tornoto's Sky Dome. This guy's having a fit! cries Yorke urgently, pointing towards the front rows. His eyes have gone out! Get security! Get an ambulance! Get him out of here! A young male fan's frighteningly limp body is pulled out of the crowd and carried hurriedly away. That looked really heavey, says the shaken frontman.

Happily, though, that moment is as dark as things will get in this particular Radiohead feature. As Yorke later tells the crowd, the fan is soon sitting up and chatting backstage. And even the enforced break in 'Myxomatosis', from the band's current album 'Hail To The Thief', provides an unexpected bonus. Once the fan had been carried away, Yorke turns to the band, says, Okay, third verse, and they launch directly into the middle of the song, as if having pressed a giant pause button. This undeniably impressive party trick sends the crown into raptures.

1. White Stripes - 42% (575 votes)
2. Radiohead - 34% (461 votes)
3. 50 Cent - 15% (205 votes)
4. Britney Spears - 9% (116 votes)

1. Sting - 39.5%
2. Madonna - 34.7%
3. R.E.M. - 13.4%
4. Radiohead - 6.9%
5. Justin Timberlake - 5.5%

Conversations overheard before showtime made it clear that many people had taken many stimulants in advance of Radiohead's appearance.

But as soon as the band traipsed onstage there was little need for any other kind of stimulation, legal or otherwise.

The 8.50pm start time caught some by surprise. But the real eye opener was the stunning stage set.

Banks of video screens showing a variety of grainy images and a potent striplight-style backdrop created an edgy beauty that suited the Oxford five-piece's angst-ridden work.

Howard Zinn and Thom Yorke have never done lunch, waved to each other along the red carpet, or even had a conversation. But what if they did? We took the recent release of Howard Zinn's new Seven Stories Press book, Artists in Times of War, (http://www.sevenstories.com) as an opportunity to find out what would happen if these two very different people were to sound off on the role of artists in politics. After all, who better for this dialogue than Radiohead's Thom Yorke?

After the dust finally settled around the controversial title of their most recent album, Hail to the Thief, a seemingly direct poke at our president, Yorke still insists that Radiohead is not political in any intentional way. Perfect. So all we have to do is pair him up with Zinn: distinguished professor, historian, playwright, and author of A People's History of the United States. Zinn and Yorke each had plenty to say about art and politics, but not without also covering everything from Marx and Picasso to Donna Summer and Public Enemy.

Q: Pablo Picasso once said: Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth. How do you react to this quote as describing the role of artists to inspire change and show us what the world should be like?

Zinn: Well, in a certain sense when you describe what the world should be like, you're not telling the truth. You're not describing reality, but a fantasy. You're describing the future, something utopian, and something that's in the imagination. So in a certain sense, it's a lie that is extremely important in revealing the truth. It's not just a matter of artists talking about the future or what life can be like in the future, which constitutes a kind of lie. All fiction is a kind of lie; you're telling stories that are not true, but they somehow add up to a very important truth.

Yorke: Fox News is a lie. [laughs> Someone needs to tell the truth, but it shouldn't be my job. So I guess I'd be on the lying side. I think no artist can claim to have any access to the truth, or an authentic version of an event. But obviously they have slightly better means at their disposal because they have their art to energize whatever it is they're trying to write about. They have music.

If you're of a weak constitution you may want to sit down before listening to this record. Yes, it says Radiohead on the cover and, yes, it's got the usual constipated conceptual artwork, but there's no getting away from it: 2 + 2 = 5 very nearly has a tune.

This exceptionally mesmerizing work by Simon Pummel consists of an artful montage of hundreds of archival moving images, which tell the story of human life from birth to death and everything in between. The film recalls such films as Koyanniqatsi and Baraka except that all of the shots are found footage rather than specifically shot for the film. Two-and-a-half years in the making, the film is a marvel to behold (especially from the second row!) and features a fine score by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood. The film has a good many graphic scenes, including about 20 human births and a couple of shooting deaths, and it is most definitely not for everyone since its narrative is mostly experimental in nature. However good word of mouth will help it find the right audience. The film too has an accompanying interactive website that is remarkable as well in that it includes every shot in the movie with explanations of each shot.

Radiohead are enigmatic. To such a point, in fact, that it’s almost become a marketing strategy. Always challenging and often cryptic; it’s also fairly unsurprising that those disillusioned web-heads are prompted to find meaning.

But it’s perhaps a little unfair that, through the over-intellectualising of their tracks by third parties, they’ve been saddled with a reputation of being pompous art-rockers.

Because they’re not quite the Manic Street Preachers emblazoning their sleeves with quotes from Nietzche, Le Corbusier or Rimbaud.

And while not a match for the often disingenuous ways of The Darkness either, a chat with bassist Colin Greenwood does uncover a band in a more playful mood than you might expect - but then that could be down to the reception Radiohead have recently been enjoying Stateside.

It’s a different culture, he observes. They’re independent of that baggage that we tend to get in the UK. That kind of media image we have isn’t so much of a thing over there. That’s refreshing.

Bush and a massive entourage came to London this week for a rare state visit. Even before he arrived the trip provoked fury, with reports that US security officials wanted to create a three mile ‘exclusion zone’ around him, effectively shutting down central London and stopping legitimate protesters from getting anywhere near the President.

Angry at what he sees as using the threat of terrorism to suppress whatever they choose, Thom Yorke e-mailed NME last week, urging people to protest against the visit.

When asked why he’d chosen to speak out, Thom told NME: To make Blair squirm over his decision to take us into a illegitimate war (In Iraq) and follow this religious lunatic (Bush) toward a dangerous future for the whole planet.

Both of these men are liars. We have right to call them such, they are putting our children’s future in jeopardy. They are not controlling the terrorist threat, they are escalating it. Blair will not be allowed off the hook by his pathetic pleading for us to ‘move on’, neither shall Bush.

Thom continued: (The visit) will be heavily staged I think. I expect they will use the threat of terrorism to suppress whatever they choose, intimidate and arrest whoever they wish. The majority of British people were against this war, and Bush's visit will just taint Blair even further.

While in the UK Bush will be staying in Buckingham Palace. Yorke urged the Royal Family to do something useful and protest too. He continued: This is a royal invitation isn't it? How about one of the little heirs to throne doing something useful with their lives and speaking out? Refusing to shake hands for example? As we are still awaiting the results of the Hutton Inquiry I think now is a good time to remind Blair that he's on very very very very very very very very thin ice.

Brixton Ritzy - 2/1/04 7 days
Manchester Cornerhouse - 2/1/04 7 days
Liverpool Picturehouse - 2/1/04 3 days
Coventry Warwick Arts - 20/2/04 2 days
Birmingham Midland Arts - 20/2 2 days

Dear All,

As you can no doubt tell from the amount of airtime St. Nick is getting, the festive period is rearing its festive head.

We owe it to you to let you know that the last dates we can accept orders for despatch in time for the 25th December.

So, our last order dates are as follows, depending on where you live.

If you live in the UK - Thursday 18th December
If you live in Europe - Friday 12th December
If you live in Canada, USA or Japan - Thursday 11th December
If you live anywhere else - Monday 8th December

Also, we owe it to you to let you know that we have some new arrivals for your consumerist pleasure......

1. The all new aubergine colour Test Specimen T shirt.

2. Limited edition art print pack. This pack contains eight A2 size (34cm x48cm) Stanley Donwood prints with a bonus card insert. These tip top quality prints are despatched to you in a textured black Radiohead portfolio.

Both now available at www.waste.uk.com

That is the end of this message from w.a.s.t.e.

Just a reminder that a fresh new lot of Loophole MP3's have now gone up on radiohead.com - go to http://www.digitallandfill.co.uk/loophole/mp3 to grab them. There will be two more sets of 20 winners to go now before the end of this competition - one in December, and one in January. We're going to close the submissions page in December, so if you want to get an entry in - hurry, you've got just one month left!

Cheers,
w.a.s.t.e.

With Radiohead, it’s all very simple…they rarely get it wrong. Having presumably taken a leaf out of touring buddy Four Tet’s book, the single opens with a jarring electro/feedback turn before settling into the usual groove of innovative and articulate guitar trickery, and affecting, languid, emotional outpourings. While the set up is definitely a familiar one, expect this short sharp shock of a song to stand out in the band’s overall canon for years to come.

Sat 22nd Nov - MANCHESTER Evening News Arena
Sun 23rd Nov - NEWCASTLE Arena Newcastle
Mon 24th Nov - CARDIFF International Arena
Wed 26th Nov - LONDON Earls Court Arena
Thur 27th Nov - LONDON Earls Court Arena
Sat 29th Nov - NOTTINGHAM Arena
Sun 30th Nov - GLASGOW SECC
Mon 1st Dec - ABERDEEN AECC
Wed 3rd Dec - DUBLIN The Point
Thur 4th Dec - DUBLIN The Point

1. One - U2
2. I Say A Little Prayer - Aretha Franklin
3. Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
4. A Day In The Life - The Beatles
5. In The Ghetto - Elvis Presley
6. My Name Is - Eminem
7. Creep - Radiohead
8. Independent Women Part 1 - Destiny’s Child
9. Live Forever - Oasis
10. River Deep Mountain High - Ike and Tina Turner

Like a college curriculum, Radiohead's discography begins with basics, influences and theory (Pablo Honey); moves through seminal concepts, weighing pros and cons (The Bends and OK Computer); and opens its scope into innovation (Kid A and beyond). Each album finds the studious Brits progressing in their path to musical enlightenment: precocious young adults producing a melange of the Pixies and the Smiths; surprise purveyors of two of the finest mortality- and technology- fearing albums of the rock era; trailblazers into an unfamiliar territory of sound and space.

This studied progression hasn't been without its compromises and obstacles. A decade ago, Radiohead was trying to break its single, "Creep," off its Pablo Honey debut (an album the band barely acknowledges anymore). Back then, the eager-to-please lads lip-synched their breakout track at the MTV Beach House, while Yorke sported long bleached-blond hair. And upon the release of Kid A, disgruntled rock purists cried heresy at a band they had nearly canonized a couple years before.

But even distinguished scholars were hungry teenagers at one point. Fans argue that in order for Radiohead to reach its current state -- where the band basically has carte blanche to do whatever it wants on record -- it had to pander to commercial demands at one point. And as for their foray from guitar rock into technology-aided rock-tronica, the band had already gone summa cum laude in guitar rock. Kid A was the beginning of graduate studies.

Harvey apparently wrote this song, for her album Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea, with Radiohead's singer in mind. Her thrummy Fender guitar chugs along on the back of a deadpan rhythm; over the top of this floats Yorke's ethereal voice, singing of a strange fleeting encounter with a woman. Yorke does most of the singing, with Harvey joining him on the refrain, and speaking rather than singing on the last verse. The song builds inexorably, chillingly, to its bleak conclusion.

Key Moment: The final verse, when Harvey speaks the words that Yorke is about to sing; the contrast between words drily spoken and hauntingly sung is compelling.

Last November, Steve Bays was feeling pretty good about Hot Hot Heat. The band had just finished its North American tour by selling out the Commodore. Its full-length debut Make Up the Breakdown was out on Seattle's legendary Sub Pop label. A major label distribution deal with Warner Bros. was in the works. Everyone from Spin to Rolling Stone and the New York Times was raving about the group and lumping them in with other hype bands, such as the Strokes and the White Stripes.

This November, according to NME.com and U.K. MTV viewers, Hot Hot Heat is bigger than Radiohead.

Talk about a good year.

On the phone from Paris, where he's been spending a s---load of money, eating good food, hitting clubs and touring cemeteries with his new London-based girlfriend, the mop-topped singer is taking it all in stride.

We've done somewhere around 500 shows since last October, says Bays. And every time through, it's been a bigger crowd, a bigger venue and a massive upgrade in terms of lights, crew and show.

That keeps things really exciting and fun, but -- flattering as it is -- we're a long way from headlining festivals like Radiohead. Their position is, to say the least, unassailable.

THE other night, FFF Boy, my American pal Derick, and I went to see Radiohead at Berlin Arena. Unlike most arenas, this one spends most of its non-concert time as a velodrome, so there's this big ribbon of track seperating the standing up area from the sitting down bit. That is, in fact, useless information. Sorry.

If you like Radiohead: they were ace. If you don't like Radiohead: it would've been your worst nightmare. Even I didn't enjoy standing behind people who were freaking out Haight-Ashbury style and dancing like lava lamps.

Radiohead adds a welcome splash of color to a doggedly bland alternative rock landscape. Never recording the same music twice, these canny British chaps always surprise us by reinventing their sound and, even more so, rock music itself.

4 Steps To Being A Fitter, Happier Radiohead Fan In The Winter Months:

1. Indulge your inner couch potato as the snow pours down with quality programming brought to you by MTV2 and Radiohead. The band will guest VJ MTV2's Subterranean on Friday, November 14th at 1am. And like all things MTV related, it will air repeatedly until there is no way you could possibly miss it...accept of course if you forget to turn your television on.

Visit mtv.com for more info.

2. This Christmas season, you could celebrate the birth of JC (and we don't mean Chasez!) OR you could celebrate the February 24th stateside release of Jonny Greenwood's score to the award winning British documentary "Bodysong." While the film doesn't quite cover the Nativity scene, we can guarantee it includes more births (among other subjects such as death and growth) then you'll probably ever want to see. The score, which was written and produced by Greenwood, features jazz group The Emperor Quartet and has a special appearance by Radiohead bass player and big bro Colin Greenwood. Stay tuned for more info on the U.S. release which is rumored to include additional material.

http://www.bodysong.com

3. Think the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade is just for kids? Well, we think you're crazy but if you insist on some more "adult" alternatives to the usual festivities then cure your Turkey induced hangover with 2 hours of Radiohead live courtesy of Westwood One. The "Radiohead Live from Earl's Court" special airs for the first time on November 27, 2003 at 9:00 p.m. ET. and will run through November 30, 2003.

Please check http://www.westwoodone.com for exact dates and times.

4. Fa la la la NOT. The only song you want stuck in your head this holiday is Idioteque. Hear an exclusive live version for a limited time only when you text RADIO to 2250 on your At&T Wireless. More live tracks to come...

http://capitolrecords.com/radiohead
http://www.radiohead.com

Most film score writing demands discipline. You have to use click-tracks, and provide music that makes its point in, say, 20 seconds -- and even leaves spaces for dialogue. This wasn't true with 'Bodysong,' which meant I could let musicians play at tempos that felt right. So I had the luxury of just concentrating on trying to put some kind of mood across.

Not that I'm knocking fanboy obsession. O'Riley's approach to Radiohead's music, does, however, smack of novelty. As he took the stage, dressed in all black, and gently pressed down Airbag in dramatic fashion, it immediately became clear that, without Thom Yorke's voice, these songs could never be as great. O'Riley himself admits to hearing Yorke's voice in his head as he plays. He wisely chooses songs where the vocals are less prominent (he opts out of Pyramid Song, one of the few Radiohead songs written for piano), but the songs suffer nonetheless.

They can still be pretty good, though, and even occasionally moving. Obviously some songs bear O'Riley's treatment better than others, especially Black Star, a highly underappreciated track from 1995's The Bends (as if you didn't know). The intro to Black Star sounds like it was made to be pounded out on the keys. It's also obvious that Radiohead's later work, as a general rule, sounds better on piano, since it's harder for verse-chorus-verse structure to sound as good without vocals. Thinking About You and Fake Plastic Trees seemed simplistic and bare compared to more lush songs like Everything In Its Right Place and True Love Waits, though they may not technically be so. The show was made far more enjoyable by O'Riley's comic asides, during which he discussed meeting Michael Stipe (You don't play No Surprises?!?) and Thom Yorke (You're talking about Gag Order?!?), and his encounter with a Wall Street Journal interviewer who seriously thought that the proceeds from an album called True Love Waits must go to the abstinence movement. O'Riley: The time spent transcribing and recording the songs on the album was my particular contribution to the abstinence movement.

I've just woken up, says Colin Greenwood, groggily. It’s 11am in the Trump International Hotel And Tower in New York, and Radiohead’s bass player is attempting to rouse himself with a mug of coffee. It’s the last week of the band’s mammoth North American tour. They’ve just completed two nights at the giant Madison Square Garden. Now - wheeling in classic Radiohead style from the rock’n’roll ridiculous to the artsy sublime - they are about to appear at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, providing the live soundtrack to an experimental ballet by choreographer Merce Cunningham.

Michael Stipe joined the band on stage in Vancouver, bringing back memories of 1995 and the now legendary tour where The Bends-era Radiohead supported the Monster-period REM.

It was then that Thom Yorke and Stipe forged their strong friendship. Yorke credits Stipe with helping him deal with the near-crippling pressures of fame he endured around the time of The Bends and OK Computer. Stipe also helped the shy Englishman fall back in love with performing.

When we toured with REM I used to watch from the side of the stage, Yorke told me earlier this year. The head space that he went into when he was on the stage wasn’t the guy I knew when he walked off. Reminding himself of those shows, Yorke found himself heading out on the Kid A/Amnesiac tour really up for it again.

Vancouver was great for Thom, recalls Greenwood. He was on stage with REM at the end of their gig, and Peter Buck threw a guitar round his neck for ‘It’s The End Of The World’, so he could thrash out the end. Thom looked about, oh, 14.

When Radiohead burst into British and American living rooms in 1993 with their now infamous ode to alienation, Creep, it was only Jonny Greenwood's frenetic guitar stabs that hinted at the inspired musical legacy of the band that would soon follow. They were two jagged electric spasms of sonic sledge that not only foreshadowed the majesty of the anthemic guitar-drenched chorus to come, but also marvelously served to heighten the emotional content of the song; in this case, the unbearable and mounting anger of the self-defeated and alienated. It was with those two bursts of distorted beauty that Jonny Greenwood scripted himself into the vocabulary of rock, and left his first mark on music history.

It's no shock that Greenwood would become the first member of Radiohead to release solo work. Anyone who's witnessed the band's meticulous career-spanning live show could see that the Jonny Greenwood of 2003 is far more peripatetic than his early 90s counterpart. On stage, Greenwood jeers back and forth, alternating between crouching in front of his varied arsenal of effects (which includes a transistor radio, a vintage patchbay, a laptop, and a number of guitar pedals), to gently lilting in front of his Ondes-Martenot, to heroically pounding notes out of his trademark telecaster. Greenwood is the consummate rock multi-instrumentalist, and the music he has composed for Bodysong perfectly reflects this heterogeneous ambition.

If Radiohead's Hail to the Thief suffered from being too scatterbrained, Greenwood's Bodysong -- composed for the nominal British documentary which details the experience of being human -- strikes a perfect balance, channeling all his diverse influences into a single multifarious recording. The album's opener, Moon Trills, marries pensive and melancholy piano chords reminiscent of Radiohead's Pyramid Song with swarming frenetic string swells, and weepy Ondes-Martenot accompaniment suggestive of the late French composer Olivier Messiaen's Ondes pieces, while Splatter comfortably melds together a frenzied Charles Mingus-inspired bass riff, a DJ Shadow-esque funk break, and Ornette Coleman-styled horn blurts.

Ryan Adams - 32% (936 votes)
Jonny Greenwood - 31% (907 votes)
Bryan Adams - 24% (711 votes)
Ike Turner - 14% (400 votes)

Fri 14
Victoria Rooms, Bristol
0117 917 2300 / 0117 917 2301
www.arnolfini.org.uk

Sat 15
Queen Elizabeth Hall, London
020 7960 4242
www.rfh.org.uk

Sun 16
Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry
02476 524 524
www.warwickartscentre.co.uk

Mon 17
Lakeside Arts Centre
Nottingham
0115 846 7777
www.lakesidearts.co.uk

Tues 18
The Arches
Glasgow
0141 565 1023
www.thearches.co.uk

Jonny provides the instrumental score to the film Bodysong, which will be released in cinemas on December 5. Directed by Simon Pummell, the multi-media project is the story of life using moving images from around the world recorded over the last 100 years.

Despite being a ‘solo’ album, Jonny said that all the members of Radiohead were involved in some way or another. His brother and bandmate Colin also provides bass on one song.

You realise quite quickly how good it is to be in a group, Jonny told NME of recording alone. Thom was suggesting titles for things and everyone in the band had a two CD version and helped me whittle it down to half the length. Colin is a bit like me, he’s not great at taking time off. He came and helped with the programming and played some bass. He really tied it together, helped a lot. I never really felt alone.

Jonny said that although he enjoyed the experience, his heart will always remain with Radiohead. He added: I think I’d only do it again if everyone else wanted to stop. The most important stuff we do is with the band and with Thom. I’ve got no illusions that it’s clear to me that Radiohead’s always going to be at least five times better because there’s five of us. That’s what I spend my time on really.

Fri April 23rd 2004 - Sydney Entertainment Centre, Sydney
Sat April 24rd 2004 - Sydney Entertainment Centre, Sydney
Mon April 26rd 2004 - Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne
Tue April 27rd 2004 - Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne

- Sydney Entertainment Centre (April 24)
- Melbourne Rod Laver Arena (April 27)

We put as much substance in our songs as Coldplay or Radiohead, Laursen says. Substance is a strange word because of course we think that there's substance in our music. Maybe not so much lyrically, but musically our songs work very deeply. It's cool with us if people don't get what we're trying to do, because there are plenty of people who do.

We started out in 1998 because we were tired of the whole Radiohead, Jeff Buckley vibe that was big in Denmark, Laursen says on the phone from a tour stop in North Carolina. We wanted something to turn that around. We were fed up with the whole pseudointellectual blah blah. Instead of these big, wordy soundscapes, we just wanted to create music that cut to the bone.