Radiohead - Rock's Paranoid Androids

Radiohead, from Oxford, were among the leading protagonists of the renewal of British rock between the Nineties and the 2000s. Few bands have managed, as they have, to capture in music the existential unease of the end of the millennium, the alienation of "Generation X", the mood of the new century's "kids". Their songs, crowded with "losers" and "creeps", androids and space junk, are the ideal synthesis of a journey that begins in the post-punk desolation of Smiths and Joy Division and arrives in the cold wastelands of European electronic music.

Their story begins in 1988, when singer Thom Yorke and bassist Colin Greenwood, already playing together in the punk band Tnt, decide to form a new group. They are quickly joined by guitarist Ed O'Brien and drummer Philip Selway, followed by Greenwood's brother Johnny, a violinist and member of the Thames Vale Youth Orchestra. The five choose the name On A Friday, in honour of the day they get together to rehearse, during whatever free moments they can find. All of them except Johnny are, in fact, busy with university studies. Thom Yorke studies English and art at the University of Exeter; Colin Greenwood attends the English literature faculty at Cambridge; Ed O'Brien studies economics at the University of Manchester, and Phil Selway studies English and history at Liverpool Polytechnic.

On 22 July 1991, On A Friday play live in public for the first time, at the Hollybush in Oxford. A few months later, they record their first demo, "Manic Hedgehog", featuring four tracks: "I Can't", "Nothing Touches Me", "Thinking About You" and "Phillipa Chicken". EMI spots their talent and signs them on 21 December 1991. In March 1992, the band decides to change its name to "Radio Head", taken from a Talking Heads song included on the album "True Stories".

The English band's first EP, "The Drill", is nevertheless something of a flop. It seems like an uphill start for the five Oxford students, who also struggle to project an appealing image live. And yet... On 21 September 1992, the single "Creep" is released, the song that, according to Colin Greenwood, "would give us luck, would destroy our lives, and would light up our path". It's a kind of anthem for a generation of losers and outcasts, wrapped in a decadent atmosphere, cut through by abrasive guitar riffs and the singer's desperate falsetto. A worldwide hit that changes Radiohead's life.

Thom Yorke and his bandmates, in fact, are not the classic "one-hit band" that some had already predicted. And they would have plenty of surprises in store for their detractors, constantly catching them off guard. There's not much trace of that, however, on the debut album, Pablo Honey (1993). Recorded in three weeks, the record reaches number twenty-five on the UK charts, but — aside from the aforementioned "Creep" and the long electric charge of "Anyone Can Play Guitar" — it doesn't offer much beyond the average Britpop of the era ("How Do You", "Stop Whispering", "Ripcord").

In '94 comes the EP "My Iron Lung", which anticipates the release of The Bends (1995). The album marks a small step forward, and Radiohead are soon labelled the "new U2". A couple of first-rate singles stand out, such as "High And Dry" and "Fake Plastic Trees", but it's above all the psychedelic appeal of "Planet Telex" and the aching atmosphere of the swooning ballad "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" that raise the record's overall quality. Yorke and co., however, still seem caught between a hard rock tinged with psychedelic moods and an introverted, Smiths-style pop, and above all they don't yet seem able to sustain the album format.

The turning point comes in 1997: OK Computer is released, destined to be counted among the masterpieces of the Nineties. It's a visionary, psychedelic rock album devoted to science fiction. A work featuring melodic songs of great emotional impact ("Karma Police", "Exit Music", "Lucky"), but also an outright anti-commercial single like "Paranoid Android": a seven-minute suite, with an alienated video completely disconnected from the music. Steeped in an underlying melancholy and highly evocative music, an ideal fusion of the noise, electronic and pop-rock currents that had run through the decade, the work of the five lads from Oxford comes across as remarkably direct and touching, striking straight at the listener's heart.

That the music has truly changed is clear from the opening "Airbag", a curious thank-you to new technology ("An airbag saved my life"): a blazing start with a sharp guitar riff that dissolves into Yorke's extraordinary falsetto, the perfect vocal embodiment of the anxieties of millennial man. Then comes "Paranoid Android", a magnificent suite running over six minutes, which the band chose — in keeping with their anti-commercial stance — as the lead single. Through the perfect use of "special" effects accompanying Yorke's desperate pleas ("Please could you stop the noise, I'm trying to get some rest"), Johnny Greenwood's guitar traces a stunning solo, marking the song's progressive but gradual acceleration. Finally, as in the best Pink Floyd, all the melodies traced up to that point are picked back up and hinted at again, for the final explosion.

Still built around the concept of alienation, after a few seconds of respite, "Subterranean Homesick Alien" kicks straight in, its title echoing an old Bob Dylan hit ("Subterranean Homesick Blues"). A sweet, melancholy, arpeggiated melody, with guitars in the background that unmistakably foreshadow what's about to happen. The following track, in fact, is one of the record's finest moments. Starting from a simple, slow, obsessive acoustic guitar chord, "Exit Music (For A Film)" holds within it Yorke's deeply sad melody, as he declaims what amounts to a genuine poem, culminating in the trembling voice of the final line ("we hope that you choke"). One of the most beautiful and saddest songs of the Nineties, revealing Yorke and his bandmates' passion for the desolate sounds of Joy Division.

Through the ethereal "Let Down" we arrive at "Karma Police", perhaps Radiohead's best-known song, the album's second single. It's a classic, catchy melody over which, once again, the chronic depression of the Radiohead aliens is described ("For a minute there I lost myself"). The song helps bring Yorke and co. to a mass audience, driving an album whose songs flow together with truly exceptional cohesion.

"Karma Police" is the dividing line between the album's two halves. Indeed, after the robotic suggestions of "Fitter Happier", a critique of the media-manufactured utopia of the perfect human being, the record's more experimental section opens up. "Electioneering" is the hardest track on the album as well as its only overtly "political" one: Yorke lashes out at the false promises made by election candidates, which are routinely broken once they're in power. Next comes "Climbing Up The Walls", perhaps the weakest song on "OK Computer", a slow, tortured rock track accompanied by Thom Yorke's heavily effected voice. A transitional piece, a prelude to the sweet xylophone melody of "No Surprises", a "spleen"-soaked lullaby that carries further political messages ("Bring down the government, they don't speak for us") and ecological invective.

In the record's closing stretch, Radiohead don't fail to remind us of the hardships afflicting our troubled existence, on "Lucky" and "The Tourist". The former, an ideal continuation of "Exit Music (For A Film)", weaves splendid harmonies over which Yorke's voice, sweet and sad at once, once again proves remarkably expressive. "The Tourist", on the other hand, written by Johnny Greenwood, is the last stop on a fantastic journey through the depths of melancholy, an ideal summa of the whole album.

Poised between the experimentation of Pink Floyd and (early) Genesis and the melodic pop of Bowie and the Smiths, Radiohead forge a compelling formula that launches them into rock's highest ranks. American reviews of OK Computer are glowing. "This album is proof that Radiohead is a band ready to look the devil in the eye," Rolling Stone writes, for instance. Only a handful of detractors will continue to oppose them, accusing them of making music that is purely artificial and formalistic. But success will produce unforeseeable effects on the band.

Twelve minutes into Grant Gee's documentary film "Meeting People Is Easy", which follows Radiohead on tour in the wake of OK Computer, Yorke has the audience sing "Creep" with a sarcastic air, bringing the microphone to his mouth only for the chorus, which goes: “I’m a creep / I’m a weirdo / What the hell am I doing here / I don’t belong here”.

It's ironic how this song, a global hit that the five Oxford men soon grew tired of (Yorke would call it "a good fridge buzz", referencing the first line of "Karma Police") and which to this day they refuse to play, despite still having plenty of fans belting it out whenever they can, captures exactly their unease at the collective adulation surrounding their 1997 album. That unease is echoed in one of the most aching songs on the following record, Kid A, "How To Disappear Completely": “That there/ That’s not me […] / I’m not here/ This isn’t happening”. It's the desperate outpouring of a man (and of a band) watching his own identity crumble, dazed by camera flashes, radio advertisements, and the endless parade of "Best Album of The Year" and "Best Album of All Times" accolades.

In 2000 Naomi Klein publishes "No Logo". A work that profoundly impresses the band, to the point that they seriously consider giving their fourth studio album the same title; and it's no coincidence that the artwork, dominated by red, white and black, closely echoes the cover of the book the New York Times called "the Bible of the anti-globalisation movement".

This fascination almost certainly reinforced the band's irritation - which they never bothered to hide - with the record industry (an irritation that would culminate in a troubled divorce from EMI and the release, via the internet and on a pay-as-you-want basis, of In Rainbows): it's no surprise, then, that the release of Kid A takes on a strongly anti-commercial tone, starting with the decision not to pull any singles from it. And while it can't be said that the illegal spread of the entire album on Napster ahead of its release in stores was orchestrated by Radiohead themselves, one might guess they didn't exactly mind it either.

Despite everything, the album lands (somewhat ironically) at the top of the Billboard chart, driven no doubt by the feverish anticipation for the follow-up to Ok Computer. If that record centered on the alienation of man within contemporary society, on Kid A it's the music itself that seems to enact that alienation: it's a decidedly unapproachable record, frustrating at times for the listener. Many fans of the band find themselves disoriented and discouraged, which explains why Amnesiac, a year later, would fail to replicate that same commercial success.

"Ok Computer" - the band recalls - "was recorded mostly live, after a lot of rehearsals and touring. Kid A was our first attempt to work on the sounds of the songs in the studio. We wanted to get a better grasp of some of the modern means of making music, like sound modules and samplers, fragments of music lifted from pre-existing songs to build new ones from scratch. We were also interested in recreating fresh sounds using old analogue synthesizers and electronic drums. In the end, we still love playing live very much."

Kid A is an album made of musical tracks rather than songs, of fractured, decomposed sonorities. If Radiohead's early anthems (from "Creep" onward) managed to come across as "explosive" in their visceral force, capable - even "figuratively", through Yorke's depressive mask - of giving voice to the rage of the eternal losers and misfits, on Kid A the songs instead seem to almost "implode" in on themselves, until they dissolve entirely. The main reference points are 80s pop, but above all the electronic rock of bands like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream, the interstellar journeys of Pink Floyd, the ambient watercolours of Brian Eno, and the Mitteleuropean expressionism of Berlin-era Bowie. Many will consider it Radiohead's finest work, others simply their most pretentious.

It opens with "Everything In Its Right Place", a keyboard riff marked out by subliminal percussion and a processed voice chasing itself, warping into digital echoes. It's the start of a pitch-black night, set against shattered glass that cuts into the soul and makes it bleed - so better to stay still, to let yourself be lulled by an unsettling lullaby, the title track, which picks up the naïve lesson of Boards Of Canada. Then comes "The National Anthem", a claustrophobia of bass and horns indebted to Charles Mingus, the perfect soundtrack for denouncing the use of fear as an instrumentum regni ("Everyone has got the fear/ It's holding on"). We'd give anything to escape this nightmare, to vanish - and here's the way shown to us: "How To Disappear Completely", indeed. Caresses of acoustic guitar, tiptoeing percussion, Jonny Greenwood on the Ondes Martenot: the coda is a catharsis, the voice turning into an instrument among instruments and drowning in a blast of noise.

The instrumental "Treefingers", an immersion into an underwater world built from Ed O'Brien's electronically manipulated six strings, offers a moment to catch one's breath and closes out the first half of the album; the second half opens with the guitars of "Optimistic", almost a lifebuoy thrown to the survivors of Ok Computer, though discreet electronics and an unreadable bassline are there to shuffle the deck. More guitars follow on "In Limbo", but this time there's nothing to hold onto: shipwreck is inevitable (“I’m lost at sea/ don’t bother me/ I lost my way”).

We're in the home stretch now. "Idioteque" is a verbal hallucination grafted onto dancefloor rhythms, the body losing awareness of itself while the mind is torn apart by slabs of synthesizer. "Morning Bell" is the most divisive chapter, a song of incredible violence that creeps under the skin without ever exploding. The closing act is "Motion Picture Soundtrack", a requiem of ecstatic organ that digs up lyrics dating back even further than Pablo Honey, enriched in its second half by dizzying arpeggios.

The final words are at once a farewell and a promise: "I will see you in the next life". Silence, and finally a deafening whisper, before the heart monitor gently flatlines.

Many have tried to trace a concept in Kid A, a narrative running through the whole tracklist. The most popular reading, suggested by Yorke himself, is that of the "first cloned child": but this is, in truth, a rather forced interpretation, not really backed up by the songs themselves.

The one certainty is the record's deeply "against" nature. Critical of the music business. Hostile to the listener. In many ways allergic to pop melody: rhythm is the engine driving everything, as in the records by Aphex Twin and Autechre that Yorke devoured during the recording sessions. In one interview the frontman even confessed that he would have gladly done without singing at all, but avoided saying as much to his bandmates, who were already struggling enough with the new approach. The making of Kid A was, in fact, a genuine ordeal, and more than once Radiohead came close to splitting up: even the choice of tracklist was fraught, a crucial matter since one of the record's defining traits is precisely its cohesion and organic unity. The songs have to be taken together, and in this order.

As bold as it is uneven, as intriguing as it is unripe, the Kid A project would be refined on the follow-up, Amnesiac, which, despite containing tracks cut during the same recording sessions, represents a considerable leap forward in the same direction: a "digital" experimentation on the Radiohead sound.

Amnesiac is an entirely different matter, starting with how it was rolled out. Before its release, Yorke wrote on the band's message board: "With the next album we'll definitely be doing singles, music videos, photos for glossy magazines and various interesting interviews about my tortured existence."

The album is far more accessible, at least on the surface, than its predecessor, even though the tracks that make it up came out of the same Kid A sessions: it can be seen as a fraternal twin of its predecessor, sharing with it the same openings (or outright flights) towards jazz and electronics. The most marked difference from its "sibling" is the presence of the human element: whereas on Kid A the voice is often distorted or filtered to the point of being nearly indecipherable, here the words are clearly intelligible. And that sense of a rediscovered "physicality" is reinforced too by the pronounced intake of breath that opens "You And Whose Army?", or the sound of fingers sliding across the guitar frets on "Hunting Bears".

In an interview published in Rolling Stone, Yorke states that the album's title relates to the Gnostic belief that "at birth we're forced to forget where we come from so that we can bear the trauma of having arrived in this life." In this sense Amnesiac ties back to Kid A, fulfilling the promise made by "Motion Picture Soundtrack": yet it isn't true amnesia, since there are several points of contact with the past, even on a lyrical level. "Pyramid Song" and "Like Spinning Plates" pick up the river imagery from "How To Disappear Completely", while "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" revisits the trapdoors of "In Limbo".

This time it's a gamelan sample (an orchestra of musical instruments of Indonesian origin) that kicks things off on "Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box", onto which synthesizers and then an autotuned voice are grafted. Next comes the first single, "Pyramid Song": a triumph of syncopated piano underpinning one of Yorke's most visionary lyrics, accompanied by strings and by Phil Selway's drumming, more inflected by jazz than ever before.

"Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors" is a sibling of Kid A, with percussion front and centre and a dehumanised vocal. Which then returns to earth, though still drugged by the fumes of a dream, on "You And Whose Army?", reviving the socially and politically charged vein of "The National Anthem", as does "Dollars & Cents", a denunciation of the wiping-out of all opposition by a power that is no longer political but purely economic, and the closing "Life In A Glass House", which points the finger at today's media-created panopticon and the impossibility of preserving one's own privacy.

The central section of Amnesiac searches for new lifeblood for the song form, upending it with rhythm sections that are anything but straightforward ("Knives Out") and dizzying atmospheres ("I Might Be Wrong", "Dollars & Cents"). The new version of "Morning Bell" abandons the unease of the original and dresses itself in a more melodic, ecstatic calm. "Hunting Bears" is an instrumental that is, in truth, dispensable, while "Like Spinning Plates" unsettles with its psychedelia of reversed sounds. Closing the record is "Life In A Glass House", already sketched out during the tour that followed OK Computer and now dressed in jazz clothing; in the finale the horns come together in an emotional hurricane, and Yorke is deeply moving as he sings as if there were no tomorrow.

You really can't judge Amnesiac as a collection of Kid A leftovers. If the latter is Radiohead's declaration of impatience with what they had become (a creature gone mad, having slipped beyond their own control) and is in some sense the antithesis of Ok Computer, Amnesiac represents the perfect synthesis of the band's various souls, a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Boldly experimental, yet still able to keep alive the immediacy of the band's earliest work, Amnesiac is showered with praise by specialist magazines the world over, earning Radiohead, in many cases, the title of "band of the year".

Buoyed by the authority they had won with international critics thanks to their last three albums, Yorke and co. return to the scene in 2003 with Hail To The Thief, which their fans had been eagerly anticipating online for a good three months before its release. The title refers to the votes George W. Bush allegedly "stole" in the last US presidential election. Yet there is actually little that's political in the album's tracks. Musically, instead, Yorke and company seem above all keen to pick back up the melodic-electronic lesson of Ok Computer.

The opening glitch of "2+2=5" shouldn't fool you, though: electronics aren't shelved altogether, but in most of the tracks it's the instruments of traditional rock that take centre stage, alongside the voice of Thom Yorke, here truly on top form. And, looking closely, the album's weakest tracks are precisely the ones that seem to want to keep an aesthetic tie to the recent past — songs like "The Gloaming" and "Backdrifts", for instance, which don't hold up against the hybrid electronics that defined some of the best work on the previous two records.

Seductive, on the other hand, is the opening triad of "2+2=5", "Sit Down, Stand Up", and the liquid, rarefied "Sail To The Moon": nervy jolts, frustrated and denied outbursts, biting bitterness in the lyrics, and an endless melancholy drowned in the balanced grace of the guitar arpeggios and Yorke's voice, ever more clearly the band's leader. This ability to alternate different tensions proves invaluable: standout emotional climaxes include the single "There There", "A Wolf At The Door" — whose melancholic music-box sound seems to have stepped straight out of Ok Computer — or the pained gospel of "We Suck Young Blood" and "I Will", and again when they even allow themselves the game of making a copy of 90s U2 better than the original, with the futuristic-flavoured rock of "Where I End And You Begin".

In 2006 Thom Yorke makes his solo debut with The Eraser.

Opening the record is the title track. A sweet melodic line, a soft voice in a state of grace, a central piano motif resting on electronic beats. The song, a beautiful one, expresses a distinct personality with its almost singer-songwriter cut. What follows, "Analyse", with its music-box-like loop, grazes rather obviously on the mother group's territory. The cut is ethereal and the piano is still the protagonist — still, thankfully, for the better. "The Clock" continues to cite the same roots, but using different brushes: the mood turns more introverted, closed-off, the singing plaintive. The track wanders without reaching a destination, evoking rather than stating, ending up mostly as a transitional moment. The wait, however, is repaid by "Black Swan", which goes back to treading the path of emancipation and on top of that lands the best electronic groove on the whole record, accompanying it with delicate guitar arpeggios. The structure, though, is the same as in the other tracks (and it always will be): these are songs, songs by a pop-rock musician who, partway through his journey, became fixated on electronics, toying with beats and loops and setting them as a backdrop.

The central pair drops slightly in quality, while still being pleasant and atmospheric, with "Skip Divided", hypnotic and slyly aggressive, and "Atoms For Peace" raising a celestial vocal over joyful bounces. "And It Rained All Night", with its rhythmic growls, and "Harrowdown Hill", a lovely melody, combine emotion and coldness, with the synths (more electro-ambient than cosmic) taking up ever more space as the minutes go by, the result of a production and sound-crafting job that is simply flawless, and which comes close to closing the gap with the songwriting of the album's opening tracks.

The record closes with "Cymbal Rush", a melody that starts off sly and drowsy, with no particular virtues on display, and which surprisingly builds into a crescendo, accompanied by the piano, sketching out one of the album's finest melodic openings.

Yorke's solo debut confirms the importance of its author within Radiohead's great transformation, and reveals further facets of him.

A year later, the twist. Radiohead promote their new record online, tossing the ball to internet users over the thorniest question in modern music: how much should music cost today? Answer: it's up to you. Whether down to fame or to overblown expectations, In Rainbows seemed destined to be remembered more for its peculiar "name your price" distribution model than for its musical content. Fortunately, that's not the case.

Radiohead now devote themselves to writing songs, in the true sense of the word, with one extra detail: lots of arrangements and very careful production. Songs that can be either exquisitely pop ("Faust Arp") or steeped in the rock guitars that filled the band's early records (the already-mentioned "Bodysnatchers", this writer's least favourite track on the album), but always with that extra pinch of ginger — the maturity that gives Yorke and company the knowledge of when to place the right sonic detail in the right spot. The adjective that best defines the record is "soft". Almost every track contains a clear musical "break": decidedly striking in the case of the opening "15 Step", reflective in the one that accompanies "Reckoner". Drummer Phil Selway reclaims an important role (the closing "Videotape" is his moment of vindication), pushing the electronics behind the curtain and relegating them to a secondary detail in relation to the substance of the sound, which grows ever more emotional and delicate.

At least three songs are gorgeous: "Nude", "All I Need" and "House Of Cards". Yorke, who knows a thing or two, places them skilfully throughout the tracklist, and above all sings them divinely. The third is worth a special mention, a romantic bossa nova recorded lo-fi with a reggae guitar. It is the off-note yet brilliant moment, this album's own "Life In A Glasshouse". Along with the drums' return to the fore, it is precisely Thom Yorke's voice that is the extra card up the sleeve of this modest collection of mp3s. The frontman finally abandons any pretence of showing off, making the most of his distinctive voice, that is, without overdoing it, without chasing the highest octave at all costs.

In Rainbows is perhaps the English quintet's least immediate record, even more so than the obsessive, electronic Kid A. And it is, if you like, the album of this band's definitive maturity, one that will add little for those who loved Ok Computer or the touching moments of Amnesiac, but shows that Radiohead are still here, that their music still offers plenty of intimate inspiration, "Nude" above all.

Complicated, desolate and rich in sound, Radiohead's music still manages, at times, to be dazzlingly beautiful.

Following the same promotional pattern as the previous album, in 2011 Radiohead once again announce a new record in extremis. Word had already been going around that the follow-up to In Rainbows would have an orchestral feel. And, listening closely, perhaps the rumors were onto something, albeit from a different angle — referring, that is, to a notion of orchestration tied to new musical directions.

The quintet, on their eighth album, take a path that is neither obvious nor banal, enriching their discography with a work that is once again different from what came before. It's not a pop record, it's not electronic, it's not rock. So what is The King Of Limbs? It's a bit of everything, a mix in which the ever-present Radiohead can still be traced, albeit within a play of shadows that makes this perhaps the most mysterious and hardest-to-pin-down record of their history.

Little remains of the previous album's pop beauty; here they take more risks. The sound is more compact and monolithic than ever, yet never lacking in variations on the theme from one track to the next. A perfect crossing of Kid A's coldness and Amnesiac's languid trails, The King Of Limbs offers a kind of revisiting of that early-decade one-two punch. An unmistakable style, in which electronic frameworks peek through on one side (file under: Four Tet) and deeply personal, softened dubstep inflections on the other (file under: Flying Lotus).

The opening march "Bloom" perfectly encapsulates the album's meaning: poised between jagged rhythmic lines, a surface-level coldness, and openings reminiscent of the Björk of "Debut" and "Homogenic". Yorke's sinuous vocals, as ever, act as a counterweight to the structure, creating a perfect blend of warmth and detachment.

And while the frantic pace of "Morning Mr. Magpie" sounds like it could be an outtake from The Eraser, the opening moments of "Little By Little" speak the language of Portishead, with the vocals turning mournful and strangled. "Feral", more than any other track, brings Kid A to mind, amid frenzied rhythmic fragments, sudden stops and ensuing accelerations, in a motion not far removed from the liveliest Four Tet.

The single "Lotus Flower", built on a tight beat, organ and gorgeous vocal lines (which warm up in the "chorus"), marks the album's turning point. From here it's a descent into the sweetest honey. "Codex" is a piece for piano, distant echoes and a sense of warmth and embrace that borders on perfection; "Give Up The Ghost" is an enchanting lament for horns and layered vocals, locked together in a deliciously celestial weave. The closing "Separator" recalls the muffled gait of "House Of Cards", with a faintly psychedelic crescendo, sealing a record that is short — thirty-seven minutes — but extremely dense, perhaps the most introspective, difficult and granite-hard of the band's career.

Following the release of The King Of Limbs, a series of remixes followed, entrusted to some of the hottest names in international club culture.

Nineteen alternate versions were collected in October 2011 on TKOL RMX 1234567, a double album that definitively legitimized Radiohead in the best à-la page clubs.

The record's launch took place via a worldwide streaming dj set with Yorke himself behind the decks, from the Boiler Room, something between an underground London club and a web radio station. Alongside Thom at the console were Jamie XX, Caribou, Lone and Illum Sphere: an ultra-trendy invite-only night, but anyone left without the precious invitation, or on the opposite side of the globe, could follow the event comfortably via streaming from home.

Caribou adds an unexpected harp loop to "Little By Little", teleporting it to the beach at Café del Mar, while Four Tet leaves the atmosphere of "Separator" intact, avoiding overloading it with bass and kicks: these are two of the project's finest moments.

Jacques Greene drags "Lotus Flower" into two-step territory, Blawan turns "Bloom" (the most remixed track, with no fewer than five reworkings) into a techno hammer, while Jamie XX gives it an industrial-ambient bed, and Lone carries "Feral" back to a rave of two decades ago, partly retaining the original percussion.

Pearson Sound completely rewrites "Morning Mr Magpie", starting from a long ambient drone and landing on structures halfway between Detroit techno and jungle breaks; Nathan Fake instead cuts it an electro shoegaze suit, Thriller Houseghost plays on repetition to give "Give Up The Ghost" an almost psychedelic effect, and Illum Sphere has the nerve to tackle "Codex", transmuting it into a midtempo track while preserving its melancholy core.

Just as Radiohead, from Kid A onward, embarked on a process of breaking down and rebuilding the matter of music according to their own Picasso-like vision, these nineteen remixes break down Radiohead's very soul, dissecting it and reconstructing it through someone else's vision. A one-way journey into the English quintet's DNA.

Yorke's second solo album arrives eight years after The Eraser and is titled Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes (2014). A work that presents us with a Yorke torn between the will to return to the intimate songwriting of the best Radiohead-style classics and the urge to pursue the path of electronic depersonalization – alluring but also risky, as partly proven by the recent debut released under the name Atoms For Peace.

So, the eight songs split evenly between these two tendencies: but while the vocals remain a consistently excellent constant, the backing tracks don't always live up to them: the hypertrophic synth of “A Brain In A Bottle” certainly doesn't match the dark evocativeness of the four piano chords in “Guess Again!”, which, if they didn't call to mind an uptempo “Pyramid Song”, could be mistaken for something out of a Reznor/Ross soundtrack; a similarly winning pairing recurs on “Interference”, which despite its brevity as an interlude boasts one of the best lyrics on the album (“We stare into each other’s eyes/ Like jackdaws, like ravens/ The ground may open up and swallow us/ In an instant/ But I don’t have the right/ To interfere”).

Much of the record's sonic trademark is owed to the programming contribution of Colin Greenwood, one of the two brothers who are longtime members of Radiohead: his imprint becomes more recognizable in the digital feedback of “Truth Ray” and in the closing track, while on the lengthy “There Is No Ice (For My Drink)” Yorke plays freestyle with manipulations of his voice, pushing forward an aseptic beat in an almost self-indulgent way; its echo drags and distorts over the comforting instrumental “Pink Section”, which finally flows into the chromatic pulses of “Nose Grows Some”, an obvious return to the by-now-deserted idioteque of Kid A.

Yorke's second solo outing certainly doesn't boast the technicolor of his Radiohead exploits, but nor does it suffer from the soulless proficiency of “Amok”. A more ambient-minded listen might lend the right mood to Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes, which nonetheless reveals a few gaps in inspiration and a suspiciously slight overall running time.

Five years on, after months of speculation and theories that monopolized debates and chatter all over the web, Radiohead release their ninth LP, A Moon Shaped Pool. First the claymation video for “Burn The Witch”, then the existentialist one for “Daydreaming”, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, immediately followed by the announcement of A Moon Shaped Pool, released just two days later. Yet another release nailed in its timing and execution, as shown by the huge resonance the video and album are having. Mere marketing facts, as well as blind, excessive hype, obviously shouldn't obscure the pure musical substance. So, what kind of band does A Moon Shaped Pool bring back to us?

A band that has probably understood the limits of a formula that was starting to wear thin and, setting aside certain electronic tendencies that had by now grown stale, reveals its more human, intimate side. Not that introspection and melancholy weren't already essential traits of their music, which indeed in many moments has captured the depressed, shadowy spleen of the new technological era. But where in masterpieces like Ok Computer and Kid A these feelings carried a universal message, on A Moon Shaped Pool, more than ever before, Yorke's private sphere takes center stage, with the personal drama of his recent separation from his lifelong partner, Rachel Owen. It is partly a return to the atmospheres of In Rainbows, but without its vivid palette of colors, replaced here by an existential greyness that many might mistake for monotony.

In reality, within the folds of a work that at first glance seems monotone, a strange and ineffable atmosphere comes to life. These eleven songs, many of which were already familiar in live form, sit on that hazy border where melancholy and nostalgia become feelings close to serenity. It's hard to say what's guiding Yorke's restless spirit – resignation or hope, or rather a calm acceptance of the futility of chasing unreachable dreams and ambitions. In the video for “Daydreaming”, the singer wanders anxious and lost through various buildings, scattered across a labyrinthine, impenetrable network, until he finally makes direct contact with nature, where emotions still flow uncontaminated by everyday life. And while the reversed strings follow Thom's wavering whisper, painting dark and mysterious scenes, all the accumulated tension explodes, before fading into a muted ending that almost feels like a farewell and a surrender. It's a track that highlights the ability to craft near-cinematic climaxes that Greenwood has honed, partly thanks to his recent collaboration with Anderson himself.

After all, strings and orchestration play a vital role throughout the entire record. The single “Burn The Witch”, an invective against an oppressive system reminiscent of the political engagement of Hail To The Thief, piles tension upon tension through relentless, explosive strings, the perfect counterpoint to Yorke's floating voice.

Elsewhere, it's angelic choirs that elevate the songs' lyricism, like the one that bursts in the middle of the rock-leaning “Identikit”, or the one that lends “Decks Dark”, close to trip-hop, an aura of mysterious charm. In the background, the piano is ever-present, crystalline and torrential, which together with the acoustic guitar textures and a subtle rhythmic fabric paints ethereal, elusive landscapes, at times distinctly folk (in certain passages echoes of Nick Drake and Tim Buckley emerge), as shown by “Desert Island Disk” and “Glass Eyes”. “Glass Eyes” in particular deserves a special mention: something of a “Faust Arp” for this record, it's the classic track that on a quick listen seems like mere filler, only to reveal new nuances on every subsequent listen. This effect is probably due to the symbiosis of a few but decisive elements: first and foremost, the poetic, introspective lyrics, which find Yorke, having just stepped off a train, alienated amid a silent, indifferent crowd; the strings add further depth, here more moving than ever, which toward the end, amid barely sketched cello notes, almost bring back to life the catharsis of “Motion Picture Soundtrack”, made even more intimate and personal.

For those who claim this record lacks melodies, the best counterexample is certainly “Present Tense”, already known to fans since 2009, and which rightfully ranks among the most beautiful melodies Radiohead have ever painted, with its irresistible bossanova sway. Psychedelia also pops up in several moments, whether kraut-rock-tinged as in the galloping “Ful Stop”, or light and languid, as in “The Numbers”, a sort of anti-climate-change anthem. Careful use of effects, together with basslines that trace hypnotic grooves, combine to create a climate of ecstatic suspension in which to lose oneself. Nothing, however, compares to the candor and grace of “True Love Waits”. A track known for over 20 years, already included on the 2001 live album “I Might Be Wrong”, it's stripped here of its acoustic arrangement and adorned with a bare, spectral piano, reminiscent of the one that opened Kid A on “Everything In Its Right Place”. If the famous acoustic version brought out cries of desperation, here resignation reigns supreme, guiding Yorke's broken voice along a forlorn melody that ideally closes a circle opened long ago.

A Moon Shaped Pool is a most welcome return from a band that seemed to have lost its way, but that has rediscovered the inspiration and the ability to move listeners like it hadn't in almost ten years. It's a masterstroke full of experience, and at times mannerism. But thank goodness, Radiohead being Radiohead is still a truly great thing to hear.

Alongside the triumphant tour in support of “A Moon Shaped Pool”, in late June 2017, to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of OK Computer, the Oxford quintet released OK Computer OKNOTOK 1997-2017, a deluxe edition enriched with a bonus CD featuring all the b-sides from singles and EPs released at the time, plus three brand-new tracks (re-recorded for the occasion, some already familiar to fans), which give the box that air of a definitive statement, leaving one stunned at the thought of what Radiohead back then could afford to leave off the tracklist. Beyond the presence of “I Promise”, the astonishing “Man Of War” and “Lift”, special mention must go to the remastering work applied to all previously released tracks, starting from the original analog tapes. The whole thing is available in digital format, double CD, triple vinyl, and – to the delight of collectors – in a sumptuous box set purchasable only online containing – besides the triple vinyl – a hardcover book with thirty artworks and the lyrics, a 104-page notebook with Thom Yorke's notes from the time and – believe it or not – a C90 cassette tape containing excerpts from the recording sessions and some demo tapes (but if you don't own a tape player, a download code is included). For 100 pounds, you get to take home the definitive version of OK Computer.

Without selling as much as britpop bestsellers (a genre to which Radiohead were too carelessly linked in their early days), the influence of OK Computer on the music of the following years has been immense, and for many this remains the English band's finest record ever, the one with which they broke free of any commercial leanings to become something different and unique, later proving they could keep reinventing themselves, perfectly capturing the spirit of their times, without fear of dropping the occasional match point along the way. Paying tribute to it is practically an obligation, as twelve Italian artists have done (including Marlene Kuntz, Benvegnù and Nada, hardly newcomers…) who covered the entire original tracklist on the tribute album KO Computer, made available as a free download. A fitting tribute to a record to be kept jealously on the special shelf of the greatest and most important albums, those that in some way helped shape each of our musical educations.

The operation of digging up the past continues in autumn 2021 with KID A MNESIA. By merging “Kid A” and “Amnesiac” together with a third album of pseudo-unreleased material, “Kid Amnesiae”, the English band Radiohead carries out a kind of hermeneutics of their own discography: a critical operation more than a musical one.

Released respectively in 2001 and 2002, the two records become not only an integral part of contemporary music history, but also a symbol. The symbol of a new way of being a rock band, without emphasis, “no alarms & no surprises”, without posturing, without putting on too much of a show, because after all, if the world is inevitably collapsing, what's the point of rebelling? One might then wonder, so what's the point of making music? It serves to exist, but in a bunker, disappearing completely, stubbornly, denying oneself the outside world. It serves to enter a metaphysical dimension, where sound becomes sensation, echo, reverberation, where words are reduced to a minimum. In this elsewhere, the mysterious KID A lives in the shadows of his own bed, ghost horses are ridden, one lives as if in a glass house and stands packed like sardines in a tin. Yorke uses autotune, his voice becomes a machine, less and less paranoid and more and more android: the transformation has taken place. The work on the sound is just as conceptual in nature, requiring erosion, softening, the building of sonic carpets in tune with the Zeitgeist of the turn of the millennium.

The third disc of the collection is probably dedicated for the most part to this purpose. From the reprise of “Like Spinning Plates/ Why us”, which sounds like a reiteration of the concept, in case it wasn't already clear, amid melancholy keyboards and solemn strings: “I’m living in cloud cuckoo land/ And this just feels like spinning plates/ My body is floating down the muddy river”. The sound becomes an object floating in space, the voice grows ever more ingloriously mournful, while in the three “Untitled” tracks it is, conversely, the indecipherability of the sounds that comes through on listening. This brings us to the album's most noteworthy tracks, among the first of which is the lead single “If You Say The Word”, a Radiohead-esque ballad that, between Ondes Martenot (a Jonny Greenwood classic, admirer of Messiaen as he is) and its imagery recalling Black Mirror, could be read as an appeal from Yorke to the listener.

We find the same desolation in “Fog”, where the sound's evanescence blends with the dark hermeticism of the lyrics, before ending with an unsettling distortion of a voice recording: “Good night, everybody, thank you”. The mash-up between “Pulk/Pull” and “True Love Waits” conveys very well the idea of a love song shredded by the drum machine, while “Pyramid Strings” and “How To Disappear into strings” are nothing less than the soundtrack to a dystopian film. Pleasantly surprising is “Follow Me Around”, a track composed in 1998 whose video, dated 1/11/2021, features actor Guy Pearce being chased by a drone. With the third disc, a listening experience comes to a close — a gift that comes from the past but speaks to the present and the hazy future.

After various solo efforts from Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood, 2022 saw the release of the side project The Smile, which also involves Tom Skinner, drummer of Sons of Kemet.

The project was born first and foremost in the rehearsal room, out of Yorke and Jonny Greenwood's desire to play together and experiment during the months of stasis at the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. Skinner joined them, and soon proved to be the variable capable of unsettling and making less predictable, with his afrobeat and kraut grooves, the rhythmic-harmonic trajectories of the two Radiohead members. The supergroup had already won us over with its first livestreamed concerts, giving us a hint of a peculiar blend of post-punk, math-rock and progressive.

Among the most successful moments on A Light For Attracting Attention are those in which harmony and melody achieve an extreme, remarkable synthesis that climbs atop the drummer's groove, sprouting voices (“The Opposite”), horns (“The Smoke”), sonic explosions (“You Will Never Work In Television Again”) and intensifications (“Thin Thing”) — spaces where Yorke's voice settles almost naturally into a spare structure that surprisingly blossoms, even in unexpected moments, with rich arrangements. The feelings of anxiety and lucid, shared awareness of the present and future that the Oxford songwriter's lyrics enclose in a “we” are strongly felt, expressed directly:

There are undoubtedly similarities, or at least threads picked up from previous Radiohead output, but A Light For Attracting Attention sounds above all like an attempt to reconcile two visions that had developed independently over time: Yorke's electro pop-rock songwriting on one side, and Greenwood's modern classical music on the other, never before so clearly defined and separate from each other. Even just within a shared field of action like film music, the two musicians have expressed their personal poetics clearly and distinctly — Yorke in the remake of “Suspiria” (XL, 2018) by Luca Guadagnino, and Greenwood above all in the recent Lady Diana biopic by Pablo Larrain, “Spencer” (Mercury, 2022). Skinner, in all this, acts as a mediator, managing only partially to leave a significant mark, his contribution ultimately proving cautious.

That Smile were not just another side project but an entity in their own right, deliberately detached from the parent band and built to last, was evident from the very first singles released. Although Yorke and Greenwood's compositional approach — and, even more so, the voice — made it impossible to forget the Radiohead legacy, it was precisely thanks to the third ingredient in the recipe, Tom Skinner's nu-jazz drumming, that The Smile found their own uniqueness, built on polyrhythms, intense dynamics and jagged guitar phrasing.

Released in 2022, and not without fine moments, the trio's debut album nonetheless revealed a structural problem: the three musicians' enormous rapport with that unmistakably impactful sound, capable of labyrinthine, hypnotic live performances, failed to translate into equally successful songs. The album's tracks often seemed built around interesting ideas that struggled to develop in an equally compelling way within song form — the format the group had chosen to privilege — ending up as little more than sketches.

There are two pieces of news, one good and one decidedly less so. The good one is that the band seems to have solved the writing problems present on their debut, finding a balance between the pull toward experimentation — dominant in Greenwood's film-score compositions especially — and the equilibrium of all the ingredients that make up a pop-rock song. The album's eight tracks are indeed fully realised songs with intriguing developments, as well as being refined and emotionally impactful. The less good news is that, in order to achieve this result, the trio has become more predictable and has eased off too much, effectively sidelining Skinner's role, a fundamental element of their sonic blend, and thereby partly betraying the uniqueness of The Smile project.

The album's opening offers reason for hope, suggesting that the drummer has had the chance to shape the band's compositions, alongside the jagged guitars (“Wall Of Eyes”, “Teleharmonic”) at times seduced by prog digressions (“Read The Room” and “Under The Pillows”); but set these tracks aside, which are all too cerebral, and the album seems to progressively flatten out, turning into a parade of classic Radiohead-style ballads that evoke various eras of the Oxford band. Emblematic is the case of “Friend Of a Friend”, which, despite a lively section somewhat reminiscent of Fiona Apple and Jon Brion, sounds like an outtake from “Amnesiac” (Emi, 2001). One might think this wouldn't in itself be much of a problem, if it weren't for the fact that over twenty years have passed, that this is a different band, and that one would expect something different from the input of a new member in a trio. So?

We ask ourselves this question with the closing notes of what we consider the most successful track on Wall Of Eyes still ringing — “Bending Hectic”, a gorgeous ballad that embodies all the attitudes and possibilities of the meeting of these three musicians, sublimely balancing the forces that constantly drive them toward, or away from, equilibrium, finding both emotion and bite: a finely crafted, pulsating track with a rich dynamic that leads into the unexpected too. This, it seems to us, defines The Smile — even compared to their live shows — more than anything else on the record.

In 2025 Thom Yorke worked on a new adaptation of William Shakespeare's Hamlet, a theatrical production by the Royal Shakespeare Company. For this project, the Radiohead singer reworked and orchestrated a “deconstructed score” based on the songs of Hail To The Thief for a cast of twenty musicians and actors. The final result was staged in England in the spring under the title “Hamlet / Hail To The Thief”. During the process, Yorke listened back to many live recordings from that era, struck by the energy they gave off. From this came the idea of releasing Hail To The Thief (Live Recordings 2003-2009), containing, in the same sequence as the studio version, twelve of the fourteen total tracks (“Backdrifts” and “A Punchup At A Wedding” are missing) from the Oxford band's most overtly political album.

Committed onstage to faithfully replicating the arrangements worked out for the studio versions, Radiohead pair their perfectionist tendencies with an even more intense electricity, as happens on the closing section of “Go To Sleep”, made even more sonic by a Jonny Greenwood chasing feedback and dissonance over Phil Selway's drumming, or in the emotional involvement of “Wolf At The Door”. It's interesting to observe both the audience's participation (as they clap along rhythmically to the evolution of “We Suck Young Blood”, or sing the anthem “There, There” in unison) and Thom Yorke's choices — for instance on “I Will”, where he opts to sing the falsetto part rather than the more baritone one. Hail To Thief (Live Recordings 2003-2009) brings together recordings gathered over the course of the 2000s, from concerts held in London, Amsterdam, Buenos Aires and Dublin, and has the merit of helping restore Hail To The Thief to its rightful place among the most illuminating albums of the new millennium.

Contributions by Paolo Sforza (“Hail To The Thief”), Ciro Frattini (“The Eraser”), Alberto Asquini (“The King Of Limbs”) and Claudio Lancia (“TKOL RMX 1234567”, “OK Computer OKNOTOK 1997-2017”, “Hail To The Thief: Live Recordings 2003-2009”), Michele Palozzo (“Tomorrow's Modern Boxes”), Angela Bozzaotra (“KID A MNESIA”), Maria Teresa Soldani (The Smile “A Light For Attracting Attention”) with Michele Corrado (“Wall Of Eyes”)

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