Tuesday 11 August 2009

Radiohead’s death knell for the humble album

Radiohead chief warbler Thom Yorke has claimed that his band are no longer interested in releasing albums, signalling a potential knock for the format that it may struggle to recover from.

The world was on the edge of its seat waiting to see how Radiohead would next release music after the revolutionary genius distribution model of In Rainbows, and fans were given a sneak preview last week when the band released a tribute to Harry Patch, the last remaining survivor from World War I, who died recently.

The track was previewed online and then made available for download for £1 with all proceeds going to charity. And that seems to be the way the band will go about releasing new material from now on.

Yorke told Believer magazine: “None of us want to go into that creative hoo-ha of a long-play record again. Not straight off … It worked with In Rainbows because we had a real fixed idea about where we were going. But we’ve all said that we can’t possibly dive into that again. It’ll kill us.”

A tad melodramatic perhaps, and we retain an air of scepticism as Yorke has threatened to give up making albums before, but if the band follow through with this threat, the implications could be huge.

This article was written for The Music Magazine.

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