Radiohead announce surprise release of new album âthree weeks agoâ
Hot on the heels of surprise new albums from U2 and Beyonce, the music world has again been rocked by news that Radiohead had released their tenth album online three weeks ago. Postmortemism came out to coincide with the thirteenth anniversary of 9/11 and was deleted the following day, before anyone could become aware of its existence. Lead singer Thom Yorke explained that the band were sick of âprostituting themselvesâ by bothering to tell people when they issued new music. Instead, the band flagged up the albumâs release by posting a series of cryptic five second animations on their website of aardvarks flossing their teeth. A luxury CD edition in a hand-chiselled sustainable-walnut digipack was also released, but was pulped after failing to sell a single copy. Both were available via a special Postmortemism web page âsomewhere on the internetâ for a full five or six hours, before the band âgave up hope of ever selling a copyâ and pulled the project. NME has hailed the release as âprobably a return to formâ, going on to praise the âplethora of esoteric musical and socio-political influences that are almost undoubtedly on display.â The band say they had no plans to tour the album, having already played a series of âlow keyâ dates in abandoned warehouses, farm buildings and disused Cornish tin mines. The tour was aborted after four dates when a passing janitor accidentally wandered into one show and witnessed a full thirty seconds of the groupâs performance. The band immediately declared the performance âartistically null and voidâ by the presence of an audience member and walked off stage.