Radiohead announces KID A MNESIA, a multiple format triple-album release marking the 21st anniversary of Kid A and Amnesiac, out via XL Recordings.

KID A MNESIA collects Radiohead’s fourth and fifth albums alongside the debut of a newly compiled third disc titled Kid Amnesiae. Exclusive to this release, Kid Amnesiae is comprised of unearthed material culled from the Kid A / Amnesiac sessions. Along with alternate versions and elements of Kid A and Amnesiac album tracks and B-Sides, Kid Amnesiae features the never-before-heard "If You Say the Word” and a previously unreleased studio recording of "Follow Me Around." 

TRACK LISTING

Vinyl Tracklisting:
Kid A:
Side A:
1. Everything In Its Right Place
2. Kid A
3. The National Anthem
4. How To Disappear Completely
5. Treefingers
Side B:
1. Optimistic
2. In Limbo
3. Idioteque
4. Morning Bell
5. Motion Picture Soundtrack

Amnesiac:
Side C:
1. Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box
2. Pyramid Song
3. Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors
4. You And Whose Army?
5. I Might Be Wrong
Side D:
1. Knives Out
2. Morning Bell/Amnesiac
3. Dollars And Cents
4. Hunting Bears
5. Like Spinning Plates
6. Life In A Glasshouse

Kid Amnesiae:
Side E:
1. Like Spinning Plates (‘Why Us?’ Version)
2. Untitled V1
3. Fog (Again Again Version)
4. If You Say The Word
5. Follow Me Around
Side F:
1. Pulk/Pull (True Love Waits Version)
2. Untitled V2
3. The Morning Bell (In The Dark Version)
4. Pyramid Strings
5. Alt. Fast Track
6. Untitled V3
7. How To Disappear Into Strings

CD Tracklisting:
CD1 Kid A:
1. Everything In Its Right Place
2. Kid A
3. The National Anthem
4. How To Disappear Completely
5. Treefingers
6. Optimistic
7. In Limbo
8. Idioteque
9. Morning Bell
10. Motion Picture Soundtrack

CD2 Amnesiac:
1. Packt Like Sardines In A Crushd Tin Box
2. Pyramid Song
3. Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors
4. You And Whose Army?
5. I Might Be Wrong
6. Knives Out
7. Morning Bell/Amnesiac
8. Dollars And Cents
9. Hunting Bears
10. Like Spinning Plates
11. Life In A Glasshouse

CD3 Kid Amnesiae:
1. Like Spinning Plates (‘Why Us?’ Version)
2. Untitled V1
3. Fog (Again Again Version)
4. If You Say The Word
5. Follow Me Around
6. Pulk/Pull (True Love Waits Version)
7. Untitled V2
8. The Morning Bell (In The Dark Version)
9. Pyramid Strings
10. Alt. Fast Track
11. Untitled V3
12. How To Disappear Into Strings 

Rescued from defunct formats, prised from dark cupboards and brought to light after two decades in cold storage… OKNOTOK will be issued on June 23rd through XL Recordings, coinciding (roughly) with the original 1997 release date(s) of Radiohead’s landmark third album OK COMPUTER.

OKNOTOK features the original OK COMPUTER twelve track album, eight B-sides, and the Radiohead completist’s dream: “I Promise,” “Lift,” and “Man Of War.” The original studio recordings of these three previously unreleased and long sought after OK COMPUTER era tracks finally receive their first official issue on OKNOTOK.

All material on OKNOTOK is newly remastered from the original analogue tapes.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: I can't think of anyone that wasn't floored by Radiohead's transformation from grungy gloom mongers to the indie/electronic greats they have become today, and this was the turning point. Liberally spread with their trademark morosity but with an unheard technical ability, ‘OK Computer’ was a stinging criticism of modernity delivered via a new sonic language. Now, twenty years after its landmark release, the band revisits this masterpiece with the definitive version. Alongside the original twelve track LP we’re treated to eight B-sides and a trio of previously unreleased tracks from the same era. This isn’t just an LP, it’s a historical document.

Released in 1993, Pablo Honey is the debut studio album from Radiohead. Produced by Sean Slade and Paul Kolderie, the album was recorded at Chipping Norton Recording Studios and Courtyard Studio, Oxfordshire. The album features the singles, "Anyone Can Play Guitar", "Stop Whispering", and "Creep". - The standout single "Creep" was the international hit that helped propel Radiohead and Pablo Honey to popular acclaim. Released several months before the album itself, "Creep" went on to define the band's early career. Also included on Pablo Honey are ethereal rocker "You", fan favorite "Thinking About You", and "Blow Out", all of which point to the band's future sonic manipulations.

TRACK LISTING

1. You
2. Creep
3. How Do You?
4. Stop Whispering
5. Thinking About You
6. Anyone Can Play Guitar
7. Ripcord
8. Vegetable
9. Prove Yourself
10. I Can't
11. Lurgee
12. Blow Out

Radiohead's ninth LP proper sees them once again couple with mega-producer Nigel Godrich. Together they have created possibly the band's most coherent record of their whole career.  Some of these songs date well back in time and that coupled with the accessibility of comeback single Burn The Witch and their recent  dare-I-say fan-pleasing set-lists suggest a group finally comfortable in their own skin, embracing all that they really are.  So you do still get electronica, but less of the fractured kind. Sure, Thom still sings of alienation, doubt and paranoia, but  in the most beautiful way imaginable. These songs  build and build, swept into shape by Johnny Greenwood's London Contemporary Orchestra strings, peppered with psych-folk and even dub reggae vibes. It's heavy, (let's face it) depressive, but eminently listenable. One for diehards, but crucially, the casual listeners too. 

STAFF COMMENTS

Andy says: These songs build and build, swept into shape by Johnny Greenwood's London Contemporary Orchestra strings, peppered with psych-folk and even dub reggae vibes. It's heavy, (let's face it) depressive, but eminently listenable. One for diehards, but crucially, the casual listeners too. One of the last bands standing that truly matter to their people. They just don't disappoint!

TRACK LISTING

Burn The Witch
Daydreaming
Decks Dark
Desert Island Disk
Ful Stop
Glass Eyes
Identikit
The Numbers
Present Tense
Tinker Tailor Soldier Sailor Rich Man Poor Man Beggar Man Thief
True Love Waits

"Fans of Radiohead's 1993 single "Creep" basically divided into two camps: those who loved it as a dynamic slice of self-loathing rock & roll, and those who just enjoyed the skrakunk-skrakunk guitar distortion before every chorus. On their later albums, Radiohead would throw their lot in with the skrakunk-skrakunk crowd, pushing the boundaries of sonic experimentation. But for one record, they demonstrated how good they could be when they stuck to guitar rock. Singer Thom Yorke explored the expressive power of moaning, while guitarist Jonny Greenwood proved equally gifted with restrained strumming and electric flare-gun solos. When critics describe bands such as Coldplay as sounding like Radiohead, they usually mean that they sound like Radiohead's brilliant second album.

The title of The Bends refers to decompression sickness, when deep-sea divers come up too quickly — a comment on the band's sudden fame. The lyrics are filled with Yorke's unhappiness rendered as health metaphors: He makes himself a cripple who can't climb the stairs in "Bones," and with "My Iron Lung," he immobilizes himself even more completely and complains, "This is our new song/Just like the last one/A total waste of time."

The record is filled with lovely ballads, full of longing, jealousy and critiques of consumer culture. But the best is the last: "Street Spirit (Fade Out)." Over chiming guitar arpeggios, Yorke sings a hymn to his own claustrophobia and insignificance, making them sound like exalted states of being. When he intones, "Cracked eggs, dead birds scream as they fight for life," he finds solace in the vowels, transforming them into a melody of hope. By the end of the song, with harmonies swirling around, the beauty has touched even him: The final words on an emotional, bleak album are "Immerse your soul in love." - Rolling Stone.

"Kid A is like getting a massive eraser out and starting again," Thom Yorke said in October 2000, the week this album became the British band's first Number One record in America. "I find it difficult to think of the path we've chosen as 'rock music'."

"In texture and structure, Kid A, Radiohead's fourth album, renounced everything in rock that, to Yorke in particular, reeked of the tired and overfamiliar: clanging arena-force guitars, verse-chorus-bridge song tricks.

With producer Nigel Godrich, Yorke, guitarist Ed O'Brien, drummer Phil Selway, bassist Colin Greenwood and guitarist Jonny Greenwood created an enigma of slippery electronics and elliptical angst, sung by Yorke in an often indecipherable croon. The closest thing to riffing on Kid A was the fuzz-bass lick in "The National Anthem"; the guitars in "Morning Bell" sounded more like seabirds.

The result was the weirdest hit album of that year, by a band poised to be the modern-rock Beatles, following the breakthrough of OK Computer. In fact, only 10 months into the century, Radiohead had made the decade's best album — by rebuilding rock itself, with a new set of basics and a bleak but potent humanity. Yorke's loathing of celebrity inspired the contrary beauty of "How to Disappear Completely," with its watery orchestration and his voice flickering in and out of earshot. His electronically squished pleading in "Kid A" sounded like a baby kicking inside a hard drive.

Ironically, Radiohead, by the end of this decade, had fulfilled much of that modern-Beatles promise by following rock's first commandment: Go your own way.

"Music as a lifelong commitment — if that's what someone means by rock, great," Yorke said in that 2000 interview. By that measure, with Kid A, Radiohead made the first true rock of the future." - Rolling Stone.

TRACK LISTING

1 Everything In Its Right Place
2 Kid A
3 The National Anthem
4 How To Disappear Completely
5 Treefingers
6 Optimistic
7 In Limbo
8 Idioteque
9 Morning Bell
10 Motion Picture Soundtrack
11 Untitled

THE PICCADILLY RECORDS ALBUM OF THE YEAR 1997

This is the album that started to show their real potential and their first use of electronics (which mix beautifully with their older rawer rock style). The album that pushed them to the very top.

STAFF COMMENTS

Martin says: There can be few greater endorsements for anything than winning over a convinced sceptic. I started off from the premise that I didn't like this corporate indie sellout, but that, I am happy to say, proved an utterly impossible position to maintain after I actually heard it. Every last track is an utterly mesmerizing glimpse into blighted existence; a beautifully rendered, multilayered kaleidoscope of angst. 'Classic' is an overused word, but this is precisely the kind of idea it was coined for.

TRACK LISTING

1. Airbag
2. Paranoid Android
3. Subterranean Homesick Alien
4. Exit Music (For A Film)
5. Let Down
6. Karma Police
7. Fitter Happier
8. Electioneering
9. Climbing Up The Walls
10. No Surprises
11. Lucky
12. The Tourist

Over the Summer Radiohead have released a series of limited edition 12" singles featuring tracks from their "King Of Limbs" album, remixed by electronic producers / artist who are currently exciting and inspiring the band.

This double CD compiles all the tracks from the 12"s, in chronological order.

Radiohead's eighth studio album, "The King Of Limbs", is an experimental progression on the sound of its predecessor, 2007's "In Rainbows". Lyrically the record harks back to 2001's "Amnesiac", and indeed the heavy use of electronic instrumentation and distortion also recalls both "Amnesia" and "Kid A". Announced only a week before its intended release date, "The King Of Limbs" is named after an ancient tree near Radiohead's recording studio.

Following the landmark independent digital release of Radiohead's seventh LP whereby customers could name their own price, the experimental British rock stalwarts finally issued "In Rainbows" in its physical formats. Musically, this release can be seen as a logical culmination of much of the band's previous work, incorporating the avant-garde electronics of later records and more traditional guitar-heavy elements synonymous with their inception. The overt political themes of previous album "Hail To The Thief" are largely jettisoned for an altogether more romantic milieu, with songs such as "Videotape" and "Nude" showcasing the intimate nature of singer Thom Yorke's voice.

Has anyone ever done this before? Achieved massive commercial success and followed it with three totally uncompromising, madly unexpected records. You have to admire their integrity. This album is something of a consolidation of their post- "OK Computer" direction. While it's choc-ful of analogue electronics, jazz-rock oddness, techno Gothic wierdness, scatterbrained drum-machines and insanely-inspiring words - there is actually more to properly grab a hold of this time. There's a number of conventional(ish!) piano songs including one acheingly gorgeous standout called "Sail To The Moon". There's also more obvious(ish!) rockier moments like "2+2=5" which ends in punky, thrashed guitar, and "A Punch-Up At A Wedding" that has lyrics you can follow (!!) and a sweet, undulating bassline. This album's just as challenging as the last two, but a lot more rewarding.

The follow up to  "Kid A" finds Radiohead continuing their experiments of the previous album but with added structure and a stronger 'song' base. This all adds up to a phenomenal album of vision and depth that will disappoint no one.

TRACK LISTING

1 Packt Like Sardines In A Crushed Tin Box
2 Pyramid Song
3 Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors
4 You And Whose Army?
5 I Might Be Wrong
6 Knives Out
7 Morning Bell/Amnesiac
8 Dollars & Cents
9 Hunting Bears
10 Like Spinning Plates
11 Life In A Glasshouse