it’s the sound of a brand new world.
I can’t seem to find it on the web to link to it, but my friend Josh points me towards a bit of Radiohead news via tipster newssheet TripWire:
On a more surprising note, O’Brien revealed that uber-producer and longtime Radiohead collaborator Nigel Godrich will not be involved with the new record. Rather, they have decided to go with Mark “Spike” Stent, who has worked in the past with U2, Madonna and Bjork. Oh yeah, and the Spice Girls.
O’Brien added: “It’s not an end of an era, (but) part of what your realise as a band is that all those records you made with Nigel, apart from Hail To The Thief we were a little bit in the comfort zone. That’s why you make records like Kid A after OK Computer, that’s why you make OK Computer after The Bends, you’ve got to do stuff that you’re scared of doing. With Nigel, we’ve been working together for 10 years, and we all love one another too much.”
At any rate, I’m sure Pitchfork’ll be all up in that shit soon, especially ’cause it also mentions that they’ll be playing some shows and offering some new tunes for download come spring.
The Godrich news is certainly surprising, and could be really cool.
(Huh, the band’s recording blog seems to no longer exist.)
Someone commented on my Bonnaroo post that they’re hearing grumblings of Radiohead as a headliner for Roo 06.
That’d be awesome, in my opinion…
U2, Madonna, and Bjork huh? I should figure out which Bjork, as I think that’d be the only real guide that I could use to determine how this producer might do wonders for Radiohead.
It is interesting to me that O’Brien would consider the period during Hail to the Thief to be a non-comfort zone era. Radiohead, at that time, appeared to be given far more carte blanche than any other huge band on the planet. They had just made two albums of very avant garde material which were accepted by most heady listeners–even the poker chip in the dryer techno tracks (Thanks, Johnny G.). I guess he’s referring to a period of time when the band had already extended their experimentalism to the nth degree and needed to be more accessible. Very interesting news, indeed, and a curious insight into the band’s thought process.
I thought Godrich did a fine job on the new Sir Paul platter.