Radiohead's new album, The King Of Limbs, has been released 24 hours earlier than expected. Here's how it happened
Tim Jonze's review of The Kings of Limbs is now online, which brings us to the end of this liveblog. There will also be an album review from Kitty Empire in this Sunday's Observer and Alexis Petridis will be reviewing the album for the Guardian on Monday. Thanks for all your comments. See you next time Radiohead decide to release an album at the drop of a hat!
Radiohead fansite ateaseweb.com published this new press shot of the band earlier today, and don't they look nice! The site also correctly guessed that the new album would be eight tracks long. An uber-fansite might be a better description.
Tim Jonze's first review of The King of Limbs will be up in the next half an hour.
An amendment to my earlier post: Everett True's review was based only on Lotus Flower and not on the entire album. Judging by his one-track analysis, I'm guessing we're in for a 5-star verdict of the whole thing
Just to clarify some confusion earlier about actual events in Tokyo. I received an email from Time Out Tokyo's Jon Wilks saying: "Plenty of disappointed folk around" after the scheduled but secretive announcement that something Radiohead related would be happening in Hachiko Square in Shibuya failed to happen. The Guardian's Tokyo correspondent Justin McCurry has just filed his story on what happened. Or, rather, what failed to happen. The story will be up soon.
Now back to the album in question: The Telegraph's Neil McCormick is trundling through a track-by-track review of The King of Limbs as I write and the outcome so far is favourable.
Here's a round-up of readers' analysis so far of The King of Limbs:
Tiresias42 says:
This album is beautiful, it is however much further removed from guitar rock than even Kid A, all The Bends fans will come out the closet to whinge, and I have no idea why those fans are still interested, the band they loved died in those cold copenhagen sessions when Thom played everything in it's right place on piano for the first time
TokenGesture says:
Its a glitchy, trippy, laid back groove of a record
Mikeydoollee, however, disagrees:
Wow, what a pile of crap. I hate Radio Head. Weren't they just a Nirvana covers band back in the day? Did a song that sounded like Teen Spirit? Also that singer, yech, one eye lookin at ya, one eye lookin for ya.
One suspects a spot of trolling from our friend Mikeydoollee, no?
Meanwhile, Curtley2 asked about the album's artwork and voddy1 replied:
The artwork is by Stanley Donwood who along with Nigel Giodrich the producer is considered an honory member by most fans. he tends to set up art studio along with the band during recording sessions and uses the music to inspire his art. He has a mysterious sidekick called Dr Thock who I think makes the tea.
The first lot of reviews are online, as well as 140-character round-ups on twitter. Technically, Gavin Haynes got there first with his pre-release "review" on Vice (oh, you guys). But this actual review of The King of Limbs comes in the form of a short and far from sweet analysis by Everett True on Collapse Board:
Sorry. I succumbed. It's like Bono, minus the 'charisma'. It's rock music, minus any of those pesky dynamics you usually associate with the form. It's like those irritating buzzing flies that always come into our kitchen around 5.30pm and buzz around the trails of blood until I get the electric badminton racket out. It's drum'n'bass, watered down and made putrid for popular consumption. It's rock music as mime: all the posturing and none of the substance. Or humour. It's rock music as midlife crisis: premature and unwanted. It's rock music as mud: grey, formless, useless. It's Radiohead. And I do not like it.
Pretty scathing. Typical True.
So now we find ourselves in possession of the new Radiohead album! And like the rest of you, the Guardian music staff have donned their headphones ready for their inaugural listen. Tim Jonze will be filing the first Guardian review of the album later today, in the meantime we look forward to reading your thoughts and bringing in analysis of The King of Limbs from across the web.
Tracklisting for The King of Limbs:
1) Bloom
2) Morning Mr Magpie
3) Little By Little
4) Feral
5) Lotus Flower
6) Codex
7) Give Up The Ghost
8) Separator
Ok, my personal copy of The King of Limbs is currently downloading. Go to http://www.thekingoflimbs.com/OrderTracking/ to see if yours is ready. More information coming soon...
Ok, getting various reports that certain people have received an email confirming their order of The King of Limbs will be delivered tomorrow (Saturday 19 February). Did anyone here get such an email?
Lots of discussion about the quality of Thom York's dancing in the video for Lotus Flower. Marcel Marceau has been thrown around as a reference point in the office, while themoon says:
there's a moment in the Lotus Flower, i think around 2.32, when he distinctly looks like Steptoe.
Also, in lieu of actually having the Radiohead album to listen to yet, I stuck ferreiragusmorais's comment (10.48 am) into Google translate and this is what I'm told he or she said:
Write to cos do not do a Radiohead album since OK Computer way, oh shit, man
I hear you, buddy
I put a call out on twitter to see if anyone has their copy of the album yet but no one replies in the affirmative. John Murphy says:
On the tracking status for my order, it's still saying 'available 19 Feb' (probably best, as I'm at work)
Meanwhile, Guardian writer Louis Pattison has his own take on the Lotus Flower video (which was directed by Garth Jennings, by the way)
No sign of the album in the inboxes of anyone at the Guardian. We're assured by XL that all pre-ordered albums will be arriving today so keep us informed as and when you get your copy.
A representative from XL records has just sent this email out:
Radiohead have brought forward the digital release of their new album "The King Of Limbs" by 24 hours with the album now being sent to those who pre-ordered it earlier this week. It is also available for new orders through www.radiohead.com at a fixed price of �6. A special edition is also available.
With everything ready on their website, the band decided to bring forward the release by a day rather than wait until the planned date of Saturday, Feb 19 to deliver the music.
A song has been placed on Radiohead's Twitter feed, entitled Lotus Flower
Justin also send confirmation that a video is now being shown with this picture of the crowd at Hachiko Square
The Guardian's Tokyo correspondent Justin McCurry has sent this email:
Definitely more ppl hanging around Hachiko square than usual; the possibility of RH promo video on big screens a topic of conversation. 10 mins before we find out.
"Thank you for waiting," was the polite, brief message Radiohead tweeted on Monday to confirm that their new album would be released this coming weekend. We've come to expect the short notice from a band whose last album, In Rainbows, was released equally suddenly as part of their "honesty box" trial.
Given their fondness for shock (and often cryptic) announcements, nobody should be surprised that the band further teased us with another ambiguous tweet (since deleted) comprising of nothing but an address in Tokyo: "Hachiko Square Shibuya, 59 minutes at 18 Friday"
Does this mean the album will be previewed today? Are Radiohead playing a secret gig? We don't know exactly, but we'll be here providing all the build-up and (hopefully) rounding up some of the best reviews, reactions and snarky Tweets.
Here's what Japanese Time Out have to say from their live blog:
..
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2011/feb/18/radiohead-king-of-limbs-live
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