It’s been covered fairly extensively already, but in case you missed it: the Radiohead webcast was an excellent affair. I missed the opening 20 minutes thanks to me sleeping in, but it featured lots of enjoyably off-kilter moments and it looked like the band was having a really good time.

There were a couple of surprises in terms of the performances. Faust Arp recorded in the countryside was one. I should have expected more covers after Thom nonchalantly dropped a rendition of Bjork’s Unravel in a preliminary test broadcast – nonetheless I was in shock/over the moon when they covered the Smiths’ Headmaster Ritual and New Order/Joy Division’s Ceremony both of which I thought were really nicely executed.

Most of the broadcast highlights (videos and mp3s) are available on Pitchfork’s coverage of the event. Adam Buxton also wrote a great blog entry talking about the background behind some of the items and how it all came together.

It was added to the rumour mill last week, and now it’s definitely happening: Radiohead are doing a webcast this Friday.

Nigel Godrich (black swan etc remember?) posted a test link up on Atease which exhibited nearly a half an hour of various people (Thom, Nigel, Colin) throwing some records on the decks and generally making a goose of themselves. Oh, and someone played with an awful lot of video effects. You can see some of it here, thanks to Atease board member tjaredfriend:

• Video capture 1 (YouTube)
• Video capture 2 (YouTube)

Webcasts have appeared on a couple of occasions in Radiohead’s history, and they have become an integral part of Radiohead folklore. Often they’ll contain performances of songs that had never been seen before or since, and they exhibit a side of the band that we don’t get to see very often: in their natural environment, having fun.

I have no idea what time the webcast will appear on Friday, but I recommend you keep an eye on Atease’s news page and Dead Air Space!

Remember the story behind the kids on 15 Step that Nigel Godrich dropped a hint on a couple of days ago? He was kind enough to repond to a private message asking for extra info on the story.

I asked: “is that really true? a failed plan to record clapping inspired the ‘yayys’?”

Nigel responded:

Well.. yes. The clapping was cute but not quite good enough and I thought while we had them all in a room what can be more enchanting than getting a bunch of happy kids to shout ‘yeah!’ no one is immune to a childs charm.

So, the new Radiohead album eh? I completely love it, and it only improves with each listen. I’m still a little startled (but becoming less so) at how direct the sound of this album is – to a point that I don’t think Radiohead have been before. But this isn’t a review, so I’ll stop there.

Anyway, the reason for this post is an idle moment on the At Ease message board, around a thread that concerned the kids yelling “YAYY!” on the In Rainbows opener, 15 Step. For those that don’t know, these kids were recorded at the Matrix Music School, which they wrote about on their web site. Looking at the photos, you can tell they’re attempting to get the kids to clap, but no real clapping (that I can hear) is on the track.

I idly speculated as to how such a random sample might have found its way into the track by way of this mock-story:

Colin: “I know! Let’s get authentic handclaps recorded by a classroom of children!”
Band: “Cool!”
Nigel: “OK Colin, let’s go”
(later that day)
Colin: (mutters under breath) “Nige mate, this is a disaster. These kids can’t clap for nuts!”
Nigel: “What the bloody hell are we going to do? These kids think they’re going to be on the next Radiohead album”
Colin: “Uhhh… let’s just tell them it’s not going to happen”
(this is done, with predictable anguish expressed by classroom)
Nigel: “Good thing I was still recording! THAT was worth it!”
Colin: “Do we tell them they might make it after all?”
Nigel: “Nahhhhhh…”

Now, obviously I entirely made this up. I was just wondering how they managed to come up with the idea for something like that.

It seems I wasn’t too far off however, as Nigel Bloomin’ Godrich himself (no kidding! black swan, for those in the know!) responded with the following two words:

almost true..

Now – waitaminute… this wasn’t orginally intended? Were the band initially at the school to record handclaps, but couldn’t for some reason? Was this some kind of way to make good of their time spent recording the kids?

I am in complete shock

(I laughed for two minutes straight before I clicked on the blog post from Jonny in my RSS reader. I thought with a name like ‘In Rainbows’, it must have been a joke)

UPDATE: Now that I’ve recovered, here’s the deal:

The album is being released digitally on October 10. They will then be a shipping a “discbox” on December 3 that contains 2 CDs and 2 LPs (vinyl, yanno?).

Yes that’s right: a double album.

The tracklisting is as follows:

CD 1 and Vinyl

1. 15 Step
2. Bodysnatchers
3. Nude
4. Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
5. All I Need
6. Faust Arp
7. Reckoner
8. House of Cards
9. Jigsaw Falling Into Place
10. Videotape

CD 2 and Vinyl

1. Mk 1
2. Down is the New Up
3. Go Slowly
4. Mk 2
5. Last Flowers
6. Up on the Ladder
7. Bangers and Mash
8. 4 Minute Warning

These days, anything about Radiohead is news, as the silence surrounding the band and their still-untitled 7th LP has been enough to rival that of My Bloody Valentine’s (if Kevin Shields is to be believed, they’re still coming back for another album yet)

But fear not, as that should change very soon. After over two months of neglect, their site’s front page has been updated with the rather obscure statement: “emergent life form”

What’s next? Tracklist? Artwork? Release date? Who knows?

Keep your eyes trained, earthlings. News should be coming very soon.

Update: This appeared on Hodiau Direkton:

Which must be a code of some sort. I’m wondering if it’s a symbol-based typeface Thom or someone downloaded off the internet?

Update 2: thanks to grapplinghook28‘s efforts, the characters have been decoded to say:

YES
WEARE
STILL
ALIVE

Nowhere near as exciting as I would have hoped!

I’ve tried to avoid blogging on Radiohead’s forthcoming album (hereafter known as LP7), partially because I’ve wanted to avoid looking a little over-excited about it, and partially because everyone else is doing it anyway, so why do you need me? But at last I’ll momentarily break my “Radio-silence” (excuse pun) and drop a couple of items:

• It’s late. It hit the rumour mill a few days ago, but it looks like it’s pretty much confirmed: the new album will not be released until 2008. This kind of sucks because from many reports it would seem the album is done and just needs to find a label and distributor.
• The kids get involved. In a move which I’ll dare to speculate is influenced by all of the band members entering fatherhood in the last 5 years, this will be the first Radiohead album to feature child performers. Don’t worry, they’re not putting together some kind of schmaltzy duet with an 8 year old choir. Instead, they got a bunch of young music students from the Matrix Music School to record some clapping, and you can check out the site for photos ‘n’ stuff. And purist music snobs, get a load of this: they recorded the event with an MBox 2. Take that!

And for those of you sitting up the back and not paying attention, you can get a 60 seconds catch up by checking out the clip uploaded by Nigel a while back containing chopped up tape of the new songs

Check out this awesome bootleg video of Sasha dropping an unreleased remix of Thom Yorke’s The Eraser track. Apparently it’s called the Stretch & Vern mix, and it seems to only have a life in Sasha’s crate – hasn’t been seen elsewhere. Shame, as I’d love to hear it released.

But anyway, it’s got me thinking it wouldn’t be too hard to do a bootleg mix of that sample as ripped from the album version. Might be a good next project, as I’ve never got into that sort of thing before.