The King Of Limbs live from the Basement

The BBC has signed a deal with Radiohead to distribute internationally a new and exclusive live performance of Radiohead’s eighth album, ‘The King of Limbs’. Radiohead – The King of Limbs: Live From The Basement is a 55-minute performance by the band and will feature the notoriously elusive band performing the entirety of their celebrated new album in a studio setting with some additional behind the scenes material. It is scheduled to be the first time that the grammy-award winners are captured on camera this year.

In a press release Bryce Edge of Courtyard Management, Radiohead’s management company said, “This will be Radiohead’s first collaboration with BBC Worldwide and the band are excited at the prospect of having their first live performance of ‘The King of Limbs’ broadcast around the world. The band will be filmed and recorded by the From The Basement team, which includes Nigel Godrich their long time producer, Dilly Gent, who commissioned many of the memorable Radiohead videos and Grant Gee who filmed the Radiohead documentary ‘Meeting People is Easy’”

Radiohead – The King of Limbs: Live from the Basement becomes available to international broadcasters in June and is embargoed for broadcast until 1st July 2011. The programme is filmed in HD, will have no audience and no presenter – just a rare opportunity to see an intimate performance from one of the greatest bands in the world.

Several years ago Radiohead played their previous album ‘In Rainbows’ live at that same basement. This is what it looked like:

Sources:

http://www.ateaseweb.com/
http://www.youtube.com/

Radiohead – The King of Limbs: First review

An article of Tim Jonze from The Guardian.


"On first listen, Radiohead's The King of Limbs sounds like it will impress the faithful without breaking any new ground."

Photo by Sebastian Edge

Radiohead's release schedule is not, you imagine, geared towards helping music critics. Minimal warnings, last-minute changes of plan and confusing announcements posted on Twitter in Japanese – does Thom Yorke not realise we have tight deadlines? The end result is a mad-rush by critics, bloggers and Tweet-freaks to be first to post their opinion on The King of Limbs' eight tracks. Trouble is, Radiohead don't make music designed for a hurried listen. A couple more plays down the line and the opinions you read here may be subject to change.

The King of Limbs begins in a manner that will no doubt make both Radiohead fans and critics smile – a looped piano riff reminiscent of Philip Glass is interrupted by crackly interference before disjointed rhythms and bleeps cascade over it. It's an abstract, awkward introduction of the sort that has become so synonymous with the Oxford band that Vice magazine felt able to send them up this week with a spoof "first review" (sample line: "P£T£R P£PP£R is Thom Yorke's deeply personal reaction to the events of the banking crisis, while Johnny Greenwood plays a timpani with a zither").

Still, bands don't become stadium-sized cult heroes if they're nothing more than avant-garde soundscapers. And 30 seconds into Bloom, the track shuffles itself around and falls into place, haphazard noises settling down into a repetitive drum march as Thom Yorke announces himself.

There is much here that will please the 'Head faithful, who will delight in the claustrophobic likes of Morning Mr Magpie and Little By Little. But you don't have to be a diehard fan to see the worth in Codex, a beautiful melody brought into focus by the band's decision to dispense of the usual trimmings in favour of piano and ghostlike effects. Closing track Separator – propelled by wandering bass and a bright guitar figure – ensures the album closes far more strongly than it opens.

These songs occupy an emotional terrain that Radiohead have mapped out as their own and – to their credit – others have failed to copy. What's disappointing, however, is that the band – so often held up as musical mavericks operating in the mainstream – have failed to come up with anything that might surprise us this time. Early albums such as The Bends, OK Computer and Kid A carved out a radical new direction. Since then Radiohead have settled into a sound – abstract lyrics, jittery rhythms, echoes of leftfield electronica – meaning that this teeters on the brink of self-parody.

Their last album, 2007's In Rainbows, was perhaps the best of Radiohead's later releases, incorporating a more human (not to mention melodic) touch. Any hints that some light and shade was beginning to appear in the Radiohead canon have been largely snuffed out here, which is disappointing. Yes, you can still marvel that one of the world's biggest bands are releasing music totally lacking in commercial concerns. And yes, they're still leading the pack when it comes to releasing music in an exciting, innovative way. But whereas their business model is unusual, there's a nagging feeling that The King of Limbs is more like business as usual.

Sources:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Independent work and The King of Limbs (2009–present)

In May 2009, the band began new recording sessions with producer Nigel Godrich. In August of that year, Radiohead released two singles from these sessions on their website. First, "Harry Patch (In Memory Of)", was recorded in tribute to Harry Patch, the last surviving British soldier to have fought in the First World War, who had recently died. The song was sold for £1, with proceeds donated to the British Legion. "Harry Patch (In Memory Of)" featured Thom Yorke singing lyrics based on Patch's own statements about his war experience, over a string orchestra backdrop arranged by Jonny Greenwood. Later that month, a new song "These Are My Twisted Words", was made available as a free download. Jonny Greenwood explained that the song had been one of the first products of the band's recent studio sessions.

In a mid-2009 NME interview, Yorke suggested that Radiohead would turn their focus from full length albums to releasing EPs, including the possibility of an EP of orchestral music. In December that year, O'Brien stated on Radiohead's website that the band would begin work on their next album in January, "The vibe in the camp is fantastic at present, and we head off into the studio in January to continue on from the work we started last summer...10 years ago we were all collectively (that’s the band) in the land of Kid A... and although hugely proud of that record, it wasn’t a fun place to be...What's reassuring now, is that we are most definitely a different band, which should therefore mean that the music is different too and that is the aim of the game." In an interview with BBC 6 Music in June 2010, Ed O'Brien made similar comments, that Radiohead were "in the heart of [recording] now". O'Brien also said the band hoped to be able to release the record by the end of the year. In September 2010, Colin Greenwood mentioned that they had just finished a new set of songs and "have begun to wonder about how to release them in a digital landscape that has changed again". Phil Selway added later that month that the band will "take stock" of the new material and said that it is all "up in the air".

In January 2010, while Radiohead members were in Los Angeles to record, the band played their only gig of the year as a benefit for Oxfam. Tickets were auctioned to the highest bidders, allowing the show at L.A.'s Henry Fonda Theater to raise over half a million US dollars for the NGO's work in Haiti, which earlier that month had been hit by a devastating earthquake. A group of fans edited together digital video taken by attendees to make a multi-camera document of the concert, which they made available through YouTube and torrents in December 2010, with the band's support and a "pay what you want" link to donate to Oxfam. In 2010, another collective of fans made a not-for-profit video of Radiohead's 2009 Prague concert and distributed it freely online, with soundboard audio provided by the band. Live in Praha and Radiohead for Haiti were reviewed by mainstream media and were described as examples of the band's openness to fans and their positivity toward non-commercial forms of Internet distribution. Radiohead's eighth album, The King of Limbs was digitally released in February 2011. It will also be available in standard CD, vinyl, and download formats, or as a unique "newspaper album", which features numerous extras.

Just 2 months after the release of The King of Limbs, Radiohead announced a new single for Record Store Day. The single contains two new songs "Supercollider" and "The Butcher".

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/

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