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Thom Yorke likes to boogie, and he wants you to, too. “I hope you dance, because this is a dance record,” he said by way of introducing “Skip Divided,” one third through the first of a two-concert solo stand last night at Los Angeles’ Orpheum Theatre. “You can just sit there like you’re at the cinema, but I hope you get down.”

The Radiohead frontman himself had been following his own advice since the first song. Entering the stage to a standing ovation, Yorke began at a standup piano facing away from the audience, pushing out the chunky chords that announce “The Eraser,” the title track from his 2006 solo album. However, as his elite backing band kicked in — Red Hot Chili Peppers’ icon Flea on bass, Joey Waronker (Beck, R.E.M.) on drums, Mauro Refosco (David Byrne, Bebel Gilberto) on percussion, longtime Radiohead/Yorke producer Nigel Godrich on guitar/synths/laptop — Yorke began to shake his tailfeather with aplomb. Strapping on a guitar, Yorke and Flea began their own punk-funk hootenanny, grooving in unison as they vamped on an angular disco riff; behind them, their bandmates built up waves of propulsive percussion that evoked more an LCD Soundsystem show than, say, “Karma Police.” (more…)

Photo courtesy of Radiohead.com

Thom Yorke has recruited Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, longtime Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich, Beck drummer Joey Waronker and percussionist Mauro Refosco for a new live outfit that will make its debut this Sunday and Monday, October 4th and 5th, at Los Angeles’ Orpheum Theatre, the singer announced on Radiohead’s Dead Air Space Website this morning. The news ends weeks of rumors surrounding the usually reticent Radiohead frontman, who has been seen out gallivanting in Los Angeles recently, DJing at the Roosevelt Hotel and being snapped by paparazzi outside Nobu.

“In the past couple of weeks I’ve been getting a band together for fun to play The Eraser stuff live and the new songs etc. to see if it could work,” Yorke writes. “We don’t really have a name and the set will not be very long cuz… well… we haven’t got that much material yet! But come and check it out if you are in the area.” (more…)

Thom Yorke’s new single “Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses” backed with “The Hollow Earth” was released today as a digital download for fans who pre-ordered the limited printing of the 12” single. A video for “The Hollow Earth,” directed by Raymond Harmon and featuring “subliminal imagery” by graffiti artist Banksy, was also unveiled this weekend, though Yorke was not involved with the clip. Watch it above.

As Rolling Stone previously theorized, “Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses” is an updated version of a Radiohead song that started appearing in their live shows around 2001, originally titled “Reckoner” (and not to be confused with the completely different song called “Reckoner” that appears on their 2007 album In Rainbows). (more…)

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Thom Yorke formally announced his upcoming “Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses”/”The Hollow Earth” 12” single today on Radiohead’s Dead Air Space Website. As Rolling Stone previously reported, rumors of the single first emerged when the Canadian record plant in charge of its printing leaked word of its existence. The two songs “are loosely under the Thom Yorke name this time, although these days it’s all getting kind of blurry,” Yorke writes. The 12” will be released September 21st.

As Rolling Stone previous wrote and Yorke confirmed today, “Feeling Pulled Apart by Horses” is an older Radiohead track — circa 2001, Yorke writes — that was originally the parenthetical title for “Reckoner,” a song that eventually emerged in a much different form as the centerpiece of In Rainbows. This “Apart By Horses” is a “radical rework” of that original track, Yorke writes, and will also feature Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood. As for the b-side, “‘The Hollow Earth’ is a bass menace that was born out of The Eraser period but needed a little more time,” Yorke says. Both tracks were produced by Radiohead’s unofficial sixth member, Nigel Godrich. (more…)

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Radiohead surprised fans and listeners of the BBC this morning by premiering a new song called “Harry Patch (In Memory Of).” The song is a tribute to Harry Patch, who was the last living World War I veteran to fight in the trenches until his death on July 25th at the ripe old age of 111. As Thom Yorke writes on Radiohead’s Dead Air Space Website, a “very emotional” interview Patch gave to the BBC in 2005 was the inspiration for the song. “The way he talked about war had a profound effect on me,” Yorke writes. “It became the inspiration for a song that we happened to record a few weeks before his death.”

The song is available now through Radiohead’s Waste digital music store for the price of one pound, or about $1.70. Proceeds from the song will benefit the British Legion. The strings on “Harry Patch” were arranged by Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood, and the track itself is similar to Greenwood’s Academy Award-snubbed score for There Will Be Blood, except it features Yorke singing lyrics either inspired by or previously spoken by Harry Patch himself. “I very much hope the song does justice to his memory as the last survivor,” Yorke writes. (more…)

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Buried deep inside an Irish Times story about musicians surviving in the Internet age is a revelation that thankfully never became reality: Radiohead’s own managers recommended the band “split up” as the group struggled to record what eventually became In Rainbows. That’s what Brian Message, whose Courtyard Management helps oversee the band, admitted, saying that though the songs were written, the band had spent the better part of two years unable to capture the songs in the studio.

“Radiohead are a once in a generation act,” Message said. “But you have to be honest if it’s not working. You have to have passion about what you do.” The band ignored their managers’ recommendations and instead completed work on In Rainbows, which was not only critically acclaimed immediately after its surprise release, but also helped revolutionized how music is distributed in the Internet age thanks to its “pay-what-you-want” scheme, which Message reiterates was “the best thing for that band at that time.” (more…)

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We’ll be honest, we kind of expected both Miley Cyrus’ and Kanye West’s feuds with Radiohead over backstage snubbings to just fade away considering Thom Yorke and friends aren’t usually ones to stir the pot. We were wrong, however: Yorke took the band’s Dead Air Space blog to issue one last parting jab before the band embarks to South America. “Wish us all a safe journey if you still like us and you’re not one of those people i have managed to offend by doing nothing xx,” Yorke wrote.

Both Cyrus and West publicly complained that Radiohead ignored them backstage at the Grammys. West was so hurt that he “sat the fuck down,” as Kanye said on VH1’s Storytellers when Radiohead took the stage to perform “15 Step” with the USC Marching Band. Meanwhile Cyrus threatened to “ruin” Radiohead for refusing to meet with her backstage. Surprisingly, the In Rainbows quintet issued a statement to Us Weekly, saying, “When Miley grows up, she’ll learn not to have such a sense of entitlement.” Unfortunately for Miley, the statement did not come with a definition for the word “entitlement.” UPDATE: According to Pitchfork, it was the band’s publicist, not Radiohead, who issued the statement to Us. “The band? That is inaccurate. I’m the one who said that,” Steve Martin wrote to the music blog. (more…)

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Mere days after revealing they were reissuing Radiohead’s CD singles as 12” vinyl, Capitol/EMI announced yesterday that they would also re-release Radiohead’s first three album as 2-CD and 2-CD/1-DVD sets. The new sets for Pablo Honey, The Bends and OK Computer are Capitol’s latest attempt to profit off Radiohead after the band fled from the label in 2007. While it’s easy to accuse Capitol of milking the cash cow once again, these sets are pretty comprehensive, compiling most of the band’s B-sides from that era onto their respective discs and throwing in some live tracks. However, the sets boast no previously unreleased material. All three albums are due out March 24th.

Additionally, the “Special Collectors Editions” will include a DVD featuring all the band’s music videos from the respective album, plus television performances from the era and one full concert, a May 27th, 1994 show from London’s Astoria. Unfortunately, to obtain the entire live performance of the Astoria concert, you’d have to buy both the “Special” Pablo and Bends, as the concert bridges both DVDs. Or you could just buy that Radiohead: Live at the Astoria DVD that came out in 2005 but has been around in VHS form since 1995. And to get all the band’s music videos, you could just buy the Radiohead: The Best Of DVD that Capitol released just this past June. (more…)

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Barack Obama wasn’t just America’s choice to be the next President, as the rest of the world is celebrating the victory of our new Commander-in-Chief. Radiohead’s Thom Yorke was especially happy with the end of the Bush era, so to celebrate, he posted a free remix of “Harrowdown Hill,” a song off his solo album The Eraser. “I humbly donate a remix of ‘Harrowdown Hill’ that was finished ages ago during the band webcasts,” Yorke wrote. (more…)

A year after its release sent shock waves through the music industry, the publisher of Radiohead’s In Rainbows has finally revealed some details about the success of the “pay-what-you-want” experiment. While exact figures have not yet been released, Warner Chappell confirmed that “Radiohead made more money before In Rainbows was physically released than they made in total on the previous album Hail To the Thief,” Music Ally reports. In all, there have been three million purchases of In Rainbows (including CDs, vinyls, box sets and digital sales) since the band began selling the album officially on New Year’s Day 2008. (more…)

Watch more cool animation and creative cartoons at aniBoom

Radiohead have announced the winners of their long-running Aniboom animation contest. Initially, the contest was only supposed to have one winning video, selected by Radiohead from a pool of five viewer-voted finalists. But we all know Radiohead doesn’t like playing by the rules, so instead of choosing one video, the band picked four grand prize winners because of “the high caliber and creative visions of the submissions.” The winning filmmaker was to receive $10,000 to make a full-length animated video. With four grand prize winners, Radiohead will fork over the additional $30,000 in prize money so that al four filmmakers can make full-length vids, which Radiohead may use in promoting In Rainbows. Among the champs was Clement Picon’s chiaroscuro landscape for “Reckoner,” which was our personal favorite from the onset and can be seen in the video above. Also getting $10k of Thom Yorke’s money is Kota Totori’s “15 Step,” Tobias Stretch’s stop-motion mastery for “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” and Wolfgang Jaiser and Claus Winter’s “Videotape.”

Watch more cool animation and creative cartoons at aniBoom

The top five finalists of the Radiohead/Aniboom animation contest have been revealed. After fan voting narrowed down the 13 semi-finalists to the final five, the judging is now in the hands of the band, with Thom Yorke saying, all Yoda-like, “…The Aniboom video competition. Totally blown me away it has. How the hell you pick a winner?” The finals include two videos for In Rainbows‘ “Reckoner” (including our personal favorite, above) and one each for “Videotape,” “Weird Fishes/Arpeggio” and “15 Step.” In a handwritten note signed by the band, the group said “We are proud that In Rainbows songs are the source of inspiration for so many amazing creations and we’re genuinely impressed by the quality of your videos.” At stake for the winner is $10,000 and the opportunity to make a full-length video for the band, which will be given web-wide distribution and marketing support from Aniboom.

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• Radiohead Premiere Laser-Assisted “House of Cards” Video

The video for Radiohead’s “House of Cards,” made without the use of conventional cameras, finally debuted today. Zoo Films, who directed the clip, used two different camera-less technologies to create the video. If you ask us, the whole thing looks like The Lawnmower Man or the bad guy in RoboCop 2, but it’s still pretty cool. To make matters even cooler, the band will make all the data compiled to create the images available to fans, allowing Radiohead die-hards who know how to manipulate such information to make their own versions of the In Rainbows song. “I always like the idea of using technology in a way that it wasn’t meant to be used, the struggle to get your head round what you can do with it. I liked the idea of making a video of human beings and real life and time without using any cameras, just lasers, so there are just mathematical points — and how strangely emotional it ended up being,” Thom Yorke said. To see more in-depth of how “House of Cards” was created, check out the Making-Of video here.

Bono has called Radiohead’s pay-what-you-want experiment for In Rainbows “courageous and imaginative in trying to figure out some new relationship with their audience,” the U2 frontman says in a letter to be printed in the NME. The comments are in stark contrast to those made recently by U2’s manager Paul McGuinness, who said that Radiohead’s experiment “backfired.” “[Radiohead are] a sacred talent, and we feel blessed to be around at the same time,” Bono said. Despite Bono’s praises, U2 will not follow a similar path as In Rainbows when they release their new album. In other Radiohead news, the band’s From the Basement performance that aired on VH1 in May is now available on iTunes. The “video album” was recorded in producer Nigel Godrich’s basement and features performances of the songs from In Rainbows.

[Photo: Getty]

Radiohead kicked off the European leg of their In Rainbows tour this weekend with a two-night stop in Dublin, bringing with them a new song “Super Collider.” The song had previously been sound-checked by the band, and Thom Yorkeused the encore portion of both Dublin shows to try the song out on a live audience with a solo performance. Check out the video above. Also performed during sound-checks, and posted in a video on Radiohead social network waste.central, is Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood attempting Portishead’s “The Rip,” from that group’s new album Third. The video, which was posted by Colin Greenwood, shows the duo covering the song backstage at the band’s show last month in St. Louis, Missouri.