Nihal Arthanayake: I'm kind of struggling for words here because Thom Yorke is someone that seemed ungettable as a guest. I just wondered whether he would ever come on to BBC Radio 5 Live. You know, perhaps not the natural home for Thom Yorke.

So it was great that we eventually caught up with him. The reason being that he has written the soundtrack for a movie. It's a remake of the 1977 Dario Argento film Suspiria, and it is a terrifying soundtrack. If he wanted to spook us in an audio sense in the same way that the new version will spook you in a visual sense, he has succeeded.

But don't take my word for it. Let's listen to a bit of the track "Volk", and then afterwards let's listen to Thom himself talking to me.

Nihal Arthanayake: It's what you've just done, isn't it?

Thom Yorke: Was it?

Nihal Arthanayake: Yes. It's terrifying. Claustrophobic. It's unsettling.

In fact, I tweeted how excited I was to interview you because of this monumentally unsettling piece of work you've put into the world.

Thom Yorke: That's good. Well, I guess that's what was happening.

It was terrifying for me to listen to it, but I wasn't terrified by the process of having to create it, which perhaps I didn't realise how terrifying it was until I started to put it together as a record.

It might sound a bit stupid, but when you're working in the context of a film you're working to, "We need this kind of thing here, we need this kind of thing there," and then you make your responses to it.

When you remove it from that and just listen to it for what it is, you realise there's something else going on here as well.

I found myself going into some fantastically dark spaces, which was making me feel much better—partly because I had no idea I could do that, and partly because it was probably something I'd always wanted to do without realising it.

Nihal Arthanayake: Yet if the press is to be believed, it took Luca some time to persuade you to do it.

Thom Yorke: That's mostly because I'm so flaky.

We met one time and I was definitely interested, but I was thinking about other things. Then we met again in London, where he was talking about the central dance piece, which is called "Volk." As he was speaking, something clicked in my head that I could do with it. It really intrigued me and I couldn't shake it off, so I ended up saying, "Yes, sure. Okay."

I think what finally persuaded me was when I went down to see them, initially when they were setting up to film in this old derelict hotel. It reminded me of a few times we'd done things during The Bends, OK Computer and other records, where we'd roll up in derelict buildings and speak to ourselves on a massive scale.

I was hooked after that, really.

Nihal Arthanayake: The clichéd term is "comfort zone", but I don't know if you've ever really had a comfort zone. Do you have one?

Thom Yorke: Yeah. Everybody does.

Nihal Arthanayake: Musically? Creatively?

Thom Yorke: Yeah, you do.

I mean, I could knock up another record of super-forlorn songs... but I'm not going to.

Nihal Arthanayake: So, in terms of being taken to dark spaces, does it make that any easier when someone is giving you the imagery to help you go to those dark places?

Thom Yorke: This is one thing Jonny showed me quite early on.

There's a process of absorbing what they want from you—absorbing a script or whatever—but then removing yourself from it and working in abstraction so you don't freeze up.

I think if you watch the same sequence over and over again you get stuck. You cease to be creative. The more fun thing is to try things, throw them against the picture and see whether you're close, or what you can do to make them fit.

There are a few sequences. There's one with this amazing dancer who throws herself against a mirrored room until gradually her limbs break because she's under the spell.

You read it in the script and think, "Well, that's going to need a fairly vicious, angry-sounding piece of music."

But actually I went completely the other way. It's just a little piano melody coming from a tape recorder, but because of the screaming and the sound effects they put with it, it becomes the most horrible thing.

Having something gentle underneath somebody screaming while their limbs are breaking...

I discovered along the way that the obvious thing is to do something really dramatic, whereas sometimes the opposite works better.

I didn't want to do any normal horror clichés because it's not that sort of film. Early on, Luca was talking about the melancholy of the film, and that's really what I identified with.

I loved the idea of taking melancholy melodies and stretching them, pulling them into places they wouldn't normally go—taking nice melodies and turning them into horror melodies.

Nihal Arthanayake: So you decided to jump in at the deep end.

Thom Yorke: One hundred percent. Sustainably in at the deep end.

I knew I was in when Luca was setting up and there was a crew of three hundred people, a costume department of twenty people, and you're thinking, "Okay... and who's doing the music?"

Muggins.

Everyone's looking at you.

"Can you do this by next week?"

"Sure..."

Nihal Arthanayake: Were you ever used to that kind of pressure? Because with albums, when you were signed to Parlophone...

Thom Yorke: We never did deadlines. No, really.

That was the first thing that went after "Creep". It was like, "Okay, you've made us some money, so in return you never have deadlines again."

Nihal Arthanayake: Must have worked well for their quarterly figures.

Thom Yorke: Not for us making a record during that quarter. Not that it would have mattered.

Nihal Arthanayake: Was there a point during the process of writing Suspiria where it went from being the burden of expectation to becoming the freedom of doing something that was, in some ways, even more liberating than writing your own solo material or Radiohead music?

Thom Yorke: I didn't necessarily feel the burden of expectation because I knew what Luca was doing was so different from the original Suspiria.

He watched it when he was a kid and carried it somewhere else in his imagination. I understood that fairly quickly, so I wasn't bothered about that.

It was just technically difficult for me.

I can't read music, so I had to go through that whole process.

I was really lucky because I was working with Hugh and the LCO. The first thing Hugh said was, "Well, it's the same. It doesn't matter."

Jonny had been saying that for years, but I'd always let Jonny do it because he knew how to write music to that level.

Then I realised that what I do on the computer—editing, splicing and moving things around—is still a score. It's the same thing.

Initially things like that were absolutely terrifying. I kept thinking, "I can't do that. What am I doing?"

But the deadline forced me to stop sitting in the kitchen moaning about it and just get on with it.

Nihal Arthanayake: You didn't sit in front of the director, Luca Guadagnino, and say, "Listen, I didn't do deadlines for Parlophone. I'm certainly not doing them for you."

Thom Yorke: No, I didn't do that. No, because I understood I was one small cog in a much larger machine.

It was the biggest ordeal, but in a way it's the thing I'm technically most proud of, because if you see the film in the cinema and the surround system is working, the music becomes one with the image. Bits of it break off into the cinema. Some of the melodies go into the roof, some go into the floor, some spin around the space.

When we had the premiere in Venice, that was, for me, an artistic highlight of my career, to be honest. I hate saying that, but it was one of those situations where you hope you'll pull it off. Sam, who produced it with me, and I were sitting there with our fingers crossed, and then one day you're just sitting there thinking, "Nailed it."

It was an ordeal, but I've learned that when you're pushed into a place where you really don't understand what's going on, that's usually the best place to be—once you've come out the other side.

Nihal Arthanayake: Thom, if you analyse it now, what are the differences between being in a band, being a solo artist, and writing film scores? What are the particular joys of creating a score as opposed to making solo records or working with Radiohead?

Thom Yorke: Being a solo artist is a drag. Always.

You can't generate ideas and judge whether they're good or bad at the same time, so everything takes longer unless you're really lucky. You'll have good days and bad days, but a lot of the time you're knocking things out with no idea whether any of it's actually any good.

When you collaborate with other people, you're bouncing ideas around. Things happen that you don't expect. It's a much faster process and you discover different things about yourself.

Watching something you've doodled with a microphone, or whatever, being given to professional players and singers—and then seeing them bring it to life—is incredible. What you've given them might be a relatively simple idea, but what they give back is something where you just think, "Wow."

They bring themselves to it.

That is super fun.

Nihal Arthanayake: Have you been invigorated by the experience?

Thom Yorke: I went into it blindly, and it was really tough.

Now I'm working with Nigel on my own stuff, and I don't feel any sense of intimidation about trying things or breaking off into different places. I don't care anymore.

Nihal Arthanayake: So Suspiria has done that for you?

Thom Yorke: Yeah. I think it was taking control of such a large project, and such an abstract project.

Nihal Arthanayake: Did you listen to the Blade Runner soundtrack again?

Thom Yorke: Blade Runner? Yeah, I did.

Nihal Arthanayake: Vangelis.

Thom Yorke: Weren't they using the CS-80? The heaviest synthesizer ever made.

Nihal Arthanayake: Electronica geekery coming through there.

Thom Yorke: Yeah.

I could literally sit there and listen to a CS-80 all day.

Nihal Arthanayake: As pop quizzes go, the days must fly by.

Thom Yorke: You should listen to Wendy Carlos. The opening of The Shining, when the car is driving towards the hotel—that's amazing.

Nihal Arthanayake: When you're so close to this material, do you ever manage to unsettle yourself? Presumably you have to play it back over and over again. Do you switch all the lights off and create the atmosphere?

Thom Yorke: It did creep me out listening to sections of it.

Nihal Arthanayake: Good. That was exactly the point.

Thom Yorke: Especially "Volk".

Nihal Arthanayake: I want to go to a rave halfway through it.

Thom Yorke: Oh, really?

Nihal Arthanayake: Yeah.

Thom Yorke: You could probably go halfway through, but then you'd have to come back and have a cup of coffee before starting the second record.

I mean, the record descends. Depending how you look at it, it isn't an easy listen. It ends up somewhere that really isn't pleasant.

My studio is in the basement of my house, and I'd spend most of the time down there working, looking at people being dismembered. Then the kids would come back from school...

Nihal Arthanayake: Family business.

Thom Yorke: "Yeah... you can't come in now. Not for this bit."

No, it did sometimes become a bit odd, which was actually quite funny.

Nihal Arthanayake: Has it made you think differently about how you divide your time in the future between Radiohead, solo work and film scores? Scores must take up an enormous amount of time—and emotional energy.

Thom Yorke: This one certainly did. It was completely all-encompassing.

If I chose to do another one, I'd try not to let it become like that. It became an obsession where I couldn't really focus on anything else.

I wouldn't jump into another score if it was going to consume me in the same way.

Nihal Arthanayake: So what would your criteria be for the next score?

Thom Yorke: Quick.

Nihal Arthanayake: Incredible.

Thom Yorke: And preferably involving me not spending months alone in the basement.

Nihal Arthanayake: Disney animated movies, so the kids can at least come in.

Thom Yorke: (laughs) Nice. Something nice.

Nihal Arthanayake: Have you seen the whole film all the way through now?

Thom Yorke: Yeah.

Nihal Arthanayake: How many times?

Thom Yorke: Are you kidding?

Nihal Arthanayake: Does it still have the same effect on you? I believe you're quite a horror fan.

Thom Yorke: Yeah, it still has an effect. Especially the scenes I worked hardest on. They don't get old for me, which is really cool.

I don't really know why. I mean, I was obsessed with The Exorcist around the time of OK Computer, which probably explains a lot.

Nihal Arthanayake: That's right. You used to watch it on your own on the tour bus.

Thom Yorke: At the back of the bus, yeah.

Nihal Arthanayake: While everybody else was watching something else.

Thom Yorke: It got me in the mood.

Nihal Arthanayake: As self-help DVDs go...

Thom Yorke: Don't put Ennio Morricone on the bus from that period...

Nihal Arthanayake: (laughs)

Thom Yorke: Yeah.

Nihal Arthanayake: How do you get yourself out of that mood? Once you've been sitting on the back of the tour bus on your own watching The Exorcist...

Thom Yorke: I kind of thought it was funny, so there's probably something wrong with me.

Nihal Arthanayake: I went back to Hail to the Thief, actually, and to the context around that. It struck me that the context now seems even more extreme than the one that gave rise to the energy of Hail to the Thief.

I wonder whether that all comes back, or whether you feel you've already explored what can happen—the resurgence of the far right and a world in chaos—so you don't necessarily have to return to that.

Thom Yorke: It's been very strange touring with Radiohead recently.

So many of the songs—not just the Hail to the Thief period—are political, and they've somehow become more relevant with age once they've been taken out of the period they were written in.

I'm like everybody else. I'm suffering from a form of paralysis.

I grew up in an atmosphere where we believed we could change things. I grew up watching Thatcher, and it always seemed obvious to me that politics and music went together—that whatever art you're making should address what you see and what you feel.

Politics is part of what you see and feel.

Now it's like... how many times can you watch this level of corruption being thrown in your face without asking, "Why aren't we angry?"

If people are dying on trolleys in A&E, or not getting the care they need when they have terminal cancer, then surely at some point we should say, "Maybe the system has broken down. Maybe we should be doing something about it."

Instead, everybody just...

It feels like the issues we were addressing then—watching Bush come into power felt like the end of the world at the time—and then it just keeps getting worse.

Which is weird.

Nihal Arthanayake: I wonder if that paralysis comes from the fact that resistance used to be something shared. You formulated resistance collectively.

The irony of social media—the irony of Twitter, or getting your news from Facebook, God help you—is that there's no longer any certainty about what's true.

Thom Yorke: Exactly.

If you undermine the very idea of truth, then people become immune to what's happening.

That's when things become dangerous.

That's when things begin to feel a little like Alone in Berlin—that extraordinary novel about resistance during the Second World War, about the couple leaving postcards around Berlin when nobody was prepared to speak the truth or even look the truth in the face.

Everybody was informing on everybody else.

I feel we're moving towards a climate where something like that could happen again.

We're not there yet, but the intimidation and aggression surrounding any form of public statement—or simply putting your head above the parapet on social media—creates a climate of fear.

It creates a feeling of powerlessness, and that opens the door to exactly the same forces that brought us to the Second World War.

That's what's happening.

Nihal Arthanayake: You asked what it feels like looking back at those songs.

Thom Yorke: In this context, those songs feel like alarm bells.

They were knee-jerk reactions written by people who'd grown up during thirty years of political anger, expecting that anger to be shared by others.

And it is.

When we play those songs in front of fifty thousand people, you can feel that anger.

The irony is that when we play in America—this started about a year after Bush came to power—and we get to the line, "Bring down the government, they don't speak for us," the place just erupts.

You can actually feel something happen.

That song wasn't written about that at all, but it becomes a conduit for people.

They've come to hear music, and suddenly they're given an opportunity to be properly angry.

I don't think we're given that opportunity now because the anger is constantly being misdirected.

It's nullified.

It's misinformed.

People are being duped.

We should be angry, but we don't know where to direct it.

Nihal Arthanayake: Do you feel, then, that music no longer has the power to change the world—or perhaps that it never did?

Thom Yorke: It always has, and it always will.

Any art form—television, music, painting, writing—they're all part of something bigger.

They can't change things on their own.

I remember one of our managers coming to us years ago saying, "Nokia would like to give you two million pounds because you're content creators, and they've got a new phone that needs content."

I remember thinking, "Content? Lovely content."

Suddenly everything I'd been trying to do all the way through art college just collapsed in front of me.

I thought, "I'm an idiot."

If that's what people think this is, then they've completely misunderstood it.

It's not content.

For a lot of people, it's life or death.

People come up to me in the street and say, "Your music helped me through a really difficult time."

I used to hear that and think, "Yeah, yeah..."

Now I understand.

Music does that.

Writing does that.

That's simply what art does.

It's not about building me up. It's true of any good artist.

You're trying to make sense of the world—not just for yourself, but for other people as well.

So of course it's important.

Of course it can change things.

Nihal Arthanayake: Thom, people will be screaming at the radio because you mentioned Nigel Godrich.

When are people going to hear the fruits of your and Nigel's labours?

Thom Yorke: Soon.

Nihal Arthanayake: Ah...

Thom Yorke: No, listen—that wasn't an announcement.

We've already thought about when we're going to release it.

Hopefully early next year.

I don't know.

We'll see how quickly it comes together.

Sometimes it happens quickly, sometimes it doesn't.

As soon as I can finish doing all this...

Nihal Arthanayake: Which I know you love.

Thom Yorke: What have I been saying?

Give me more coffee.

Nihal Arthanayake: It's been amazing, Thom.

Thank you for taking the time to speak to me.

Thom Yorke: Thanks.