[Opens with parts of Optimistic]
Sook-Yin Lee: "This crazy Kid A"
Thom: "Are we on then?"
Sook-Yin Lee: "Are we on? Kid A, a hauntingly beautiful creature."
[The following are incoherent edited sound bites with tracks of Kid A as background]
Sook-Yin Lee: "When we go to Kid A!"
Phil: "This really was going the next step."
Sook-Yin Lee: "We're just about to...*laughs*"
Phil: "We're very motivated"
Thom: "What are you doing?"
Thom: *Gibberish*
Thom: "It created a mu,mu,mo... [slaps himself] momentum to what we were doing"
[End of sound bites]
Sook-Yin Lee: "It comes out and its a bit confusing"
Thom: "I wasn't even coming into the studio personally, I wasn't even coming into the studio with fully formed songs."
Sook-Yin Lee: "Well, it captures your mind and brain and your imagination"
Thom: "Nigel Godrich had loads of trouble with, you know, standing there going, I'd be going 'what do you think' he goes 'well how the fuck should I know?'"
Phil: "I think we've always had very rigid structures, in our songs anyway, in the past. And everything was much looser this time around"
Sook-Yin Lee: "These are catchy tunes actually..."
Thom: "Ya, ya, thats..."
Sook-Yin Lee: "...in the guise of being strange"
[Everything In Its Right Place]
Sook-Yin Lee: "There's a great comforting feel to the music, to the, it almost feels like a lullabye."
Thom: "Really?"
Sook-Yin Lee: "Yeah, I find it very comforting"
Thom: "What, even on Kid A? Cause I find..."
Sook-Yin Lee: "This is Kid A! This is what I think *slaps CD case* I find it..."
Thom: "Really? Thats interesting, bits of it, bits of it are incredibly alarming"
[Part of Motion Picture Soundtrack plays]
Sook-Yin Lee: "Its, its got a lot of polarities, its comforting..."
[Part of Kid A plays]
Sook-Yin Lee: "...yet disturbing, its, disquieting, its alot, there's a sorta chaotic point in the center, but it um, you, a lot of your work..."
Thom: (coughs)
Sook-Yin Lee: "...has tapped into the sort of cultural anxiety with relationship to technology *laughs*"
Thom: "Shit..." *Thom apparently did something here*
[Intermission]
Thom: "When we started, doing, recording properly, uh, I'd bought a new notebook and put at the front 'Hoping for happy accidents', and thats basically what we were trying to do."
Phil: "There you are in the studio, you know, looking like some kind of three year old sat infront of a computer screen, not really knowing what you're doing."
Thom: "You know, I was just, just not exactly wild about using what we had before because, because I knew how tempting it would be just to use that, and that would be the solution to all our problems, you know, just to carry on where we left off..."
Sook-Yin Lee: "Easy to fall back on formula"
Thom: "..yeah"
Phil: "It just makes you just feel a bit thrilled really."
Thom: "If you're writing songs and, you know this will work, then you already know that it will not work. Do you know what I mean? You already know that you've been cheated of it."
Thom: "You just have this chaos going on a lot of the time"
Phil: "Where as in the past you might respond to a lyric or a vocal, those elements weren't there. Uhm, so, I dunno, you know, you've found as though you're clutching, clutching at thin air at points."
Thom: "And some things come out of it and you keep them and you go 'thats great', and uh... you're just waiting to get response back and that's why I've always been into computers, and they're the most fantastic cheat tool."
[Some Kid A music as intermission]
Sook-Yin Lee: "Your beautiful voi, Your beautiful voi, Your beautiful voice, and its just, this is an example: Your beautiful voice is just like *done to make it sound like in Kid A (standing in the shadows...)*"
Thom: "The song Kid A was written by Johnny, and all I was doing was talking through what johnny was playing."
Sook-Yin Lee: "Why? Why did you, uhm, distort and..."
Thom: "Uhm, I, uhm, it was basically, uhm, something, I'm not precious about the way my voice sounds at all, and I kind of had a problem with my own voice, uhm... and hearing people like myself on the radio made me not want to sound like me, uh, and I would do anything frankly to not sound like me. But yet still, you have to write and sing."
[The National Anthem]
Thom: "What I like about all the electronic stuff I hear is there is, uhm, there's, its the stuff that it throws back at you."
[Laughter and random beeping noises]
Thom: *In a funny voice* "Its the analog..."
Thom: "Its exactly the same thing as when you learn to play the guitar..."
Sook-Yin Lee: "Built inside you"
Thom: "...its like top gear, thats another thing americans really love, top gear"
Thom: "Uh, when you first learn certain sort of chords, or when you first learn to play an organ"
[Organ noises]
Thom: "Thats horrible!"
Thom: "Certain things will happen, like you're a total amateur"
[More random blips and organ noises]
Thom: "You're fired"
Sook-Yin Lee: *laughs* "That was my one note solo!"
[Random scratching noises as intermission]
Sook-Yin Lee: "Its an interesting piece of work because it does polarize people. In one regard like, uh you got half a star in the billboard magazine..."
Thom: "Excellent, out of what? ten?"
Sook-Yin Lee: "I dunno, I think five, half a star"
Thom: "Cool, thats something to be proud of, cause billboard really they've got their finger on the pulse so just face it."
Sook-Yin Lee: "You got half a star on billboard and then you got a two page cover in Time that says radiohead is God..."
Thom: "Hmmm"
Sook-Yin Lee: "...So it's one of those pieces that polarizes people."
Thom: "A little principle on this record of not reading anything that anybody writes, uhm, at all, about it at all, because it, last time it just phases me out completely."
[Parts of No Surprises plays]
Sook-Yin Lee: "Again, music to cut your wrists to"
Thom: "Took me two years to, uh, manage to turn off the critical monologue going on in the back of my head."
[Sound bite from Meeting People Is Easy "You know, critics love radiohead"]
Thom: "Especially the british media, they're like, a lot of it has been like, uh 'We've always loved you!' , you know, 'What do you mean?! We've always supported you!' , you know, and you sit there going 'you lying motherfuckers!' "
[No Surprises plays some more]
Person 1: "Its the most miserable song and tune I've ever heard"
Person 2: "Its not the sort of stuff you want on your first birthday to..."
Person 1: "No, no."
[Goes back to Thom]
Thom: "One, thing that I've picked up from the others is that, you know, that that, I saw on the front cover of some magazine, its like 'there's no melodies' "
[Parts of Idioteque]
Sook-Yin Lee: "If it's not guitar its in drums and bass, you're like 'What is this!' *lots of sarcasm*"
[Ending of In Limbo]
Thom: "It doesn't fit in the box, which is a bit of a shame really."
Thom: "I was looking at some website today, one of our unofficial sites and there was some quote from Jelebiah at the bottom saying uh, what was it, 'don't hate the media, be the media'. Which I thought, that was pretty cool."
[In Limbo]
Sook-Yin Lee: "You that documentary, 'Meeting People Is Easy' ? "
Sook-Yin Lee: "Oh my god, I watched that"
Sook-Yin Lee: "I was crying my hea..."
Thom: "Its good isn't it?"
Sook-Yin Lee: "I was crying my head off, over the whole thing, its..."
Thom: *laughs* "The idea was..."
Sook-Yin Lee: "...its, what a terrible experience!"
Thom: "...ya, it was like, the idea was to put you off doing it"
[Exerpts from Meeting People Is Easy "Hope to see you soon on tour, bye"]
Sook-Yin Lee: "How accurate then, is your portrayal...of you?"
Thom: "Where? I dont portray anything."
Sook-Yin Lee: "I know, in the media"
Thom: "Oh, its completely, ass, back, titface"
Sook-Yin Lee: "So, by and large your sense of the way you've been depicted is inaccurate"
Thom: "Yeah, but its like, its not, I dont, I dont care, you know what I mean, I think the people who, who understand, understand, and people who dont, dont, and I, I dont feel answerable to it, and I have no wish to fight it because its really their fault, but its their problem. I've definitely had enough."
Thom: "Anybody, any sort of creative artist who, who gets any successfu, gets into the public eye, or is doing something that's seen as new, uhm, will have their work stolen from under them, fairly quickly, by someone, some lame motherfucker in an advertising agency, who needs and idea quick. What? was it every fourth dollar in America was spent on marketing, its true, they're making a fortune, these people are. This is the thing that does my head in, you know, the advertising guy is being payed to go and find you, you know, find out how much money he's making every week, to go and find you!"
Thom: *evil voice* "We want the young blood, we're going to suck the young blood to keep us going, you know"
[Idioteque]
[Optimistic]
Sook-Yin Lee: "Like, its kinda cool, you've set out to, you're doing lots of stuff like on your own terms."
[Part of National Anthem plays]
Thom: "We're not just making music, we talk about other things and it becomes your life, uhm, and it, and it does translate into what you're doing in your music, in a funny sort of way. You only realize it in retrospect."
Sook-Yin Lee: "How did you find some sort of grouding point or understanding of what you were trying to make?"
Phil: "Uhm, I think one of the big things is getting into our own studio eventually, you know, thats how we always envisaged making the album, it would be in our own place."
Thom: "It was sort of trying to start again, which is what I wanted to do you know. I wanted to stick with these people and make music because I know that the sum total of what we do is far better than what I would do on my own or with Johnny"
Phil: "We could actually have all these different elements, you know, for recording, for rehearsing, for the artwork being put together there in the kind of visual side of it. So once we can actually see all those things coming together in one place and they're all playing off each other, you know, that creates a real momentum in itself."
Thom: "Even when it sort of feels like you're, uh, totally shooting yourself in the foot, you're not really, because you're just following, you know, you've been put on earth to do that particular thing, and you do that."
Sook-Yin Lee: "And its survival..."
Thom: "There comes a point where you really have to stop apologizing for it really..."
Sook-Yin Lee: "Stop apologizing?"
Thom: "Yeah"
Sook-Yin Lee: "For sure"
Thom: "Just get on with it"
[Parts of National Anthem]
Thom: "Its just such, uh, a precious thing to create a space where you go and you work and its creative, but its pure anarchy as well, its really fun."
Phil: "This is going to sound incredibly touchy feely, but just, just five of us and Nigel as well just sitting down and us having endless talks and debates at points about what had happened in the past seven years of being signed and fourteen years of working together as a band, and just trying to be as honest as possible with each other, you know, what we wanted out of our working arrangement"
Thom: "In the studio, everybody is sort of, its got this gallery area, uh and thats where stanley is, and..."
Sook-Yin Lee: "Who's Stanley?"
Thom: "The guy who does the artwork..."
Sook-Yin Lee: "Oh, OK"
Thom: "...with us, well he does it really, I got there, and messed around with him while the others are doing stuff downstairs and we'd shout down the stuff and they'd shout back."
Sook-Yin Lee: "That sounds fun!"
Thom: "Yeah it is, its really good fun actually. So what I mean, it goes late on into the night and early into the morning, and by the end of it everyone just feels terrible, because we're all drunk or whatever and just can't feel anything. But it was great, you know, obviously you can't do it for months on end because you go completely lala."
[Parts of Kid A]
Thom: "Anyways, so these words came out of all the notes and all the bits and pieces, that weren't, uh, that were left, uhm, and we thought, oh well we don't want to lose these, you know, and we just started putting them together and realized that there was this stream of concious to this thing running right through it and it was kind of like 'wow, thats a bit scary' just starts at one place and gets to the other, and to me it makes perfect sense."
Sook-Yin Lee: "I slip away, I slipped on a little white lie, we've got heads on sticks, you've got ventriliquistes standing in the shadows at the end of my bed, the rats and the children follow me out of town, come on kids!"
Sook-Yin Lee: "Bodies floating down the stream, the truck loads of meshetees, the cameras are turning off, you can watch birds picking over the bodies, the cameras and the flies, too much to drink...and on and on and on, very disturbing images, it almost felt like, I was uhm, it was almost like an explosion of turrets, you're having there."
Thom: "Yeah, dressed up in tuxedos with the orchestra at the ball and it slides like slime through your wallpaper wall, with a grin like road kill and the bloody power of kings, I sneeze and its an exocet I cough a new disease *coughs* "
Sook-Yin Lee: "You didn't have a new single, you didn't have a video, you had the blips and yet it goes to number 1 on the billboard, I mean, you are charting at a different route, you know, you dont have to 'tour' for months..."
Thom: "Yeah"
Sook-Yin Lee: "...still..."
Thom: "Its pretty pointless as well"
Sook-Yin Lee: "What is the aspect that makes it such a grind?"
Thom: "You disassociate yourself from, uhm, the moment, from the world around you, from the people you know, because you've basically, you know, become this monster."
Sook-Yin Lee: "The typical touring in arenas, the way in which artists are put through the bowels of the music industry and promotional machine."
Thom: "I know other people in other bands, at the moment being forced into doing things, that really, knowing them and knowing how delicate they are, should really be fucking not doing them."
Colin: "I used to really like the interviews, but I really hate them now, well I dont hate them, but they're getting really incoherent, no i'm sorry, I dont hate it, thats not true"
Thom: "The pressure that they're under to do these things is too much and they can't handle it, so they cave in."
Phil: "I think you actually feel like you're trying to shoe horn youself into a very established cycle."
Sook-Yin Lee: "There are ways to break the mould."
Thom: "If we've had had nine months schedule, then I would have snapped in a week, you know, but basically the whole thing is over in, uh, two weeks time, over over over over, thats it, you know, and then we decide what to do next year, and I can't tell you how good that feels."
[Random noises as intermission]
Sook-Yin Lee: "This is my system, this is where I make music."
Thom: "You can get some money can't you?..."
Sook-Yin Lee: "I could..."
Thom: "...buy some near gear?"
Sook-Yin Lee: "I could get money, but I like that gear."
Sook-Yin Lee: "Hey, do you think you're an optimist or a pessimist?"
Thom: " *sigh* definitely an optimist"
Sook-Yin Lee: "Oh cool"
Thom: "mmm, definitely"
Sook-Yin Lee: "A lot of your work does address, you know, more painful aspects of living."
Thom: "They're starting to be, like a language in which to, uh, address issues that have been impossible to address, uh, in day to day experience. Its about the invasion of your space, its about the invasion of your ideas and your emotions and your feelings."
Sook-Yin Lee: "You acknowledge some of the crap that's going on in the world. But that's part of your optimism isn't it?"
Thom: "Basically, uh, its blahaaa...aa..a.lala, blalalala..."
Sook-Yin Lee: "Blahlalalalahahaahahalala"
Thom: "...basically."
Sook-Yin Lee: "It seems like it has a function to address, the most sort of negative, painful aspects."
Thom: "Uh, you know, f...f...for me the way that I, yeah, I use music in order to address those things, and when you get something good coming out of it, then its sort of like a really great leap forward, so, uhm, I'm lucky that I've got that, you know, other people have to do it other ways, but uhm, its cool you know...I'm into that."
[Parts of how to dissappear completely]
Sook-Yin Lee: "So you've got validation from your public through the industry which you have a love-hate relationship with, uhm, are you able to get the validation from yourself?"
Thom: "Uhm, I really get it when we finish something that I like still, you know. I quite like doing shows again though, I thought I'd hate doing gigs again."
[Parts of Optimisitc]
Sook-Yin Lee: "What or who is your god?"
Thom: "Uh, wa, uh, not really, I don't know, doesn't have a name."
Sook-Yin Lee: "But you do get a sense of afterlife or..."
Thom: "No"
Sook-Yin Lee: "Cool, uhm..."
Thom: "I get it from like walking around, the old worldsworth thing, walking through the country"
Sook-Yin Lee: " *quoting morning bell* Walking, walking, walking , walking , walking, walking, walking"
Thom: "Yeah, big style"
Sook-Yin Lee: "And you just feel like 'woof!' beauty..."
Thom: "Yeah, you get blown around on a cliff and that sorta thing and carrying on hedgerows and a thunderstorm and things like that, you're definitely meeting him."
Sook-Yin Lee: "And last question is where do you derive solice from? what makes you the happiest?"
Thom: "Uh, uhm, swimming in the sea."
Sook-Yin Lee: "Really?"
Thom: "Yeah, or..."
Sook-Yin Lee: "You do that a lot?"
Thom: "...or walking...walking, walking , walking , walking..."
[Sound bite of Morning Bell "walking walking walking...."]
Sook-Yin Lee: "...good"
Thom: "Fairly normal isn't it?"
Sook-Yin Lee: "Yeah, yeah, sure."