dadada:

Jonny Greenwood: “The reaction in the UK has been strangely conservative in a way, complaints about lack of melody, really quite surreal, they've reviewed it like a Travis record or something, it's quite bizarre.”

Colin Greenwood: “Everyone wants a Travis record, five times platinum. I think it's great. I think the press that we've had in the UK was entirely predictable, because I think a lot of what the journalists were writing about was very much where our heads were at about eighteen months ago when we started this recording project. It was like a fear of trying different things and also sort of clinging on to old things and expectations of continuing the guitar thing from The Bends and OK Computer. It wasn't like these journalists had spent eighteen months with us in the studio going through the process, they had like forty-eight hours to listen to the record, and if I was them I'd probably have to give the same kind of verdict as well. [...] We've had some very bad reviews off people who think that we're trying to rip off people like Aphex Twin or Warp records artists, completely missing the point about what we're doing, which is... we're just like playing each other our records, and carrying on songwriting.”

dadada:

Jonny Greenwood: “It seems to have been received with a series of kicking, actually, in the press, to our amusement. Not amusement, but sort of... [sighs] I don't know, Colin should probably answer that.”

Colin Greenwood: “I think we didn't give people enough time to listen to it as a record when it first came out, and I also think that - to be honest - it's the nature of the times that we're currently in. The guitar music that is successful now is kind of... [...] A lot of people who were writing about us - they really like us, and people who really like you can be as dangerous as people who really hate you, because you can confound or disappoint their expectations. I think a lot of writers had expected us to come back and sort of save a certain kind of music genre from the pallid versions that had been put out a year later to much greater commercial success, they expected us to come back with a sort of combination of OK Computer and The Bends and sort of definitively stamp on all these sort of young six string whippersnappers.”

dadada:

Chris Douridas: “Kid A debuted at number one on the Billboard charts in the United States. Now, even to everyone's best expectations that was somewhat of a surprise. It was, I think, a revelation, or at least a reminder to record companies that, you know, good music can strike a chord across the so called ‘demographics’.”

Colin Greenwood: “The week when the record went number one in America was... it was very strange obviously. We were in New York and it was at number one. But everyone said it was a slow week for music, er... (laughs) How was it for you, Ed?”

Ed O’Brien: “(laughs) It was wonderful. No, it was great. I think one of the best things for me was that... we did this gig at Roseland. And people from different record companies were coming up and saying ‘I don’t work with your band, I’m with a rival label, but thank you, thank you, thank you, at last there’s something different in the industry’. The industry’s become so stale, there are set routes, you’ve got your boxes. ‘You’re a guitar band, you go in that box, you’re a hip-hop band, you go in that box’... It’s all bullshit, that stuff. It’s economic rationalisation, and I think one of the great things about this record is like hopefully it’ll stir up a few of those fat fuckers, the heads of the record companies, who’ve – sorry for the profanity (laughs), erm... music should not be subdivided into categories, music should be all over the shop. It’s not consistent, and it’s not rational, and that’s what's great about it. It should be freer (laughs).”

Chris: “You know, it's really shaken the rug up...”

Ed: “Well, I don’t know. In reality, I don’t know whether one album can do it, but hopefully it will give other bands the courage who’ll say ‘listen, we’ve sold this amount of records’... I mean that’s probably a bit arrogant on my part, saying that, but it would be nice to think that even record labels would go ‘ok, well we don’t know everything, we don’t have all the answers, and maybe this band, if they feel comfortable doing it this way, then that’s right’.”