It has now been over eight years since released a new record, the longest dormant period in the Oxford quintet’s career by some distance. But the band’s members have been anything but idle during that time. There have been solo excursions, side-projects, soundtracks and more.
Frontman Thom Yorke, for example, has been particularly prolific form of late. This year alone he released an excellent second album with , the trio he’s in alongside Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood, and also found the time to record the soundtrack to the Italian film . Yorke resisted any solo work until deep into the band’s career, eventually veering off on his own to make 2006’s whilst Radiohead debated how to tackle the record that would become .
He hasn’t looked back since, his solo and extra-curricular work often a place where he can try things that might not fit into Radiohead’s world, be it electronic experiments, looped techno beats, unsettling soundscapes or getting Flea to play bass. Here are ten of the best Yorke cuts away from the band where he made his name..
. The astounding highlight of Yorke’s 2006 solo debut , is one of the Radiohead frontman’s most political songs (it’s about the death of David Kelly, the Welsh scientist who said the UK government had wrongly claimed to have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq). It’s also one of his best, building up over intricate layers of skittish beats, a future-funk bassline and ominous synths until it breaks into a f.