Category: Phil Selway

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Ed O'Brien GP Phil Selway Radiohead Stanley Donwood

Radiohead Lately

pandemoniumx3

It’s been a while since our last post. Here’s what you (and we) have missed:

Radiohead opens up a new digital store. You can now purchase the In Rainbows CD2, as well as other treats.

Radiohead’s Kid A, Amnesiac, Hail to the Thief Get Deluxe Reissue Treatment. Capitol is at it again. (via Pitchfork)

Ed and Phil are being included on the Neil Finn supergroup benefit album. It’s called The Sun Came Out and will feature the singing debut of Phil. Yeah!

Stanley Donwood exhibits new work in Bristol ‘EL CHUPACABRA’.

Stanley’s apt choice of title ‘El Chupacabra’, meaning ‘the goat sucker’ in Spanish is his response to suffering a long fixation with the horned gods and having to live amongst some of the most mendacious economic times he can remember provoking him to start making pictures of Pandemons.

“I’ve got nothing against goats. I’ve simply discovered that if I draw a goat, give it the mouth of a rapacious carnivore then dress it in the suit and tie of a disgraced banker or politician it looks fucking evil. There are thirteen Pandemons in the show called ‘el chupacabra’. Thirteen ghosts at the funeral. Thirteen spectres at the feast of the goat. Loitering on the blackened cliffs of free-market economics, cackling as they raise a glass to toast Milton Friedman, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Augusto Pinochet. Gallons of paint I’ve poured over them to drown their snickering. But still they laugh.” Comments Stanley Donwood.

Sounds amazing.

And finally, you’ll notice a new look to GP. This is our first major design change in over 6 years. After dozens of mockups, we’re finally settled on this look, which should hopefully be more clean and simple. Many of the sections are still old so we’re working to convert those over. Until then, things may be a bit stupid.

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Phil Selway

Video of Phil singing, playing guitar

Woah. Here it is ladies and gentlemen.


(via Atease)

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Ed O'Brien Phil Selway

Review of 7 Worlds Collide: Phil Sings!

The New Zealand Herald has posted up a review of the first night of 7 World’s Collide, a series of live performances Neil Finn has put on for Oxfam. Radiohead’s Ed and Phil, who took part in Finn’s 2001 version of 7 Worlds Collide, came again to lend their support. Other artists there include Jeff Tweedy, KT Tunstall, Don McGlashan, Bic Runga, Liam Finn, among others.

The second half largely belonged to a combination of the Wilco and Radiohead songbook, a match seemingly made in rock-crit heaven.
It also provided the night’s biggest wobble. Finn snr wrestled manfully with the vocal to Radiohead’s Bodysnatchers, but couldn’t quite pin Thom Yorke’s original hyperventilations over its monster riff. Not one for the live concert DVD perhaps.

Radiohead’s drummer Phil Selway delivered one of the night’s nicest surprises in what was his live singing debut of a rather lovely self-penned song destined for the album.

Read the full review here.
(Thanks to Ollie)

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Ed O'Brien Phil Selway

Ed and Phil to perform with Neil Finn

Neil FinnOld news, we know:

GP reader Simeon sent us the following:

Amazing musicians coming together in 3 New Zealand concerts including Radiohead members (from www.oxfam.org.nz). Concerts are 5, 6 and 7 January at The Powerstation in Auckland. Post if your interested:

Neil Finn announces new Seven Worlds Collide project
Music icon and Crowded House frontman Neil Finn has today announced a follow up to the acclaimed Seven Worlds Collide project, and together with members of the original lineup and other artists, he will record an album of entirely new material in support of Oxfam.

“Seven years ago I invited a few friends and fellow musicians to do a special series of concerts in New Zealand under the banner Seven Worlds Collide. The concerts were an amazing experience for all of us and we are delighted to have found an opportunity to gather again, this time to expand the concept and the lineup too,” said Finn. “What will make these sessions particularly meaningful is that all the proceeds of this recording will go to support the continuing great work of Oxfam International.”

Taking part from the original Seven Worlds Collide lineup will be Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien and Phil Selway, guitar supremo Johnny Marr founder of The Smiths and current member of US alternative rock innovators Modest Mouse, Soul Coughing bassist Sebastian Steinberg, songwriter and violinist Lisa Germano, and Liam Finn. Other artists joining the project include Jeff Tweedy, John Stirrat, Glenn Kotche and Pat Sansone from Wilco, and New Zealand songwriters Bic Runga and Don McGlashan. Behind the mixing desk will be master recording engineer Jim Scott. More names will be added to the lineup in the coming weeks.

“We are honoured to be working with Neil and so many other talented and committed artists on this project, many of whom have supported Oxfam over a number of years,” said Oxfam New Zealand Executive Director Barry Coates. “At a time when the number of people living in extreme poverty is growing, funds generated from this project will be urgently directed to those in need, providing opportunities and hope for a better future.”

The album will be recorded over the next few months in Auckland’s Roundhead Studios and is due for release in 2009.

Like its predecessor, the project will also see a series of concerts featuring many of the artists included in the lineup. The shows will take place in Auckland early in the New Year. Details will be announced soon.

“Everyone is really excited about coming together again with a few new faces and extending the magic we created with Seven Worlds the first time round,” added Finn. “With such an amazing group of people, I’m excited about the music we’ll be making.”

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In Rainbows Jonny Greenwood Phil Selway Radiohead

Radiohead on CNN.com

There is a lengthy article/interview with the band on cnn.com for your reading pleasure.
Here’s a bit:

As unified as “In Rainbows” sounds, it took years to complete. The band began recording it with producer Mark Stent, the first time in years they didn’t work with Nigel Godrich.

The attempt was futile and Radiohead set out on tour to help bring the new songs into shape. When they returned to the studio, they went back to Godrich, considered the unofficial sixth member because of his importance in helping refine the group’s sound. (Colin calls his wealth of gear “like Aladdin’s cave.”)

“The key thing in actually propelling it forward was Nigel coming back into the process,” said Selway, 41. “The reality when we got in there was it still wasn’t good enough. We really had to raise our standards quite a lot.”

Typically, songs begin with Yorke writing something on piano or guitar with vocals and fleshing it out with the multi-instrumentalist Jonny Greenwood. Then the band works together to find the right arrangement, a process that can be tortuous. “Videotape” underwent, Yorke jokes, hundreds of versions before finding the right minimalist sound.

“We still sometimes get overawed by the songs,” said Greenwood. “We’ll get very attached to a song as an idea in its very basic form, but we also know we can’t really leave it like that. So that’s what we spend our time talking about and planning and thinking about. Thom will sit and play ‘Pyramid Song’ on piano, for example, and it’s obviously not finished. It needs a rhythm to propel it along. But what do you do with it and yet not mess it up? So that’s the sort of enjoyable pressure we like to be under.”

Though the method of release overshadowed the music of “In Rainbows” somewhat, it’s been almost universally hailed as a masterpiece. Yorke has been quoted as calling it “our classic album, our ‘Transformer,’ our ‘Revolver,’ our ‘Hunky Dory’ ” — a statement he said is a misquote: “I do talk some … but I didn’t say that.”

His point, he said, is that they strove to make a similarly concise work as those albums.

Read the rest….
(thanks to Alex)

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Colin Greenwood Ed O'Brien Jonny Greenwood Phil Selway Radiohead Thom Yorke

Excellent Radiohead Interview from Word Magazine

Word MagazineIf you get a chance, check out this great interview The Word did with the band. Here’s a snippet:

What do people most often get wrong about Radiohead?

Thom Yorke: We play up to the tortuous thing a bit too much. It’s not quite like that in the band. But also, this idea that there’s some sort of masterplan, that we’ve got some sort of clue what we’re doing… We haven’t.

Ed O’Brien: I used to think that maybe people didn’t know that there’s actually a great sense of humour in the band. But maybe the webcasts and a few of the things we did last year show that we’re not entirely super-serious all the time. You can’t do what we do without humour. It’s a lot easier to be melancholic in music. We struggle with songs of joy. That’s the tough part.

Phil Selway: People have got a pretty accurate take on us, I think. It can be uncomfortable because some of those takes are less than flattering, but they’re probably valid. You know, po-faced and over-serious… fair point, really. People are starting to pick up on the more playful side of Radiohead, which we hope has come to the fore in the past few years but, you know, no smoke without fire.

Jonny Greenwood: That we’re grumpy. People confuse the work with the people who make it. We’re not necessarily like our songs. Also I think they misunderstand Thom, and how really tiresomely energetic and enthusiastic he can be. Even when the rest of us are flagging, he’s the one with the energy and the excitement who’s saying, “Come on, this sounds amazing, what you’re doing is great.” That’s really good for us and I don’t think anyone knows it.
Read the rest…