Guitarist Ed O’Brien has announced he will become the next Radiohead member to go solo with plans to release an album next year.
Frontman Thom Yorke has released two solo albums as has drummer Phillip Selway and now O’Brien is also going to release music outside of the Radiohead juggernaut.
He told BBC Radio 6 that he plans on dropping an album next year.
“We’ve attempted to do something like a full solo album — you know, stand there on the mountaintop with the hair going and the Les Paul and create a whole Ed O’Brien,” he said.
“I haven’t up until two years ago but I am going to now. I’m gonna do one next year.”
The record was started a long time ago, in the early 2000s when O’Brien was living in Brazil with his family, ” on a little farm”.
“I would go each day, walk up the hill to this beautiful little hut next to this lake, and I started writing,” he said but later decided what he was making was “rubbish”.
Eventually though he was inspired by Carnival in Rio. He was particularly excited by the procession of samba schools (which is a club or dancing school) which paraded from 10 at night until 6 in the morning.
“It was the greatest thing I’ve ever, ever, ever experienced in terms of music,” he said.
“Everyone sings. There must be 4000 people on each samba school who parade down there, and the combination of writing music and that feeling of being there and being like, ‘Oh my god, music can be like this.’”
As such, it’s inspired much of his writing which means we can probably expect to hear elements of Brazilian music when he releases the record next year.
He’s going to be extremely busy given that Radiohead have spent much of this year on a world tour in support of A Moon Shaped Pool. At this stage, however, it’s unknown whether O’Brien will tour the project or not.
You can listen to his full BBC interview here.
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