Have Radiohead Just Previewed Their Next Album?

September 2, 2014

Influential British band Radiohead may have just blessed their ever-loyal fanbase with a preview of their highly-anticipated ninth studio album, via an update to their PolyFauna mobile app. Launched in February 2014, the experimental virtual reality app initially featured music from the band’s 2011 album The King Of Limbs. It now features new and unreleased music of uncertain origin.

On Monday 1st September, PolyFauna was updated to version 2.0, with no announcement from the band aside from a set of tweets posted by frontman Thom Yorke (below) highlighting the app’s new visuals. Fans of the band who updated or downloaded the app were greeted by new landscapes in PolyFauna 2.0, accompanied by previously unheard music, whose creation remains credited to Radiohead. Some helpful fans have even uploaded the music from the app online (below), allowing others to share in the mystery.

The music featured in the app, which often sees Yorke harmonising with electronic percussion or having his vocals cut up and repositioned, could be offering a glimpse into the sound and aesthetic the band are heading towards on album number 9.

If that’s exactly what’s happening, the aesthetic appears sparse, with electronic beats, filmic soundscapes and plenty of reverberating synth and piano. The band have said that they plan to begin recording their next album in September, with Yorke having already brainstormed some ideas with guitarist Jonny Greenwood.

Interestingly, Yorke has also shared this photo via Twitter, depicted a figure with a large head. This figure does not appear in PolyFauna, and its origins are unknown. The framing on the shot does resemble a video, however, leading some fans to speculate that a new Radiohead video is on its way.

When Radiohead first launched PolyFauna, Thom Yorke described it as a project which came “from an interest in early computer-life experiments and the imagined creatures of our subconscious”. The app initially featured The King of Limbs‘ track Bloom, and was developed by Radiohead, their producer Nigel Godrich, artist BFF Stanley Donwood and digital arts studio Universal Everything.

PolyFauna can be downloaded for iPhone and iPad via iTunes and for Android via Google Play, although the Android version has not been updated to version 2.0 at the time of writing.

Listen: PolyFauna 2.0 Track 1