UPDATE 09/05/16: Radiohead’s new album A Moon Shaped Pool has been released. Here’s everything you need to know.
Radiohead are up to mischief again. And when they’re up to mischief, it usually means they’re about to drop a new album.
First of all, all their digital media outlets have gone fully white. Their website slowly faded down over the weekend to complete opacity, while their Facebook and Twitter accounts have been similarly nuked – all posts have been deleted, both profile and cover photos are all white.
Also, fans who had signed up to band’s old-school snail mail initiative have received cryptic flyers in their mail, reading: “Sing the song of sixpence that goes/Burn the Witch/We know where you live”, accompanied by a photo of what appears to be some geological formation and an embossed Radiohead logo. Burn the Witch is the name of a song that has been floating around the band’s heads for about ten years; that, or the band is a fan of mid-2000s Queens of the Stone Age.
WAS LISTENING TO RADIOHEAD WHEN THIS CAME THROUGH MY LETTER BOX..?! Is this the new album?!! Hope so #radiohead pic.twitter.com/DijUoSKPyM
— Si (@SiTume) April 30, 2016
Radiohead had earlier also registered two businesses, Dawn Chorus LLP and Dawnchoruss Ltd, something they also did before the release of 2011’s King of Limbs. As some of the sleuths on the Radiohead subreddit found out, Witches’ Night is a traditional German holiday that usually falls on the 30 April/1 May, while International Dawn Chorus Day falls on 1 May. Cryptic indeed.
As everyone might recall, this isn’t the first time Radiohead have done weird things before an album. When King of Limbs came out, the band made up a themed newspaper which Thom Yorke himself peddled on the streets of London. Their album before that, In Rainbows, made its own news in being sold on a ‘pay-as-you-wish’ principle.
According to The Guardian, the band’s manager had reportedly said earlier this year that Radiohead’s imminent ninth album will be released in June. At the moment, it looks like he wasn’t too far off.
Update 4/5/2016: Radiohead have released their new single Burn The Witch. Check it out here.
UPDATE: The Internet Is Having Loads Of Fun At Radiohead’s Expense
