What’s even stranger and more mysterious: right before the band’s cyber disappearance many United Kingdom fans received leaflets with the band’s logo with the message “Sing the song of sixpence that goes “Burn the witch” We know where you live”. Fans and critics were tipped off last night when the group “disappeared” from the internet, creating speculation that a new album was on the way.
Advertisement
The band, which is set to begin a world tour this month with two dates in Amsterdam, Netherlands, has a track record of releasing its new albums in innovative and attention-grabbing ways.
It restarted its online presence early on Tuesday morning, sharing three animations on Instagram which have been liked by more than 50,000 people, before putting up the full song. Radiohead’s “Burn The Witch” is the band’s first song release from the its ninth studio album.
Burn The Witch was initially posted on YouTube and later made available for download – priced at 99p for an MP3 and £1.99 for the WAV version of the song.
Yorke is known for taking a viral approach to album launches – most notably handing out faux newspapers named “The Universal Sigh” to promote “King of Limbs” in London.
Advertisement
Others speculated on Twitter about how the new album will arrive, with Radio One DJ Phil Taggart writing: ” #Radiohead will release their new album at midnight exclusively through a carrier pigeon sanctuary in Torquay #RadioheadReleaseTheories”. Could this music be the first snippet of a new song from the album? The track played to a claymation video, which was directed by artist Chris Hopewell, which clearly seems to be an homage to the 1973 horror movie, “The Wickerman”. But recently, they announced something in a very Radiohead way-they deleted everything off of all of the band’s social media channels, suggesting that something was up.
