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New Radiohead Influenced By Dave Eggers?
John Doran , February 15th, 2011 07:40

The message boards lit up like a firework display in Lewes yesterday when Radiohead announced the release of their eighth album The King Of Limbs.

The MP3 and WAV versions are available to download from the King Of Limbs website this Saturday morning but there is also the option to pre-order a fancy sounding collectors edition.

But speculation is rife on the internet as to what a "newspaper album" actually constitutes.

This is what the website says is contained in the package:

  • Two clear 10" vinyl records in a purpose-built record sleeve.
  • A compact disc.
  • Many large sheets of newspaper artwork, 625 tiny pieces of artwork and a full-colour piece of oxo-degradable plastic to hold it all together.
  • The Newspaper Album comes with a digital download that is compatible with all good digital media players.

Our guess is that Radiohead have turned to Dave Eggers' literary quarterly, McSweeney's, for inspiration. The Pulitzer Prize finalist, whose recent tome Zeitoun is a non-fiction work about the flooding of New Orleans and institutional racism, sees that McSweeney's comes out in a different format each issue. No. 33, one of the most collectable, was issued as a broadsheet paper with its own plastic bag to keep it in.