Radiohead have released a vast amount of demo material that was produced around the recording sessions for their 1997 album OK Computer.
The material, which comes in at around 18 hours, was made available this morning via Bandcamp and will be available for 18 days only at a price of £18. The band decided to make the demos available after they were recently stolen, with the culprit demanding that they pay up for their return.
"We got hacked last week," reads a statement attributed to Jonny Greenwood on the band’s Facebook page, adding that "someone stole Thom’s minidisk archive from around the time of OK Computer, and reportedly demanded $150,000 on threat of releasing it."
The note continues: "Never intended for public consumption (though some clips did reach the cassette in the OK Computer reissue) it’s only tangentially interesting. And very, very long. Not a phone download. Rainy out, isn’t it though?"
The material included in the Bandcamp collection was all recorded between 1995 and 1998, according to the band. Find out more about what features amongst the recordings via this Google Doc handily put together by fans on the Radiohead subreddit.
You can read the band’s full Facebook post here and stream and download the demos here. The band will be giving profits from the release of the material to protest group Extinction Rebellion.
Revisit our 2017 piece on the 20th anniversary of OK Computer here.
