Thom Yorke releases surprise new album via BitTorrent
After some social media teases over the last few days, Thom Yorke has released a surprise new album via BitTorrent, called Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes. Much as Radiohead did with In Rainbows, the distribution method for Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes is fairly innovative and unusual. In a statement released to coincide with the album’s drop, Yorke says, “It’s an experiment to see if the mechanics of the system are something that the general public can get its head around.”
“If it works well it could be an effective way of handing some control of internet commerce back to people who are creating the work,” he continues. “Enabling those people who make either music, video or any other kind of digital content to sell it themselves. Bypassing the self elected gate-keepers. If it works anyone can do this exactly as we have done.”
Download the album here, for $6. Or pre-order the vinyl edition here.
This interesting and unexpected release falls in line with Yorke’s recent criticisms of music distribution at the moment, including this gem: “To me this isn’t the mainstream, this is is like the last fart, the last desperate fart of a dying corpse.”
Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes follows 2006’s The Eraser, and 2013’s AMOK, Yorke’s debut album with Atoms For Peace.
Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes:
1 A Brain in a Bottle
2 Guess Again!
3 Interference
4 The Mother Lode
5 Truth Ray
6 There Is No Ice (For My Drink)
7 Pink Section
8 Nose Grows Some
Jeff Terich is the founder and editor of Treble. He's been writing about music for 20 years and has been published at American Songwriter, Bandcamp Daily, Reverb, Spin, Stereogum, uDiscoverMusic, VinylMePlease and some others that he's forgetting right now. He's still not tired of it.