Description
Label Review.
A Moon Shaped Pool is the ninth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead, released as a download and on paid streaming services on 8 May 2016. CD and LP releases followed in June 2016 through XL Recordings. Radiohead also sold a special edition, containing two extra tracks and additional artwork, from their website.
Radiohead recorded A Moon Shaped Pool in southern France with longtime producer Nigel Godrich. It includes several songs written some years earlier; "True Love Waits" dates to at least 1995, "Burn the Witch" to 2000 and "Present Tense" to 2008. Several tracks feature strings and choral vocals arranged by Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood and performed by the London Contemporary Orchestra. "Ful Stop" features additional drumming from Clive Deamer, who performed with Radiohead on the King of Limbs tour. The artwork was created by longtime Radiohead collaborator Stanley Donwood.
Radiohead did not promote the album until the week before its release, with the singles "Burn the Witch" and "Daydreaming", accompanied by music videos. The band also commissioned a series of video vignettes by directors and visual artists set to short clips from the album. A world tour began on 20 May 2016.
A Moon Shaped Pool received critical acclaim and was the fifth Radiohead album to be nominated for the Mercury Prize. It topped the charts in several countries, becoming Radiohead's sixth number-one album in the UK, and has been a bestseller on vinyl. It was certified gold in the UK on 24 June.
Our Overview.
Radiohead continue to pump oxygen into the music universe, when at times one can be forgiven to think we are being bombarded and aurally strangled by producers wanting to get rich quick and flood the airwaves in a mundane world of the banality of mass and often over produced ‘popular music’ frequently born from reality shows dominating the airwaves, (yawn!)
Radiohead have always been a constant breath of fresh air, pure and clean. They have a history of challenging the status quo, not by intention just by the nature of their originality. They walk their own walk, talk their own talk and do it their way. When others zig they zag. They always have and we are delighted to say continue to provide innovative and inspiring albums, fabulously refusing to be pigeon holed into genres, or repeat and regurgitate what they released before, just letting the masses go by as they watch from the side lines and carve unique paths with total autonomy.
A Moon shaped pool does not fail to invigorate Radiohead fans like ourselves at every listening. Yes some albums mature and develop like a fine wine on each listening and Radiohead for us are one of those bands, you experience the nuances and hiatus of flavours in every piano, guitar and vocals chords transcending you into their musical world and dimensions, one uniquely theirs. So sit back, press play, transport yourself to the world of Radiohead and feel the better for it.