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Radiohead Thom Yorke 2002

Hail To The Thief: Leaked tracks are stolen early recordings

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by Andy Frankowski
Artists: Radiohead
Radiohead guiarist Jonny Greenwood has come out and stated that the leaked tracks are stolen recordings of early work for 'Hail to the Thief'.

According to Radiohead fansite At Ease, Jonny Greenwood isn't too happy regarding the leak. Here's what he had to say -

"So it turns out the leaked music is a stolen copy of early, unmixed edits and roughs - so we're kind of pissed off about it, to be honest. I see it like this (this is just me): there's napster-style file sharing of released music, then there's early internet distribution of what we at least consider to be a finished body of work. Then there's this - work we've not finished, being released in this sloppy way, ten weeks before the real version is even available. It doesn't even exist as a record yet.....

So yes, we're annoyed - the songs are good on the recordings, which you can hear. But we worked on them after this point until we were happy with them. This is why we're pissed off - we didn't give up on them in February (which is what you're hearing) and it's just a shame that, to your ears, we did. So of course people will still download them and hear them, I can understand the temptation. It's not you lot I'm pissed off about, it's just the situation I guess. It's stolen work, fer fuck's sake. What do you all think ? I know it'll come out for real eventually, and it'll all be fine, but I though you all might as well know what's in my head...."

Also getting into the whole album leak debate is producer Nigel Godrich. Posting on the Radiohead messageboard he said -

"Hey listen, Its not that it's not mastered........ It's not mixed! Some of it isn't even finished. comprendez?"

For a brief rundown of what all the fuss is about, read a short track by track preview here.


Hail To The Thief: Leaked tracks are stolen early recordings

Serves 'em right for being pro-Napster. If you support file-sharing, you can't support control.

Re: Hail To The Thief: Leaked tracks are stolen early recordings

something to do with file sharing of real Radiohead music rather than filesharing of half arsed demo tracks being sold as the real album could be their point, d'you think?

ollie.

Re: Hail To The Thief: Leaked tracks are stolen early recordings

Well, I've heard half the tracks and they sound pretty final to me.

On the one hand, I understand that they want control over how their music is represented, making sure people judge it on the finished product... but then they do those jaunts to Europe to showcase work in progress material and happily let people bootleg, there's not much of a difference there, except you don't have all that nasty crowd noise.

I'm hoping Jonny's anger is directed more at the person who stole and distributed the copies rather than the fans who, eager to hear the album they'll lap up regardless, downloaded what they believed to be the final thing.

Re: Hail To The Thief: Leaked tracks are stolen early recordings

s'all fucken conspiracy you morons!

radiohead have had TONS OF MEDIA COVERAGE because of this. they have thousands of people talking and thinking and excited about them. emi have you in the palm of their filthy, song leaking, deformed hands!

tell people what they've got isn't the finished stuff, keep them interested, get them to buy the record.

YOU ARE *ALL* IDIOTS!

Re: Hail To The Thief: Leaked tracks are stolen early recordings

Well, we would be idiots if the music sucked... but it's not too bad if you liked the last two discs.

Re: Hail To The Thief: Leaked tracks are stolen early recordings

and being an international music producer that i am it's obvious that the tracks aren't *finished* but yeah, they've probably a lot better than anything you could bootleg

and really, there'snot been that much coverage on it, just in the music press, Thom has even left it to little Johnny to make comments on it etc, surely they'd have a massive campaign ready to exploit this if it were so

everyone sees conspiracys all the time, you all know that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was making people think he existed.

ollie.

Re: Hail To The Thief: Leaked tracks are stolen early recordings

What difference does it make? Files are files. On one hand they're saying. "these are early versions of the tracks that we give out free to our close circle of friends/record company representatives, but we don't want our actual fans to have them, for free or otherwise, because their ours and so we get control", and on the other hand, "it's OK to steal copies of any properly released track, that artists/labels are trying to be paid back for, for their time and money, because we say so, despite the control that owners are entitled to". It just wreaks of hypocrisy, and is made all the more silly by the album being titled, "Hail To The Thief".

Re: Hail To The Thief: Leaked tracks are stolen early recordings

the "tracks that we give out free to our close circle of friends/record company representatives" are reportedly of a much higher quality etc than the leaked stuff due to mixing, mastering etc, these are neither demos nor are they promos, you could see them as works in progress (as they are) but not as in any way a finished product, that's what they don't want, people to getthis stuff before it's polished, i see no hypocrisy there other than peopel getting a mixed message then making up what they want from it, depending on their ideological stance on the matter

ollie.