December 22, 2005 9:53

Radiohead album - the band speak Radiohead Tickets

Tour plans, producer and album progress revealed

Photo Gallery: Radiohead

Radiohead have revealed they plan to tour this spring, plus have given an insight into their forthcoming album.

The band, who have been working in the studio on new material during large parts of this year, say they will play some small scale UK dates in 2006 to unveil new songs to fans.

"We are going to tour next year, definitely,” Ed O'Brien told Zane Lowe on his Radio 1 show last night (December 21). “Hopefully we're going to have a couple of tracks to download by about April or May. But we're going to go out in May, we're going to do some theatres because part of what we're doing is play new material. It's a good way to get your shit together.”

O’Brien explained the band will do UK and European dates in May before heading to America in the summer. He said the band hoped they would have around ten new songs in their set by then.

Discussing the album itself, the guitarist said there was no confirmed release date yet, but said Radiohead planned more recording sessions in February.

“We've been talking to (producer) Mark 'Spike' Stent, who's worked with Madonna and Bjork and hopefully in February we'll reconvene with him,” said O’Brien. “We've got some great songs but we won't release something we're not happy with. The thing with Radiohead is that each record has a different sound, it's really hard finding something that's different and sits well with us."

With the band planning to work with Stent, O’Brien confirmed their long-term producer Nigel Godrich would not be involved in the new record.

"It's not an end of an era, (but) part of what your realise as a band is that all those records you made with Nigel, apart from 'Hail To The Thief' we were a little bit in the comfort zone,” he explained. “That's why you make records like ‘Kid A’ after ‘OK Computer’, that's why you make ‘OK Computer’ after ‘The Bends’, you've got to do stuff that you're scared of doing. With Nigel, we've been working together for 10 years, and we all love one another too much."