In the early 2000s, Radiohead almost invented social media. “We came up with this idea to create something we called a ziggurat,” lead singer Thom Yorke explains, over a video call from his studio. "Each person would have a room, and you could leave your own shit there, your opinions on stuff, bits of music, what you're up to. And then you move into different rooms, message each other. Like a weird, twisted version of Facebook."
They never did build their Facebook, but in the mid-90s Radiohead were one of the first bands to build a website. Over the years, they've "actively tried to create a community outside of seriously fucking lame-arse websites that major record companies would build," says Yorke. Back then, major record labels were keen for artists to use their websites to post data on how many records they’d sold in different regions. “It was like… I don’t think we want to do that,” remembers bassist Colin Greenwood with a chuckle.
In January 2020, the many strange iterations of Radiohead's multiple websites were brought back to life when the band launched the Radiohead Public Library. If you visit radiohead.com today, you're greeted with neatly organised digital "shelves", stacked with music, high-quality videos, merch and ephemera from every era of the band. Most of those preserved websites are deliberately opaque. One, from the era of The Bends (the critically acclaimed album released in 1995), collects negative reviews of the website itself on a neon background. ("Do NOT visit this site. It is confusing, garbled rubbish," reads one.) But, if the Radiohead of the early 2000s found innovation in obfuscation, in 2020 the band has recognised that a truly radical online act is to actually provide clarity.
Designer Max Kolombos has been working on the band's online presence since the turn of the century. Two years ago, Kolombos recalls, a younger relative of his who didn't know anything about Radiohead decided to learn more, and so put the band's name into search engines and streaming platforms. "What came back was a soup of remarkably disconnected content that was reverse chronological, algorithmically picked by popularity, or just wildly inaccurate," Kolombos says. "This bothered me, but as I tried to find all the missing material, I ended up crafting some extremely byzantine search queries and frequently coming up empty-handed. It all felt very wrong."
Kolombos spent the next two years building the Radiohead Public Library, digging through the band's archives to create a timeline of everything they had released, and then undertaking an act of "digital archaeology" to find the best possible copies of everything. "Old websites had to be found and coaxed into running on modern servers, ancient T-shirt designs digitally restored so they could be reprinted on demand, and management tirelessly worked to secure all the needed footage," says Kolombos. "This has opened my eyes to digital archiving and preservation. I'd assumed because it had all been put online it'd be sticking around for ever. This turned out not to be the case – time can bury things on the internet with frightening ease."
The techno-optimism of the band's early days seems to have cooled. "My feelings about the internet have done a full reversal, a 180-degree about-turn,” says Stanley Donwood, who creates all Radiohead’s artwork and collaborated on their website designs. “I used to think it was great, that it would transform the world and make it immeasurably better. I now think it’s incredibly dangerous, as well as boring, frustrating and stupid.” He tells a story about a man who had been on the run from the Chinese authorities for several decades, living self-sufficiently in a forest, but was captured after being spotted by an unmanned surveillance drone. “That’s the internet,” he says. “He is you. He is us."
As a musician and, in particular, a music fan Yorke has become frustrated with the way that today's internet has changed music discovery. "All your activity online is analysed, commodified," says Yorke. "It relies on the concept that we all buy in to: that what we're being told to like is what we like. But if you're passionate about music, you're looking for challenge, for stuff that you don't expect. The first time I heard [1970s krautrock band] CAN, I was like, 'I don't fucking get this at all'. That kind of thing is really important. You're not being challenged if you're in some weird feedback loop with stuff you've already done. When music itself is starting to follow the algorithms – then you're really fucked."
While they were early pioneers of connecting directly with fans online – whether through their websites, or the live webcasts of the Kid A era that they hired a satellite truck to broadcast – the band have always felt more comfortable with their own online channels than with social media. "I see it as a driver of a lot of things that we're dealing with now, like populism and dumbing down," says Greenwood.
Yorke adds that he doesn't "feel a sense of community in the way that one is supposed to with these things. Because I don't like being trolled. I had enough of that a long time ago." He notes that in the past, he's had chance meetings with people who had posted abuse on the Radiohead message board, only to find that they were contrite in person. These encounters left him feeling sorry for those who post negatively online. "Generally speaking, I just don't think it's healthy. That's something that looks like direct contact, but isn't direct contact. It's two shadows talking in a room."
As they take this year away from Radiohead to work on other projects – Greenwood hopes to do more with singer-songwriter Tamino, while Yorke notes he's got "loads", but won't let the cat out of the bag – the band intend that the Radiohead Public Library will remain in place for ever, a permanent archive in a sea of impermanence. "There's a lot of stuff gets made every day; it's a huge, streaming-flooded river that rolls past us," says Yorke. The library is "the act of trying to make a little island, pile a bunch of stones in the river, so it can get seen".
Will there be more items added to the pile? Yorke laughs. "That would demand us to do some fucking work. So I'm not sure about that yet. I guess so!"
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This article was originally published by WIRED UK
