tomorrow's modern boxes full album download Thom Yorke: Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes review – ‘Bobs disconsolately along in the soul-noir slipstream’ I n the weeks since Apple violently forced U2 down the headphone jack of every mobile device in the known universe, in rock’s first confirmed case of musical waterboarding, the Ché Guevaras of alternative music have started revolting against the manipulative online iStablishment. In what genuinely feels like a turning point in artist-to-fan distribution – to the benefit of both parties – they’ve started embracing the web’s stickier strands. By releasing the first paid-for bundle distributed via peer-to-peer service BitTorrent in order to bypass “the self-elected gatekeepers” of digital music (iTunes, Spotify and other such artist exploiters and Bono enforcers), Thom Yorke requires you to swashbuckle with the online pirates and risk contracting the most savage malware known to cyber-troll to access his second solo album, Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes. The beauty of the scheme is that any tech-savvy muso with a laptop can do it. And the same, largely, goes for the record. If Radiohead’s chief 21st century innovation was to popularise sparse synthetic experimentation over overt rock melody, that blueprint has since been adopted as Bible and bedrock for the xx, James Blake and their legion of imitators. Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes merely sounds like the commander-in-chief slipping quietly into the ranks of cannon fodder. This article includes content hosted on bundles.bittorrent.com . We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as the provider may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click 'Allow and continue' . Stripped of the full-band textures of Radiohead’s last album The King of Limbs and reining in the melodic flourishes that made his 2006 debut solo album The Eraser among his most accessible releases this century, much of Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes sounds distinctly unambitious. Take the album’s seven-minute centrepiece, There Is No Ice (For My Drink); consisting of an off-the-peg Hyperdub-on-factory-settings deep house beat, skittering clicks and throbs and ominous backwards babble, it’s the sound of failing to get to sleep in boutique camping when you’ve bagged a pitch too close to the all-night bar. That it bleeds into an amorphous two-minute coda called Pink Section doesn’t help, since, besides a few warped piano chords, that’s essentially the mewling of a hundred ghost cats who died miserably in a fire. Elsewhere, he retreads old Radiohead ground. Guess Again! glitches-up Pyramid Song while A Brain in a Bottle is a sister piece to The King of Limbs’ Lotus Flower, Yorke adopting a falsetto soul croon over an elasticated bassline and the Doppler-effected siren of a wasp ambulance. “Think I’m gonna go to pieces now,” he lilts, his voice characteristically fragile and wounded. Where he really offers something different is in the electronically distended R&B of The Mother Lode, or on Interference, an enchanting paean of dislocation – “in the future we will change our numbers and lose contact” – seemingly played on ice marimba in a church made of phase. Just as no one’s marching around the Large Hadron Collider shouting “nice Boson, Higgs, but that was last year, what the hell else you got?”, it’s unfair to expect Yorke to dismantle and resolder the circuit boards of modern music every time he releases a record. But it’s disappointing to find him bobbing disconsolately along in the soul noir slipstream of the likes of Truth Ray and Nose Grows Some: a glitchy cockroach here, an icicle cathedral there, plant pot drumbeats all over the shop. His tried-and-tested tactic of whacking out an album with 15 seconds’ notice via some Nasa-level new technology – and only releasing physical versions months later in the form of a £300 playable trout – is effective in bypassing the self-elected gatekeepers of popular opinion, but here the process is more impactful than the product. Indeed, Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes is so deviously understated you wonder if it’s a sly cover for the seeding of Skynet. Tomorrow's Modern Boxes. Purchase and download this album in a wide variety of formats depending on your needs. Buy the album Starting at $11.99. Three years after its “atypical” release on the peer to peer platform BitTorrent, Tomorrow's Modern Boxes is finally “officially” available. At the time, Thom Yorke had presented this second solo album with a tweet: “ I am trying something new, don't know how it will go. But here it is .” Produced by Nigel Godrich, the eight songs sung by the leader of Radiohead reach heights of destructuring with muffled rhythms and staggering keyboards. All of which is of course devoid of any guitar chord. Like its predecessor The Eraser , Yorke openly walks the paths of an electronic soundtrack more experimental than anything else. But his anti-songs fascinate the ear. The singular voice of the man (who some may find irritating) binds these eight strips in a melancholic way. In concrete terms, we don’t really know where Thom Yorke is going, and yet we follow him with our eyes closed and our ears open. © CM/Qobuz. Thom Yorke Announces New Album, 'Tomorrow's Modern Boxes' UPDATE: The album is out! Thom Yorke, music man of mystery, dropped "Tomorrow's Modern Boxes" and it's available to purchase for $6 at TomorrowsModernBoxes.com. The bundle also includes the music video for "Brain In A Bottle," which you can watch below: This is Yorke's first solo album in eight years. Here's the track list: 1. 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. EARLIER: Thom Yorke put some Radiohead rumors to rest on Friday when he announced a new album, "Tomorrow's Modern Boxes." Per a press release from Yorke and Nigel Godrich, the record will be released through a new version of BitTorrent. Read the full statement: As an experiment we are using a new version of BitTorrent to distribute a new Thom Yorke record. The new Torrent files have a pay gate to access a bundle of files.. The files can be anything, but in this case is an 'album'. 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. 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. The torrent mechanism does not require any server uploading or hosting costs or ‘cloud’ malarkey. It's a self-contained embeddable shop front. The network not only carries the traffic, it also hosts the file. The file is in the network. Oh yes and it's called Tomorrow's Modern Boxes. Thom Yorke's New Album Is Here and You Can Buy It on BitTorrent. Radiohead's Thom Yorke has a new album, Tomorrow's Modern Boxes , and it's available now. And he's trying something new to get it directly to his fans by selling it on BitTorrent. Tomorrow's Modern Boxes will be sold as a BitTorrent "bundle" for $6. This is the first BitTorrent bundle to be placed behind a "paygate." BitTorrent has been building out the bundles program over the last couple years. Basically, a bundle is really just a bunch of files—music, lyrics, videos, etc.—transferred to you over the BitTorrent protocol using a client of your choice. You Can Now Buy Stuff From Right Inside a Torrent. BitTorrent's always got something cooking, from a streaming video protocol that never overloads,… Usually, the bundles are gated—so that in order to get access to the bundle you've got to submit your email address or some other information. It works as a free/premium system. For example, you might get a song or two for free, and then even more songs behind the gate. Tomorrow's Modern Boxes is the first BitTorrent bundle behind a paygate, which means it's the first to charge actual money in exchange for access. In addition to the bundle of MP3s, you'll also be able to purchase a deluxe package with 180 gram vinyl and lossless file formats for $48. A large promo image on the BitTorrent website reads: As an experiment we are using a new version of BitTorrent to distribute a new Thom Yorke record. 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. 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. The torrent mechanism does not require any server uploading or hosting costs or cloud malarkey. It's a self-contained embeddable shop front. That's some pretty aggressive language. But there's something to it. It's not the first time Yorke has experimented with novel distribution. You'll recall Radiohead offered its 2007 record In Rainbows as a pay what you want download. And many fans paid up, but it remains to be seen if novel distribution works for artists that aren't huge superstars. Thom Yorke will probably sell a lot of bundles, but the future of the system for other artists remains unclear. [ Tomorrow's Modern Boxes and BitTorrent ] Tomorrow's Modern Boxes. Purchase and download this album in a wide variety of formats depending on your needs. Buy the album Starting at £12.49. Three years after its “atypical” release on the peer to peer platform BitTorrent, Tomorrow's Modern Boxes is finally “officially” available. At the time, Thom Yorke had presented this second solo album with a tweet: “ I am trying something new, don't know how it will go. But here it is .” Produced by Nigel Godrich, the eight songs sung by the leader of Radiohead reach heights of destructuring with muffled rhythms and staggering keyboards. All of which is of course devoid of any guitar chord. Like its predecessor The Eraser , Yorke openly walks the paths of an electronic soundtrack more experimental than anything else. But his anti-songs fascinate the ear. The singular voice of the man (who some may find irritating) binds these eight strips in a melancholic way. In concrete terms, we don’t really know where Thom Yorke is going, and yet we follow him with our eyes closed and our ears open. © CM/Qobuz.