Radiohead’s official presence online has disappeared completely. The British rock band, who have been slowly building up anticipation for their upcoming ninth studio album, have made their website completely blank, and deleted all posts to their Twitter and Facebook pages.
The lack of a social media and web presence comes just days after some fans in the United Kingdom reported receiving odd leaflets in the mail, all of which featured an embossed logo and the cryptic words, “Sing a song of sixpence that goes / Burn the Witch / We know where you live.”
The band is scheduled to hit the road this month in support of their latest work, but has yet to formally announce how or when the new music will be released — despite public remarks from an executive at their management company that the album will be out in June.
Radiohead’s internet purge is particularly interesting given the band’s groundbreaking history of online distribution. The five- piece rock group was the first big-name band to ever release music digitally under the pay-what-you-want” model with 2007’s In Rainbows, and frontman Thom Yorke released his most recent solo album via BitTorrent.
Still, quirky publicity stunts are not abnormal when it comes to Radiohead’s release cycles. When the band released its most recent album, King of Limbs, in 2011, Yorke famously handed out copies of a self-made newspaper at a London record store.
As is typical of the beloved cult band, many fans have already poured through the hidden meanings of the recent leaflet, pointing out that the song Burn The Witch was a potential track for In Rainbows. The leaflet’s release also coincided with Walpurgisnacht — or “Witches’ Night” — in Germany, as well as International Dawn Chorus Day. Dawn Chorus is what many fans think Radiohead will call the album, after the band registered a company by the same name earlier this year.
The band has yet to release official word about when or how their latest set of songs will be made public, but given the internet blackout, new music seems imminent.
Just don’t try to check social media for updates, because there is literally nothing to see.
