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Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien planning solo LP

Ed O’Brien w/ Radiohead @ ACL Fest Weekend 1 (more by Tim Griffin)

In an interview with BBC 6 Music‘s Matt Everitt, Radiohead guitarist and (occasional background vocalist) Ed O’Brien revealed plans for a future solo album, presumably to be released next year, saying, “We’ve attempted to do something like a full solo album — you know, stand there on the mountaintop with the hair going and the Les Paul and create a whole Ed O’Brien. I haven’t up until two years ago but I am going to now. I’m gonna do one next year.”

When asked, O’Brien cited his time living in Brazil with his family as his main inspiration:

…in February of that year, got taken to Carnival, and a really close friend of mine invited me and my wife to the Sambadrome in Rio. Oh, my god. It’s the greatest show on earth… It was the greatest thing I’ve ever, ever, ever experienced in terms of music. So of course, the beats, what they call the bateria, and it’s like all these polyrhythms. Everyone sings. There must be 4000 people on each samba school who parade down there, and the combination of writing music and that feeling of being there and being like, “Oh my god, music can be like this.” It was so profound, so it’s fed my whole inspiration and writing. There’s an element of that joy of music. But it also again, like, a lot of Brazilian music there’s a dark heart, melancholy, but, we’re all feeling this, we recognize it but let’s celebrate being a human being because that’s part of the journey for most of us. So that’s like a watershed in my life.

Upon the album’s release, it would mark the fourth member of Radiohead to release solo material, which includes singer Thom Yorke‘s music under both his own name and with the Atoms for Peace supergroup, Jonny Greenwood‘s soundtrack work, and Phil Selway‘s two studio albums.

Radiohead concluded their 2016 this past Friday at ACL Festival, which was also Thom Yorke’s birthday. You can listen to the full interview with Ed O’Brien below, as well as a “From the Basement” version of the Radiohead song “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi”, which features Ed’s background vocals.

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