Thom Yorke reveals new album Tomorrow's Modern Boxes

Thom Yorke has announced details of his second solo album, Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes.

The album will be released through BitTorrent, as an experiment to see whether file distribution can help bypass traditional record labels.

"It’s an experiment to see if the mechanics of the system are something that the general public can get its head around", Yorke explained in a statement. "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."

The statement in full reads:

"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 & Nigel Godrich"

Over the last couple of months, Yorke has been unveiling enigmatic artwork via Twitter - that seems to be by himself and long-time artist and collaborator Stanley Donwood. Coupled with Radiohead posting up steams of unheard music samples on their Polyfauna mobile phone app, fans have been kept on tenterhooks in recent weeks.

Yorke recently caused further excitement by tweeting a link to his Tumblr page, containing the following image: 

See Thom Yorke's recent Tweeted artwork below:

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Radiohead's eighth studio album, The King Of Limbs, was released in 2011 and was nominated for five Grammies.