page_title: The Eraser
section_title: Recording
hierarchical_section_title: The Eraser / Recording
caption_attribution_description: English: A screenshot from a fan-made video of Yorke at the Latitude Festival, 2009.
context_page_description: The Eraser is the debut solo album by English musician Thom Yorke, released on 10 July 2006 through XL Recordings. It was produced by Nigel Godrich, the longtime producer for Yorke's main band Radiohead.
  The album comprises electronic music Yorke recorded during Radiohead's 2004 hiatus and between their 2005 rehearsals. The lyrics express Yorke's political concerns; he wrote the lead single, "Harrowdown Hill", about the death of David Kelly, a British weapons inspector who died of presumed suicide after telling a reporter that the British government had falsely identified weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The cover art, by longtime Radiohead collaborator Stanley Donwood, was inspired by the legend of King Canute failing to command the ocean, which Yorke likened to government attitudes towards climate change.
  The Eraser debuted at number three on the UK Albums Chart and number two on the American Billboard 200. It was named one of the best albums of 2006 by the NME, Rolling Stone and the Observer, and was nominated for the 2006 Mercury Music Prize and the 2007 Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album.
context_section_description: In 2004, after finishing the tour for their sixth album, Hail to the Thief (2003), Radiohead went on hiatus. Songwriter Thom Yorke began recording The Eraser, his first solo release, with longtime Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich in late 2004, and continued work throughout 2005 between Radiohead sessions. He told Pitchfork: "I've been in the band since we left school and never dared do anything on my own ... It was like, 'Man, I've got to find out what it feels like,' you know?" Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood said: "He had to get this stuff out, and everyone was happy [for Yorke to make it] ... He'd go mad if every time he wrote a song it had to go through the Radiohead consensus."
  Yorke recorded in Radiohead's Oxford studio, Godrich's studio in Covent Garden, and his home. He wanted to "approach and engage with computers and not a lot else, and yet still have lots of life and energy in the music". To generate ideas, he cut and pasted clips at random from Radiohead's library of original samples, many of which were created on laptops in hotel rooms as the band toured. He would send fragments to Godrich, who identified passages that could become songs, edited them, and returned them to Yorke. Describing the collaboration, Yorke said: "'Black Swan', back in the day, was a ... nine-minute load of bollocks. Except for this one juicy bit, and [Godrich] goes past and goes, 'That bit. Fuck the rest.' Usually it's something like that." Godrich is also credited for extra instrumentation.
  To create the title track, Yorke sampled piano chords played by Greenwood and cut them into a new order. "And it Rained All Night" contains an "enormously shredded-up" sample from the Hail to the Thief track "The Gloaming", and "Black Swan" samples a rhythm recorded by Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien and drummer Philip Selway in 2000. Yorke said "Harrowdown Hill" had been "kicking around" during the Hail to the Thief sessions, but felt it could not have worked as a Radiohead song.
  Yorke initially intended to create instrumental tracks, but added vocals at the encouragement of Godrich. On Radiohead albums, Yorke had altered his voice with layers of reverb and other effects; for The Eraser, Godrich wanted Yorke's voice to be "dry and loud". As Yorke found it difficult to write lyrics to loops of music, saying he could not "react spontaneously and differently every time", he translated the music to guitar and piano and generated new musical components in the process.
  Yorke saved one song recorded in the Eraser sessions, "Last Flowers", for the bonus disc of Radiohead's seventh album, In Rainbows (2007). Another song, "The Hollow Earth", was finished later and released as a single in 2009.
caption: In July 2009, Yorke performed solo at the Latitude Festival in England, performing Radiohead and Eraser material.[1]
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