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The King of Limbs is the eighth studio album by the English rock band Radiohead. It was self-released on 18 February 2011 as a download, followed by a physical release on 28 March through XL Recordings internationally and TBD Records in North America. Following the more conventional instrumentation of In Rainbows (2007), The King of Limbs saw Radiohead move further from standard song structures and recording methods. They developed it with their producer, Nigel Godrich, through sampling and looping. The singer, Thom Yorke, described it as "an expression of wildness and mutation". The artwork, by Yorke and his longtime collaborator Stanley Donwood, depicts nature and spirits inspired by fairy tales. Radiohead released no singles from The King of Limbs, but released a music video for "Lotus Flower" featuring Yorke's dancing that inspired an internet meme. In 2012, they began an international tour, with several festival appearances. To perform the complex rhythms live, they enlisted a second drummer, Clive Deamer. The European tour was postponed after the temporary stage collapsed in Toronto's Downsview Park, killing the technician Scott Johnson and injuring three others. Though its unconventional production and shorter length divided listeners, The King of Limbs was named one of the best albums of the year by publications including The Wire, NME and PopMatters. It was nominated in five categories at the 54th Annual Grammy Awards, including Best Alternative Music Album. The download version sold more than 300,000 copies in two months, and the vinyl became a bestseller in the UK. The retail edition debuted at number seven on the UK Albums Chart and number six on the US Billboard 200, making it the first Radiohead album not to achieve gold certification in the US. The King of Limbs was followed by the remix album TKOL RMX 1234567, the live video The King of Limbs: Live from the Basement and the non-album singles "Supercollider" and "The Butcher". Recording Radiohead worked on The King of Limbs intermittently from May 2009 to January 2011 with their longtime producer, Nigel Godrich. The sessions included three weeks at the home of the actress Drew Barrymore in Los Angeles in early 2010. Radiohead wanted to avoid repeating the protracted recording process of their previous album In Rainbows (2007). According to the singer, Thom Yorke, they felt that "if we are gonna carry on, we need to do it for a new set of reasons". The cover artist, Stanley Donwood, said that whereas In Rainbows was "very much a definitive statement", Radiohead wanted to make an album that was more "transitory". The multi-instrumentalist Jonny Greenwood said: "We didn't want to pick up guitars and write chord sequences. We didn't want to sit in front of a computer either. We wanted a third thing, which involved playing and programming." Whereas Radiohead had developed In Rainbows from live performances, The King of Limbs developed from studio experimentation. Yorke sought to move further from conventional recording methods. After he and Godrich became interested in DJing during their time in Los Angeles, Godrich proposed a two-week experiment whereby the band used turntables and vinyl emulation software instead of conventional instruments. According to Godrich, "That two-week experiment ended up being fucking six months. And that's that record, the whole story of all of it." Radiohead assembled much of the album by looping and editing samples of their playing using software written by Greenwood. Yorke wrote melodies and lyrics over the sequences, which he likened to the process of editing a film. The guitarist Ed O'Brien said: "The brick walls we tended to hit were when we knew something was great, like 'Bloom', but not finished ... Then [Colin Greenwood] had that bassline, and Thom started singing. Those things suddenly made it a hundred times better." According to Godrich, the result of the recording sessions was a "gigantic mess that took me about a year and a half to unravel". On 24 January 2010, Radiohead suspended recording to perform at the Hollywood Henry Fonda Theatre to raise funds for Oxfam responding to the 2010 Haiti earthquake. The show was released free online that December as Radiohead for Haiti, and included a performance of the King of Limbs track "Lotus Flower" by Yorke on acoustic guitar. In February, at a benefit concert in aid of the Green Party, Yorke performed songs including "Separator" (then titled "Mouse Dog Bird") and "Give Up the Ghost". Yorke first performed "Morning Mr Magpie", previously titled "Morning M'lud", during a webcast in 2002. Music and lyricsYorke said The King of Limbs was a "visual" album, with lyrics and artwork about "wildness" and "mutating" inspired by his environmental concerns. The title derives from the King of Limbs, an ancient oak tree in Savernake Forest in Wiltshire, near Tottenham House, where Radiohead recorded In Rainbows. According to Rolling Stone, The King of Limbs saw Radiohead move further from conventional rock music and song structures in favour of "moody, rhythm-heavy electronica, glacially paced ballads and ambient psychedelia". Several critics noted dubstep influences. The album features extensive sampling, looping, and ambient sounds, including natural sounds such as birdsong and wind. Pitchfork said it comprised "aggressive rhythms made out of dainty bits of digital detritus, robotically repetitive yet humanly off-kilter, parched thickets of drumming graced with fleeting moments of melodic relief". O'Brien said "rhythm is the king of limbs", and that rhythm "dictates the record". The first track, "Bloom", was inspired by the BBC nature documentary series The Blue Planet. It opens with a piano loop and features horns and complex rhythms. "Morning Mr Magpie" has "restless guitars". "Little by Little" features "crumbling guitar shapes" and "clattering" percussion. "Feral" features scattered vocal samples and "mulched-up" drums. "Lotus Flower" features a driving synth bassline and Yorke's falsetto. "Codex" is a piano ballad with "spectral" horns and strings and a Roland TR-808 drum machine. "Give Up the Ghost" is an acoustic guitar ballad with layered vocal harmonies. The final track, "Separator", has guitar, piano, a "brittle" drum loop and echoing vocals. At eight tracks and 37 minutes in length, The King of Limbs is Radiohead's shortest album. O'Brien explained that Radiohead felt the ideal album was around 40 minutes long, and cited Marvin Gaye's What's Going On (1971) as a classic record shorter than The King of Limbs. Artwork and packaging The King of Limbs artwork was created by Yorke with Radiohead's longtime collaborator Stanley Donwood. As with previous Radiohead albums, Donwood worked as the band recorded nearby. He painted oil portraits of the Radiohead members in the style of Gerhard Richter, but abandoned them as "I'd never painted with oils before and I'm not Gerhard Richter so it was just a series of painted dis.... Discover the Thom Jones Amy Bloom popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Thom Jones Amy Bloom books.