Radiohead's OK Computer to be reissued

NEW YORK • Nothing new to listen on radio? Better to stay tuned.

Twenty years after Radiohead shook up the music world with its dystopian electronic album OK Computer, the band announced on Tuesday that an expanded edition with unreleased tracks will be rolled out.

The British rockers will reissue the album on three vinyl records or two CDs - with remastered sound, three unreleased tracks and B-sides from the singles.

Radiohead will also put out a boxed edition with new artwork and "full lyrics to all the tracks except the ones that haven't really got any", the band's website said.

Radiohead had fuelled speculation of an OK Computer anniversary when street posters recently appeared in New York, London and other cities with lyrics to the album's Fitter Happier, a melancholy spoken-word song in which a computerised voice offers guidance for modern survival.

But the lyrics in the posters are even darker than 20 years ago, ending with the lines: "Worse politicians/ More fear."

OK Computer, the third album by Radiohead, turned the page on the more carefree, guitar-driven Britpop of the 1990s, creating a sound driven by electronic loops to dramatise paranoia in a world being taken over by Internet culture.

Radiohead went further into experimentation with the 2000 follow-up album Kid A, often considered the band's masterpiece.

Radiohead said OK Computer was put out with the best available analogue technology in 1997, but subsequent advances in recording have allowed the band to refine the sound.

Meanwhile, speculation has swirled over which musicians will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland in the United States next year.

Radiohead will notably be eligible as, per the rules, 25 years will have passed since the release of their first album Pablo Honey.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on May 04, 2017, with the headline Radiohead's OK Computer to be reissued. Subscribe