Thom Yorke's two appearances at 2015's Latitude annual festival in Suffolk, England, marked a weekend of surprises.
On Friday night, July 17, Ed Sheeran performed on the iArena stage at the whose capacity is 3,000. Saturday he got even more intimate when he surprised fans at the Other Voices stage which only accommodates a few hundred.
And then on what would be technically Monday morning since it was after midnight, Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke performed in the very same iArena, unannounced.
Yorke delivered a plethora of live debuts to the few thousand fans who were lucky enough to be there instead of rocking out to Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds on the main stage.
What those lucky few thousand got to see and hear was Yorke's first real solo performance in over four years. The 11-song set had seven live debuts, four of which ("Impossible Knots," "Not the News," "Traffic," and "Twist") wouldn't officially come out on an LP until mid-2019's Anima.
"My name's Pharrell, and this is Robin Thicke," Yorke said to the festival goers while introducing Radiohead producer and longtime collaborator Nigel Godrich. "This is an experiment. Relax and let our machines talk to you."
Technically this surprise appearance was the first show of Yorke's Tomorrow's Modern Boxes tour which had 40 stops over three years. And much like that night, the material that would later be found on Anima accounted for more of the tour than 2006's The Eraser or the aforementioned Tomorrow's...
Smack dab in the middle of the set Yorke played "Amok" from the Atoms for Peace supergroup he was in alongside Flea and others. During the tour the AfP song "Amok" also got a lot of love, only missing out on two of the 40 performances, which this was sadly one.
On Saturday Yorke joined his friend Portishead on “The Rip," a tune Radiohead would cover during soundchecks in 2008.
In fact, Yorke and Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood once uploaded an acoustic version of "The Rip" onto the Radiohead blog, Dead Air Space.
Speaking of... Yorke and Greenwood are currently touring with their side project The Smile. They are scheduled to play two smallish gigs this week in Missouri before performing at the Pitchfork Music Festival in Chicago.
Tickets available on their website.
