Colin: "With the computer program ProTools you can really try wicked stuff in the studio. On one song, for example, Thom sings backwards. Now that's gonna be a challenge when we play live." [laughs] (Humo Magazine, june 2000)

Were you in effect suffering from a form of writer's block? Thom: "It wasn't really a writer's block because words were coming out like diarrhoea but they were all awful! And I couldn't tell the difference - which was much worse. But that was because, personally speaking, I'd lost all confidence." Q: "When and how did it come back?" Thom: "It came back when we recorded 'The National Anthem'. I really, really love that track. 'Everything In Its Right Place' I really, really love as well. And 'In Limbo' I'm still proud of just for the disorientating, floaty feel we managed to capture. It comes from this really peculiar place. On the new one - even though I've heard it too much - 'Pyramid Song' is still a really good one. In terms of trying to get somewhere new, I think 'Spinning Plates' is the best of all the record for me. When I listen to it in my car, it makes the doors shake." [laughs] (Mojo, june 2001, Interview from april 12th 2001)

Q: "It was your personal quest not to repeat OK Computer?" Thom: "I don't think it was just me - it was everybody, really. What was happening was everyone was saying, 'Well, we've got to start somewhere...' But I was standing, going 'Yeah, but not here'. Then they'd say, 'So where, then?' And I'd reply, 'I don't know'. And the dialogue would just go round and round in circles like that. So we'd launch ideas off and about halfway through them I'd suddenly start screaming, 'This is bollocks! Stop the tape'. And I'd pull the tape off and start something else. Things seemed to be constantly falling apart at that point. Then we'd go back and listen to them a few months later and suddenly we'd realise, 'That's fucking amazing, why the hell did we stop working on that'. That happened with loads of stuff like 'Morning Bell' and 'Spinning Plates'. Basically we'd lost all confidence in what we were trying to do; we didn't have the ability to see anything through. But gradually, as things got back to normal agoin, it became clear what was good and what wasn't." (Mojo, june 2001, Interview from april 12th 2001)

At the end of those two days, Radiohead decided to issue two single discs. Amnesiac has its share of Kid A-style art games; one song, 'Like Spinning Plates', was built over the backing track of another unreleased song, 'I Will', played backward. (Rolling Stone, may 24th 2001)

Colin: "The ominous tones of 'Like Spinning Plates'. In Copenhagen, I was listening to Woman's Hour [popular BBC Radio 4 programme]. They were talking about this English composer, whose name I can't remember, who wrote a piece of music for a singer where all the phrasings were backward but she sung it forward. Thom sung the backwards melody. It was recorded forward then listened to backwards and he did the phrasing so as to create backward sounding words but it's sung forwards. It's kind of my favourite track." (source unidentified)

Amnesiac's 'Like Spinning Plates' is the track from another, unreleased song, 'I Will', run in reverse. "Thom learned to sing the backward melody forward," says Colin. "You can hear what the words are, but they sound like they're backward." (Rolling Stone, august 2nd 2001, interview from late may 2001)

Q: "I'm not gonna lie to you: there are no hit singles on it and, of course, it's not the much talked about return to the guitar sound of Ok Computer or The Bends either." Jonny: "Oh really? You actually think so? Well, I'm not sure if I should say it's more accessible... (Jon toys around with a pencil, hitting the bottom of my tape recorder while he ponders the question) ...but on the album you got 'Like Spinning Plates', which I think it's an incredibly emotional song, but not an easy one to grasp. Some tracks on Amnesiac are harder to get into than most on Kid A. It's distributed that way on purpose. So I don't know, I suppose there are possibly more straight ahead songs on Amnesiac and maybe that makes it easier to listen to in the end. It's hard for me to explain it though." (Mondosonoro, June 2001, Interview in Milan)

The most striking departures from the real time three-guitar group sound are pieces such as Kid A's title track, which, with its exquisitely wistful music-box chime and melted-candle Yorke vocal, is worthy of Curd Duca or Boards Of Canada; and Amnesiac's 'Like Spinning Plates', whose dissociated drift reminds me of Robert Wyatt's Rock Bottom updated for the IDM era. 'Plates' is partly built from an earlier song called 'I Will' played backwards. Says Yorke, "We'd turned the tape around, and I was in another room, heard the vocal melody coming backwards, and thought, 'That's miles better than he right way round', then spent the rest of the night trying to learn the melody." (The Wire, july 2001)