Hail To The Thief - Recording

Recording

In September 2002, Radiohead moved to the Ocean Way Recording studios in Hollywood, Los Angeles with producer Nigel Godrich and artist Stanley Donwood, both of whom had worked with the band since their second album, The Bends (1995). The location was suggested by Godrich, who had previously used the studio to produce records by Travis and Beck. Yorke said: "We were like, 'Do we want to fly halfway around the world to do this?' But it was terrific, because we worked really hard. We did a track a day. It was sort of like holiday camp."

After Kid A and Amnesiac, which were created through a process drummer Phil Selway described as "manufacturing music in the studio", Radiohead sought to capture a more "live" sound. Yorke told MTV: "The last two studio records were a real headache. We had spent so much time looking at computers and grids, we were like, that's enough, we can't do that any more. This time, we used computers, but they had to actually be in the room with all the gear." Most electronic elements were not overdubbed, but recorded at the same time as other instruments as "part of the band, rather than one person with a computer and four people watching, as tended to happen with previous records." Yorke said: "We were very much into getting the sound of people in a room on this record, and the sounds of things off-mic and all that kind of stuff." After using effects pedals heavily on previous albums, Jonny Greenwood mostly used clean guitar sounds, saying "I wanted to try and avoid relying too heavily on pedals, and see if I could come up with interesting things without them."

The band tried to work quickly and spontaneously, avoiding procrastination and over-analysis. Yorke was forced to write lyrics differently, as he did not have time to rewrite them in the studio. Greenwood said: "We didn't really have time to be stressed about what we did. We got to the end of the second week before we even heard what we did on the first two days, and didn't even remember recording it or who was playing things. Which is a magical way of doing things." The approach protected against the tension of previous sessions; guitarist Ed O'Brien told Rolling Stone that Hail to the Thief was the first Radiohead album "where, at the end of making it, we haven't wanted to kill each other." The bulk of the album was recorded in two weeks, with additional recording and mixing at the band's home studio in Oxfordshire, England in late 2002 and early 2003.

An unmixed version of the album containing unfinished tracks was leaked online ten weeks before release. Jonny Greenwood wrote on Radiohead's official forum: "We're kind of pissed off about it, to be honest (...) Work we've not finished, being released in this sloppy way, ten weeks before the real version is even available (...) It's not I'm pissed off about, it's just the situation I guess. It's stolen work, fer fuck's sake." The leak partly influenced the band's decision to self-release their next album, In Rainbows (2007), via a pay-what-you-want model.