Mark Pritchard
Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke has unveiled a new song, with âDialing Inâ serving as the theme to Apple TV+âs forthcoming series Smoke.
Released on Wednesday (May 28), and recorded with Sam Petts-Davies, the haunting track presents a dark and brooding atmosphere as Yorkeâs trademark vocals warmly accompany a tender and eclectic musical bed.
The song also soundtracks the recently-released trailer for Smoke, which â according to a descriptor â follows Taron Egerton and Jurnee Smollett as they âattempt to get as close to the truth as possibleâwithout getting burned.â
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For diehard fans, âDialing Inâ wonât be an entirely new experience, with its origins being found in Yorkeâs unreleased track âGawpers,â which had been performed during a run of European dates in 2019, but has since evolved before its 2025 release date.
Yorke announced the release of âDialing Inâ by noting on social media that the track is ânow available to stream on your least crap streaming service.â According to the songâs credits on Tidal, Yorkeâs daughter Agnes is also featured as a backing vocalist.
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âWorking with Thom Yorke was as much an honour for me as working with Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorsese or Richard Price,â said Dennis Lehane, Smoke creator and executive producer. âIâve somehow been blessed with collaborating with living legends who were also formative influences on my own creative life. Thom is definitely that.
âIn addition, he took a basic concept I gave him and delivered a song that perfectly embodies the show and absolutely crushes.â
âDialing Inâ is the latest release from Yorke this month, who also released the album Tall Tales, created alongside Mark Pritchard, on May 9.
âMark sent me a large file of MP3s of ideas during lockdown,â Yorke explained of their long-distance collaboration. âThere were so many great ones, I knew straight away that I had to drop what I was doing. It felt very much that I had not been anywhere like this before â both as soon as I put my headphones on and started trying to find the vocals, words and sounds, but also, as it progressed, watching Jonathan [Zawada] respond so freely and spontaneously with all his video and artwork ideas.Â
âIt was mental, and I feel lucky to have been involved,â he added. âTall Tales is very important to me. I hope people get it, and get to hear it!â
Listen to âDialing Inâ below:
Fresh off the release of a joint single last month, Thom Yorke and Mark Pritchard have announced their debut collaborative album.
Pritchard, who has 30 yearsâ experience as an electronic musician and producer, first teamed up with the Radiohead and the Smile frontman in 2016, with Yorke providing guest vocals on âBeautiful Peopleâ for Pritchardâs Under the Sun record.Â
The pair had first met when Radiohead last toured Australia in 2012, where English-born Pritchard is based, though their association extended back slightly further (at least in name only). In 2011, Radioheadâs TKOL RMX 1234567 album featured two remixes of âBloomâ reimagined by Pritchard, with one made available under his Harmonic 313 alias.
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Yorkeâs 2024 Australian tour brought with it the live debut of the new song âBack in the Game,â which was officially released in February, and is set to also appear on their forthcoming album, Tall Tales. The LP will be out on May 9 via Warp Records.
The recordâs announcement also coincides with the release of a new song from the pair, with âThis Conversation Is Missing Your Voiceâ once again being accompanied by a Jonathan Zawada-directed music video. The clip, along with the visual for âBack in the Game,â is part of a feature length film made by Zawada which had been developed in tandem with the creation of the music. A one-off screening of the film will also be announced in the near future.
âMark sent me a large file of MP3s of ideas during lockdown,â Yorke explained. âThere were so many great ones, I knew straight away that I had to drop what I was doing. It felt very much that I had not been anywhere like this before â both as soon as I put my headphones on and started trying to find the vocals, words and sounds, but also, as it progressed, watching Jonathan respond so freely and spontaneously with all his video and artwork ideas.Â
âIt was mental, and I feel lucky to have been involved. I am looking forward to this finally coming out. Tall Tales is very important to me. I hope people get it, and get to hear it!â
The release of Tall Tales comes following a surprisingly prolific year for Yorke. In January 2024, The Smile released their second album Wall of Eyes, with a third album, Cutouts, arriving in October. The records peaked at No. 42 and No. 52 on the Billboard 200, respectively. In April, Yorke also issued the soundtrack to Daniele Luchettiâs drama film Confidenza.
Mark Pritchard and Thom Yorke are âBack in the Gameâ, with the pair joining forces once again for a new single.
Pritchard, who has spent more than 30 years as an electronic musician and producer, first teamed up with the Radiohead and The Smile frontman back in 2016, with Yorke providing guest vocals on âBeautiful Peopleâ for Pritchardâs Under the Sun record. Five years earlier, Pritchard had also shared a pair of remixes of Radioheadâs âBloomâ, with both versions (one of which was released under his Harmonic 313 alias) appearing on the TKOL RMX 1234567 album.
Much like their previous collaboration, âBack in the Gameâ sees Yorkeâs vocals digitally distorted by Pritchard, this time by way of the H910 Harmonizer, the worldâs first commercially-available digital audio effects device.
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The track has also been a staple of Yorkeâs recent live sets, with the musician having debuted the song in Christchurch, New Zealand in October as part of his Everything solo tour and playing it at every show since.
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âBack in the Gameâ comes accompanied by a surreal, kaleidoscopic Jonathan Zawada-directed visual which combines both analog and digital techniques. In a statement, Zawada explained that an early demo of the track saw him envision a cocky, strutting John Travolta in the final scene of Staying Alive, albeit with a more sinister approach.
âSlowly a version of that visual arose around a character wearing a kind of giant parade head with a fixed expression of mania stuck on their face, such that you couldnât tell if their endless march was one of aggression or celebration,â Zawada explained. âThe more I paid attention to the lyrics the more details began to fill themselves out and the overall concept began to form [a] parade of many characters marching past a building from within which everything was being thrown out of a window and into a giant bonfire.
âUltimately the film for âBack in the Gameâ ended up depicting a sort of blind celebration taking place as civilization slowly deteriorates around it, a kind of progression through regression. Overlaid onto this is an exploration of how and where we choose to place value in our collective cultural expression and how we collectively confront major cultural shifts in the 21st century.â
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