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Here I am, sitting at my desk with coffee in hand, body teeming with that surge of irritability that a lack of sleep pushes out, headphones in, Apple Music on and delivering to me what I’ve been waiting for so eagerly for the past few days; A Moon Shaped Pool. Radiohead’s ninth record.

It’s an odd predicament because I would hardly even call myself a die hard fan, yet last night I attempted to sleep from 9:30pm until the album’s release at 4:00am. It just felt right (at the time at least). There are large portions of their discography that I haven’t even come close to listening to (I downloaded their last 3 LPs only this week) but something about the very prospect of a new Radiohead album at this point in time just drew me in. It’s possible that it came right at a time when I was at the peak of my music-listening period (James Blake, Skepta, Car Seat Headrest and Death Grips all released albums (/had albums leak) this week) and I’ve dedicated a lot more time than usual to tuning into these entries.

And of course, part of this plenitude of excitement is due to their release methods; hiatus following their last album tour until a little something something I like to call their greatest contribution to cinema that never existed, their rejected Spectre theme song. The radioplay this got (among my repetition of the song that came every time I opened iTunes) could definitely be attributed to creating this deep-seeded enthusiasm towards the band. Following that, another period of silence until May 1st, where complete social media extermination from the band gave a few hints towards something new, and BANG BANG: May 3rd we got Burn the Witch and May 6th we got Daydreaming and an album release date. And here we are now, May 9th with the entirety of A Moon Shaped Pool in our unworthy ears. First new Radiohead LP in 5 years and it’s over like that.

My 4am alarm-setting venture didn’t work out in the end–I slept briskly from 9:30 to ~10:40, pissed around on my laptop from then until 1:30 with the idea of a 4am start still swirling through my mind. When it came down to business, I unconsciously hit snooze on my alarm, woke up at 4:10, checked their Facebook page and saw that it was out, checked Apple Music and saw that it wasn’t, and dozed back off. Mission partly accomplished. Big ups to the boys at Radiohead HQ for somehow convincing me through their musical endeavours and marketing genius that it was a good idea in the first place.