Thom Yorke
The Eraser
- Released
- 2006
- Format
- Vinyl, LP, Album
- Label
- XL Recordings · XLLP200
ElectronicRock LeftfieldArt RockElectroIDMExperimental
View on Discogs ↗ Related titles
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Radiohead OK Computer OK Computer is where Radiohead established the parameters — The Eraser is Yorke using the same label relationship to take the electronic experiments further without the band's infrastructure. -
Frank Ocean Blond The XL node holds Frank Ocean's Blond alongside Yorke's solo work — three records from a label whose logic is aesthetic, not commercial.
The Eraser (2006) is Thom Yorke’s first solo album, built from looped samples and electronics with Nigel Godrich, without Radiohead’s instrumentation. It arrived the same year as Burial’s debut and Trentemøller’s The Last Resort — 2006, when electronic music and post-rock were converging on a particular quality of melancholy that felt specific to the decade.
The record is more electronic than anything Radiohead had done at that point, quieter and more patient than most of what was happening around it, without the gestures that make rock albums feel like rock albums. XL gave Yorke the same relationship it extends to Frank Ocean: the freedom to make the most extreme version of what you want to make, with full support behind it.