Homepage photo by Kevin Westenberg

Back in October, Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien mentioned that his decade-award-dominating group was planning on heading back into the studio "in winter." And hey, it's winter. And Radiohead are back in the studio, just like O'Brien said. Hello 2010!

Writing on the band's Dead Air Space blog on December 19, the guitarist said, "The vibe in the camp is fantastic at present, and we head off into the studio in January to continue on from the work we started last Summer. I am so genuinely excited about what we're doing, but for obvious reasons I can't divulge anything more...anyway we all love surprises don't we? 10 years ago we were all collectively (that's the band) in the land of *Kid A...*and although hugely proud of that record, it wasn't a fun place to be...What's reassuring now, is that we are most definitely a different band, which should therefore mean that the music is different too and that is the aim of the game...keep it moving."

O'Brien gave away a little more about the State of Radiohead in a [#script:http://pitchfork.com/media/backend/js/tiny_mce/themes/advanced/langs/en.js]||||||Rolling Stone interview: "We feel way more empowered in terms of our art and what we're doing. We have been rehearsing for the last four weeks, for this new record. And we are in a very different place, a very new place. I don't know if this is relevant, but I was talking with [drummer] Philip [Selway] three days ago about this. We were saying, 'What's different?' And one of the things is we do things without fear. [...] The thing that is different about In Rainbows is that it was an album from the heart. It was a lot warmer. And from what I'm making out in the rehearsal room now, there are still elements of that. [...] I'm an eternal optimist, but I truly believe we can shift massively on this [next] record. That's the thing we all know, that we feel in our bellies as we're rehearsing-- we're on a big move here." Good things happen when this band makes big moves.

In other Radiohead news, Thom Yorke put up a final furious report from his trip to the United Nations Climate Change Conference on Dead Air Space. And the singer contributes to the soundtrack for an upcoming documentary about Tibet called When The Dragon Swallowed the Sun. (Via Consequence of Sound.) The film, which also features music by Philip Glass and Damien Rice, is due out early this year.