MiniDiscs (Hacked)

MiniDiscs [Hacked] contains over 16 hours of demos, rehearsals, outtakes, and live performances recorded while Radiohead were working on their third album, OK Computer (1997).[1] It includes unreleased songs, alternative mixes, early versions of OK Computer songs (such as an extended version of "Paranoid Android"), and versions of later songs "Lift", "True Love Waits", "Nude", "Last Flowers", "Motion Picture Soundtrack" and "Life in a Glasshouse".[1][2]

The recordings are taken from MiniDiscs belonging to Radiohead singer Thom Yorke.[1] Though some had been released on the 2017 OK Computer reissue OKNOTOK 1997 2017,[3] most were never intended for release.[1]

The recordings were taken from MiniDiscs (example pictured with battery for scale).

On 5 June 2019, the recordings were leaked online by a collector who claimed to have traded them for unreleased Beatles recordings.[4] They may have been stolen while archived material was being prepared for the OK Computer reissue.[4] Guitarist Ed O'Brien said they had been hacked from Radiohead's cloud archive.[5]

According to conflicting reports, the thief initially demanded a $150,000 ransom from Radiohead not to release the recordings.[6] However, according to an investigation by Pitchfork, the thief, who used the name Zimbra, had instead hoped to sell them to fans.[4] Zimbra told Pitchfork that "the whole $150k thing and 'ransom' was taken way out of context".[4] A fan who negotiated with Zimbra said he did not believe extortion was his intent: "He never told us anything to suggest he was trying to get money from the band, only from fans."[4] Zimbra released the recordings free after news broke on the discussion site Reddit.[4]

On 11 June, Radiohead made the recordings available to stream or purchase from the music distribution site Bandcamp for 18 days.[7] All proceeds went to the environmentalist group Extinction Rebellion,[7] raising approximately £500,000.[8] The official release removed a 12-minute field recording and non-Radiohead material, such as several minutes of a James Bond score.[9] Guitarist Jonny Greenwood wrote on Twitter that the collection was "only tangentially interesting",[10] while Yorke wrote on the Bandcamp page: "As it's out there it may as well be out there until we all get bored and move on."[1]

Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	82/100[11]
Review scores
Source	Rating
The Guardian	[12]
The Daily Telegraph	[13]

Pitchfork wrote that MiniDiscs [Hacked] did not "make for an ideal listening experience" and would be of interest "only to the most diehard Radiohead fans". They observed a "few moments of brilliance (and strangeness)", including Yorke's acoustic songs, the extended "Paranoid Android", and an alternative version of "Lift" that "could have topped the charts".[1]

However, The Guardian felt MiniDiscs [Hacked] had merit "even for less nerdish fans", and wrote that was "an endlessly interesting chronicle of a band reinventing the mainstream by rejecting it ... [It shows] the inner workings of what is regarded by many as the greatest album of the 1990s, showing how they walked alongside and then turned away from the brash Britpop that surrounded them."[12]

New Statesman wrote that "starting, skipping and scrolling" through the lengthy tracks "makes for a surprisingly liberating experience, akin to wandering Radiohead’s subconscious memory palace and occasionally encountering the familiar in a different form".[14] The Quietus praised the "stunning" live performances and particularly Yorke's demos, and wrote of the "unromantic revealing" of the process of creating music.[15]

External document

MiniDiscs (Hacked) – a fan-made Google document cataloguing the recordings at the time of the leak

Each MiniDisc is included as a single track lasting approximately an hour; the contents are not broken into individual tracks.[14][16] Fans assembled a Google document to identify songs and timestamps.[16]

All tracks are written by Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Philip Selway, Ed O'Brien and Colin Greenwood.

• Radiohead on Bandcamp (archive link as of 12 June 2019)
• MiniDiscs [Hacked] at Discogs
• Fan-made document cataloguing the compilation contents – via Google Docs