NEW YORK (AFP) – Radiohead announced Monday concerts in six cities around the world as speculation builds for the experimental rockers’ much-anticipated but unannounced ninth album.
The band said it would play from May 20 to Oct. 4 at major arenas in Amsterdam, Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles and Mexico City, with two shows in each city except London, where Radiohead will play three.
The British rockers were already announced as headliners for eight festivals including Primavera Sound in Barcelona, Summer Sonic in Japan and the European edition of Lollapalooza in Berlin.
“These are all the headline shows that the band will play in 2016,” the band said in a statement Monday.
Radiohead, which has continually sought new ways to release music, has not revealed any details of the next album other than to confirm that the band has been in the studio.
Primavera Sound, when announcing its lineup in January, said in a press release that Radiohead would be presenting its new album at the festival but later revised the wording.
The new studio album would be Radiohead’s first since 2011′s “King of the Limbs,” which played wildly with traditional song structure by using as a base a loop of music that the band had previously recorded.
Radiohead has sold more than 30 million albums since emerging in the heyday of alternative rock in the early 1990s.
But the band soon swapped guitar rock for more electronic and experimental sounds starting with 1997’s influential album “OK Computer.”
Radiohead has not performed live since 2012, although frontman Thom Yorke has played a series of solo shows including Saturday at Britain’s electronic Bloc festival which organizers are ending after a 10-year run.
Yorke in 2014 released a second solo album, “Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes,” which is dominated by electronic rifts and reflections on the role of the individual in industrial society.
Radiohead on Christmas Day released a song that the band recorded for the latest James Bond movie “Spectre” that the filmmakers ultimately did not use.
