Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien: “Technology’s evolution on the human psyche is a massive problem”

As a teenage witness at the dawn of the MTV era, Ed O’Brien felt his heroes didn’t make music – they descended from somewhere and delivered it. Yet having risen to those heights himself as Radiohead’s guitarist, with multiple albums that rewrote what rock music could be, O’Brien knows exactly how mortal he is.

Not long ago, he found himself near paralysis: exhausted, overwhelmed, unable to get out of bed. The long process of pulling out of what he calls a ​“dark night of the soul” led to Blue Morpho, his first solo album in six years.

Huck caught up with the Radiohead guitarist under the bright Texas sun, the day after he offered the world its first glimpse of the music – a première at Austin’s SXSW of Blue Morpho: The Three Act Play, a short film directed by his friend Kit Monteith. Moving through rivers, mountains, and forests in Wales, the film traces how O’Brien found his way back: through nature, and through music that is gritty, glitchy, and hard-won.

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There’s a strong current of technophobia running through society right now. With OK Computer, you and your bandmates were way ahead. Now that everyone’s talking about AI and the effect that it’s going to have, you suddenly come up with this album about how fragile humans are as machines. Was that a conscious decision?

No, it’s not conscious at all. I guess it’s a response to everything being a human being walking on this planet and being sensitive to these things. I don’t think I’m very good at being conscious about things or trying to make a statement about anything. I just can’t do that. It’s always got to be personal. Sometimes those things you capture, there’s a zeitgeist moment on it, but it’s really just: What are you feeling?

With the new album dropping along with the accompanying short film, you’re being very open about your own mental health, has that been difficult? 

I’ve always felt like it’s important to share. You don’t have to share the detail, but I’ve always liked the idea of sharing or saying you’ve had an experience. I’ve never been scared of showing my vulnerability. When I grew up, people and bands constructed these images. The video age was really about presenting a look. Well, they weren’t always true. When we were making Kid A, I did this blog. It was quite early with the internet, like 1999 – 2000. The whole purpose was I wanted to demystify the creative process. With people whose work I admired, all you’d see is this finished result and you’d think, ​“Wow, these people are like little gods.” Well, there are transcendent moments, obviously, in the work that they do, but they’re human beings as well. What I was interested in was opening up the process and saying, ​“Well, today was a shit day.” 

In the same way, I feel like that about mental health. It is a zeitgeist‑y thing at the moment, but then, of course, there’s a reason why. The evolution of technology upon the human psyche is without a doubt a massive problem. And our disconnect from nature and the two things go hand in hand, and they have a massive effect on how we feel. I’m no different from any other human being in that regard. So all I try and be very open about sharing the challenges. There’s never any self-pity associated. Everybody on this planet who lives, one way, or the other, will suffer. In Buddhism, suffering is just a given. I’ve always been interested in sharing that and how you can pull through it; it might resonate with someone else.

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You’ve referred to the record as experiencing a ​“dark night of the soul”. Could you describe it?

I just found myself there. Suddenly it feels very, very heavy and you feel like you’re carrying this weight around. You’re exhausted, you can’t get out of bed. You feel overwhelmed, you feel anxious. You don’t want to see people. Everything feels like a supreme struggle. It was my body saying, ​“Yeah, no. Okay. You have to deal with some stuff.”

How did you get out of it?

I leaned into my spiritual practice, which started 20 odd years ago. I taught myself to meditate. I’m sort of a mongrel meditator. I don’t have a discipline. I’d just get up in the morning and sit there for 25 minutes and try to focus on my breathing. Then I’d do some breathing practices and then get into cold water. I went for walks and made myself play an instrument – I’d pick up my guitar in the mornings and play.

The other thing is not running away from it. The impulses as human beings, when we’re in discomfort, we sort of try and move away from it, don’t we? But it was my wife who said, ​“You’ve got to sit in the fire. You’ve got to walk across those hot coals. There’s no substitute for this.” And I guess I did, and I sat with it. Every time it became too much, I focused on my breathing. There’s a brilliant book by Eckhart Tolle called A New Earth, which I read. It provides answers, because essentially what I went through is sort of a death of the ego. That’s what it was. This book has some practical advice. Part of it he says is when it all becomes too much, just concentrate on your breathing. You might concentrate on your breath for five minutes and then it sort of feels okay.

Did you listen to any particular music?

I listened to Gilles Peterson’s 6 Music Saturday show. It’s a very beautifully curated weekly show with a lot of jazz, Brazilian music, a bit of hip hop, a bit of electronic, a bit of folk. It became like the high point of the week for me. Any tracks that really resonated, I’d put on this playlist which I’ve called ​‘Sacred’. I always make a playlist when I’m in a creative place. There’s about 80 odd tracks on there now, and it’s just filled up. There’s classical music in there as well. I wasn’t listening to any kind of alternative music. I needed to expand my palate.

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At the film première, you also mentioned the period between 1968 and 1974 speaking to you recently.

It’s really interesting, particularly Charles Stepney (1931−1976), the arranger [and producer]. He worked on Earth, Wind & Fire records, the Minnie Riperton record ​‘Les Fleur’. There’s something about that music – it’s beautiful, it’s spiritual, it’s psychedelic. It’s got amazing arrangements and beautiful, beautiful vocals. There was a lot of cross-pollination going on at that time. Miles Davis goes electric in that period in In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew. I love the sound of those records. 

People like Inflo – who worked with Danger Mouse and did the Kiwanuka stuff – I felt like they were alluding that time sonically, because there’s a slight distortion in the recordings. There’s what you call a saturation. In digital music it can be super clean. To me, the saturation – the analogue sound – it’s like the earth on the ground. The digital sound is like a perfect kind of composite material that’s super flat and perfect and clean. I’m not interested in that. I like the earth. I want to be barefoot in the earth with the mud in between my toes. I wanted something dark, visceral and untidy.

You were a kid when that music first came out. Do you think connecting with the past was somehow part of the process?

Yeah, I was born in ​’68. So it would have infused some of my earliest memories. I hadn’t thought about that until you said it. A lot of dealing with the ghosts of the past and childhood – so yeah, maybe that’s what it was. But I was drawn to that period of time because I love the cross-pollination. I see my kids, they’re really open. There’s no tribalism like we had, because they have access to all music. They’re just interested in good music.

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In your creative process, you adopted a routine. Was it difficult to maintain that when you were in a dark place?

The first two weeks are odd and nothing really seems to be happening. But you need patience. You’re co-creating music with spirit and spirit needs to know that you’re in for it. You’ve got to apply yourself. You need to show intention, application and hard work. With Radiohead, when we were in the studio, there were no people turning up at 3pm. We start rehearsing at 11am. We work through till 6pm. You might go through till 8pm or 9pm, 10pm even sometimes. Your body switches on and knows when it needs to work. You find the rhythm, you have to commit to it, and then your body gets used to it. And then you’re in work mode.

You’ve said that now you’ve awakened and you’re not hiding anymore. What does this mean for you moving forward with your creative practice?

I don’t care what people think anymore. Ultimately that’s it – I’ve just got to do this. I love the full spectrum of it, whether it’s moments of transcendence, moments of supreme challenge, moments of supreme doubt in myself. It keeps me humble, it keeps me curious, it keeps me alive. And that’s enough in itself. The bit that’s so refreshing now is liberating is not worrying what people think. All I can do is, do my best, produce this piece of work and then put it out there and then it’s off. It has its own life. It’s a place of freedom, truth and a place of peace.

Blue Morpho is out on May 22 via Transgressive Records. An accompanying short film, Blue Morpho: The Three Act Play premiered at SXSW 2026.

D’Arcy Doran is a journalist and editor. Follow him on Instagram.

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