Radiohead Awaits Silent Trystero’s Empire

[Robin Landseadel]

Days after being criticized by Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon for its pay- 
what-you-want model for In Rainbows, Radiohead has launched a download  
section of its official online store.

The timing is probably accidental, but it is nevertheless cool. The  
band’s W.A.S.T.E. store is selling downloads for releases the band  
actually owns, including guitarist Jonny Greenwood’s soundtrack for  
the Oscar-winning film There Will Be Blood, vocalist Thom Yorke’s solo  
effortThe Eraser, In Rainbows and In Rainbows 2 (previously available  
only as part of the In Rainbows box set).

More is sure to come as Radiohead pushes the envelope of digital  
distribution.

The store’s name was cribbed from Thomas Pynchon’s conspiratorial  
postmodern classic The Crying of Lot 49. In the book, W.A.S.T.E. is an  
acronym for “We Await Silent Trystero’s Empire,” a slogan used by a  
shadowy organization dedicated to alternative, perhaps anarchic,  
communications.

The group’s symbol, the muted postal horn at right, shows up as  
graffiti everywhere throughout the hilarious narrative, and  
illustrates the subversion of accepted delivery systems: You can’t  
blow your communications horn if it’s muted by a bunch of anarchists.

It’s a cool metaphor for the current brouhaha over Radiohead’s  
subversion of the music industry’s conventional distribution system.  
By offering its fans the opportunity to pay what they want for In  
Rainbows, it’s arguable that Radiohead became industry anarchists.  
It’s also arguable, as Sonic Youth’s Gordon explained to The Guardian  
last week, that the variable-pricing release was all a hoax.

Like Lot 49’s dizzy executor Oedipa Maas, it’s up to you to assign  
meaning to what has happened. And what will happen when Trystero’s  
empire, or the demise of the music industry as we know it, comes  
calling.

Clever dudes, those Radiohead lads.

http://www.wired.com/underwire/2009/06/radiohead-adds-downloads-still-awaits-trysteros-empire/