Radiohead – Supercollider / The Butcher (2011 Record Store Day Edition 12-Inch Single)

Supercollider / The Butcher was released as a double A-side single on 12-inch vinyl in the UK, Europe and Japan on 16 April 2011 for Record Store Day. It was released on the same format in the United States and Canada on 14 June 2011.

Singer Thom Yorke first performed Supercollider solo on 6 June 2008 at Malahide Castle, Dublin. Radiohead worked on it during the recording of their eighth album, The King of Limbs, but did not finish it until March 2011, one month after the album’s release.

The Butcher was recorded and mixed during the King of Limbs sessions, but Radiohead decided it did not fit the album.

Rolling Stone described the songs as ‘superb electro ballads’ that would have fit the ‘moodier second half’ of The King of Limbs. The Guardian wrote that Supercollider had a ‘a lovely rise and fall’, and particularly praised Yorke’s falsetto. In 2021, Stereogum writer Chris Deville wrote that Supercollider was ‘the kind of epic that can work as an album’s centerpiece and spine’, and that The Butcher combined dance beats with ‘Radiohead’s most dirge-like tendencies in fascinating ways’.

Track Listing

1. Supercollider
2. The Butcher

Format: Vinyl / 12” Single

Label: XL RECORDINGS

Barcode: 827565057740

Release Date: 16 Apr 2011