Thom Yorke understands why fans were 'alienated' by King of Limbs release

Singer Thom Yorke has no regrets about the way Radiohead gave fans just a few days' notice about the release of its album The King Of Limbs, although he can understand why the unusual method "alienated people".

The British rockers announced plans to release the follow up to In Rainbows in February, 2011, declaring it would only be sold digitally and would be available for fans to download online just five days later.

But not every Radiohead fan embraced the rush-release and Yorke admits it didn't work quite as well as they'd hoped and without a physical CD release, it seems like the project didn't actually exist.

He tells Rolling Stone magazine, "It was amazing just to put the record out like that. But then it didn't feel like it really existed... But that was the consequence of what we chose to do. You can either get upset about it, or say, 'Well, that's not good enough.'

"I can see why it's alienated people. I didn't realise it was on its own planet."

It wasn't the first time Radiohead shunned traditional release methods for their albums - they adopted an 'honesty box' system for the 2007 release of In Rainbows, allowing fans to pay what they liked for the record.