Earlier this week Yorke cryptically Tweeted out a picture of a pure white record sending knee-jerk reactions worldwide from Internet addicts about the prospect of a new album. The salivators were right, but would it be solo work? Radiohead? Atoms for Peace? What exactly was Mr. Yorke up to this early in the changing season?

Ethan Randall, who played Mark in the 1995 era-defining movie Empire Records, once shouted the iconic quote “Damn the man! Save the Empire!” It’s a scripted remark that tidal waved through a generation and was most likely the impetus to more than a few hammered brahs waking up in detox.

Nonetheless, the ideal of the statement carried through the years and while a musical revolution hasn’t yet peeked out from behind corporate interests because of it, there are well-to-do artists up enough on the industry hierarchy that can make interesting splashes while dissenting with the status quo. We’re talking of course about Thom Yorke. He's an often-untouchable icon that has done more than his fair share of damning the man in his close to 30-year reign.

Today's recent stunt comes almost 7 years after the “pay-what-you-want” model Yorke introduced with his band under the Radiohead moniker for the album “In Rainbows.” It’s an idea that receives both praise and criticism from just about every possible musical outlet around and continues to be a scorching topic of debate amongst professionals.

“In Rainbows” is the first album to come out after Radiohead’s contract with EMI ended. The theory of self-releasing, as “In Rainbows” did, turned into more of a circus surrounding the pay scale than what the actual music is on the album. Apparently the trickery of that album wouldn’t be the last we’d see from Yorke.

Earlier this week Yorke and long-time collaborator and producer Nigel Godrich cryptically Tweeted out a picture of a pure white record sending knee-jerk reactions worldwide from Internet addicts about the prospect of a new album. The salivators were right, but would it be solo work? Radiohead? Atoms for Peace? What exactly was Mr. Yorke up to this early in the changing season?

Twisting the diamond teats of the music industry is what he was up to. Did we expect anything less?

Yorke and Godrich gifted the world an album this morning in the form of solo work from Yorke. The $6 album comes complete with download instructions – from what we’re assuming is an independently ran BitTorrent site – and a glorious fuck-off statement from the two musicians to the “self elected gate-keepers” of music.

Here’s the message in its entirety:

A message from Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich:

As an experiment we are using a new version of BitTorrent to distribute a new Thom Yorke record.

The new Torrent files have a pay gate to access a bundle of files..

The files can be anything, but in this case is an 'album'.

It’s an experiment to see if the mechanics of the system are something that the general public can get its head around …

If it works well it could be an effective way of handing some control of internet commerce back to people who are creating the work.

Enabling those people who make either music, video or any other kind of digital content to sell it themselves.

Bypassing the self elected gate-keepers.

If it works anyone can do this exactly as we have done.

The torrent mechanism does not require any server uploading or hosting costs or ‘cloud’ malarkey.

It's a self-contained embeddable shop front…

The network not only carries the traffic, it also hosts the file. The file is in the network.

Oh yes and it's called

Tomorrow's Modern Boxes.

Thom Yorke & Nigel Godrich