Wake up, babe—Thom Yorke is being mysterious on the internet again. Fans of things like Lost, Survivor, and… Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory are gonna love this one. This morning, Yorke posted the following message on his Instagram page: “400 coins scattered across the world buried in earth, stone, shadow[.] Track the tally & keep searching. If you’ve found a coin, let the forger know[.]” Don’t ask us what any of that is referring to because we have no idea.
What is clear is that the coins are blessedly of the real-and-made-by-a-blacksmith variety rather than the crypto variety. (At least for now—again, we have no idea what this is actually about.) A link in Yorke’s Instagram bio links to a landing page called “Waste Headquarters,” which itself contains a link to something called “The Forger’s Ledger.” This page contains a graphic of all 400 hidden, numbered coins, marking that some have already been found. Clicking on one of those images reveals the coin’s location and the name of its finder; just like Yorke said, the little treasures have already popped up everywhere from Vermont to New Zealand. The site also contains an equally Lindelof-esque 12 minute video featuring “the forger at work,” which you can watch below:
All of this somehow links back to Tall Tales, Yorke’s new collaborative album with Mark Pritchard (which does feature an image of a coin on its album art). That album is already out, however, so it’s unclear what this whole goose chase could be teasing. Perhaps a tour or an answer to the mysterious new business entity Radiohead filed back in March? All we really know at this stage is that Yorke seems to be having a lot of fun.
